NGOs Slam Missed Chance To Prevent Seabed Mining

United Nations, United States, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Apr, 2023 ) :More and more governments are calling for strong environmental rules before allowing any large-scale mining of the seabed, but as the latest round of talks on the issue concluded Friday, NGOs voiced fear that industry may soon be given the green light.

Several nations called for a moratorium on such mining at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) council meeting.

"The first thing to highlight is that the political atmosphere has shifted quite radically since that time last year," Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition told AFP.

"There wasn't a single state at that point that had stood up and said no to mining." But as the two-week meeting wrapped up, she remained "very worried" the door could be opened to mining applications later this year.

The Jamaica-based ISA, established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, has authority over the ocean floors outside of its 167 member states' Exclusive Economic Zones, which extend up to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from coastlines.

It has so far awarded seabed exploration contracts only to research centers and companies in well-defined areas of potential mineral wealth.

Industrial exploitation of nickel, cobalt or copper is not expected to begin until the adoption of a mining code that has been under discussion for nearly 10 years -- including at the latest talks in Kingston.

For years, non-governmental organizations and scientists have warned about the damage seabed mining could inflict on deep-sea ecosystems.

Countries are increasingly echoing that concern: Canada, Australia and Belgium among others have insisted that international seabed mining cannot begin without strict rules.

"Brazil believes the current level of knowledge and best available science are insufficient to approve any seabed mining projects in areas beyond national jurisdiction," Ambassador Elza Moreira Marcelino de Castro said at the ISA council meeting.

Without calling outright for a moratorium on exploitation, she said Brazil sees "significant merit" in the proposal for a deep-sea mining "pause" as advocated by around 15 countries including France, Germany, Chile and Vanuatu.

"Deep-sea mining would go beyond harming the seabed and have a wider impact on fish populations, marine mammals, and the essential function of the deep-sea ecosystems in regulating the climate," said Vanuatu representative Sylvain Kalsakau.

"We encourage our fellow Pacific states who have expressed interest in deep-sea mining to step back from the brink," he said -- in a message pointedly aimed at the tiny island country of Nauru.

- 'A lot of anxiety' - Nauru, impatient with the pace of progress, invoked in June 2021 a clause allowing it to demand that a mining code be adopted within two years.

Once that deadline is reached, on July 9, Nauru's government could request a mining contract for NORI (Nauru Ocean Resources), a subsidiary of Canada's The Metals Company.

But without a code in place, the 36-member council is divided over the process for reviewing an application for a mining contract -- and it looked on course to part without agreement, with a draft seen by AFP calling for further talks on the matter.

The continuing uncertainty is "creating a lot of anxiety here," said Pradeep Singh, a law of the sea expert and fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam.

Nauru reiterated its pledge to wait until ISA's next council meeting, later in July, before filing a mining application -- but observers told AFP they doubted the mining code would be ready for adoption by then.

"It looks like meeting this deadline is certainly not possible," Singh said.

"There's a lot of points that are still contentious," he added, including the fraught issue of how profits from undersea mining would be shared, and how environmental impacts should be measured.

In the absence of clear rules on how to approve or reject a mining application, "governments are recklessly leaving the backdoor open for deep-sea mining to sneak in and start operating later this year," warned Greenpeace's Louisa Casson, in a statement.

If The Metals Company starts gearing up for a launch of production in late 2024, NGOs fear that other industry groups will spy an opening -- and file their own applications when the two-year clause ends.

Barely weeks after the historic adoption in March of the first international treaty on the protection of the high seas, "this deeply irresponsible outcome is a wasted opportunity to send a clear signal... that the era of ocean destruction is over," charged Casson.