At deep sea mining meeting, debate on regulations nears critical decision

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Delegates to the UN-affiliated organisation that regulates seabed mining cut a live stream of their negotiations on Wednesday and retreated behind closed doors in an attempt to resolve a dilemma that could determine the fate of the deep ocean.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) missed a deadline on July 9

to enact regulations to allow the mining of deep sea ecosystems

for valuable metals used in electric car batteries.

That means the ISA must accept licence applications from mining companies. But the question of whether it must act – and how – on any submissions in the absence of environmental safeguards has stymied the Council, the ISA’s 36-member policymaking body that has been meeting at its Kingston, Jamaica, headquarters for the past two weeks.

While delegates negotiated out of sight, observers from environmental groups huddled in conversation outside the Council chambers at the Jamaica Conference Centre, a sort of tropical UN.

Ms Louisa Casson, a Greenpeace campaigner, worries a compromise could commit the ISA to reviewing mining license applications by a certain date even if regulations still are not in place.

“It would be outrageous for negotiators here to cook up a deal that sets a start date for this risky industry,” Ms Casson said. As at Wednesday night, no deal had been announced.

The ISA has extraordinary powers to determine the future of the deep ocean, the world’s last untouched wilderness. Pushed by the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru and an investor-backed seabed mining venture, the ISA in July is continuing to negotiate regulations that could allow mining to begin.

The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of Sea created the ISA to promote the exploitation of the seabed in international waters for the benefit of humankind while, seemingly contradictorily, ensuring the effective protection of the marine environment.

The treaty also directed the ISA to establish the Enterprise, a for-profit corporation to mine the seabed and share revenues and technology with developing nations. In other words, the ISA will regulate its own company.

For decades, the ISA had toiled away out of sight and out of mind, writing rules for an industry that seemed far in the future. This week, as extreme climate-driven heatwaves broil the planet’s biosphere, the regulations’ final details are still being hammered out – and could go into effect as early as 2024. Now, though, the world is watching.

A growing number of the ISA’s 168 member nations, plus the European Union, are calling for a moratorium or pause on deep sea mining due to a severe lack of scientific knowledge about the seabed ecosystems targeted for exploitation.

The ISA has issued 31 licences to mining contractors to explore the seabed for minerals but none are yet allowed to start mining.

Environmental activists, meanwhile, are pressuring corporations to pledge not to use or finance seabed minerals, saying deep sea mining risks destroying otherworldly seabed-dwelling animals such as “Casper” the ghost octopus.

For a few weeks each year, Kingston is transformed into a diplomatic hub as hundreds of member state delegates, non-governmental organisation observers and mining contractors descend on the capital, whisked from their hotels to the ISA ’s harborside headquarters by a police escort that barrels through city streets, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

But escalating controversy has disrupted the ISA’s clubby atmosphere, where the annual meetings long had the air of a family reunion.

Mr Matthew Gianni, co-founder of an alliance of environmental groups called the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, recalls weekend retreats at a Jamaican resort where ISA participants would mingle. “People really did socialise – contractors dancing with NGOs, NGOs with delegates,” he says. “Nobody was really taking strong positions on things back then and the negotiations were fairly easy-going.”

The present ISA gathering is the first since the pandemic. Armed security guards and police roam the building and media are permitted to attend only one week of the three-week session and barred from the meeting chamber when delegates are in session.

Tensions have been rising since 2021 when Nauru triggered a rule requiring mining regulations to be enacted within two years. That focused global attention on the ISA and its closeness to the mining contractors it regulates.

Nauru is the ISA state sponsor of The Metals Company, a Canadian-registered firm, and it invoked the two-year provision shortly after executives told potential investors they expected to begin mining in 2024. That started a countdown to finish a complex set of regulations that had been in the works for more than five years.

Temperatures at the ISA are likely to rise in the final two days of the Council session this week as delegates try to resolve what to do about mining applications.

At the same time, they are trying to come to terms on regulations that involve everything from setting royalties on mining revenues and how to share them among member states to establishing environmental inspection and compliance procedures.

The ISA Assembly, which is comprised of all member states, meets next week. Although it is the ISA’s final arbiter and usually approves the Council’s decisions, mining opponents plan to take their case to the Assembly’s 169 members. Chile, France, Palau and Vanuatu have submitted a proposal to the Assembly to prohibit the approval of any mining licences until regulations are enacted. BLOOMBERG