UNITED NATIONS: Governments and environmental activists expressed anger Friday after a Canadian undersea mining group announced plans to cut a deal with the United States to side-step a United Nations treaty. Delegates to the International Seabed Authority (ISA) warned that the decision by The Metals Company (TMC) would violate international law and undermine joint management of the seabed. But the firm argues the ISA was taking too long to set undersea mining rules and that North American industry needs seabed minerals to compete with China.
“I must express my deep concern,” said ISA chief Leticia Carvalho. Created by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), the ISA was designed to protect the seabed in international waters and to regulate mining. Debate over a global mining code has stretched for more than a decade, amid mounting calls to pause deep sea mining for fear of irreversible damage to the undersea environment.
The United States is not a member of the ISA nor of Unclos. TMC, apparently exasperated by the ISA’s failure to agree on rules to mine the Pacific seabed for nickel and cobalt, now plans to submit a request to President Donald Trump’s administration via its American subsidiary. This would perhaps fatally undermine the effort to confirm the ISA as sole regulator of mining under international waters — and trigger a global free-for-all.
On the final day of the ISA conference in Jamaica, delegates of several countries including giant China and.
