A United Nations-affiliated organization is expected to start accepting applications this summer from companies looking to mine deep sea ecosystems for valuable metals, despite failing on Friday to establish regulations governing the embryonic industry.
That doesn’t necessarily mean mining is set to begin anytime soon. Given the absence of environmental regulations, as well as ongoing disagreement among the International Seabed Authority’s 167 member nations over whether deep sea mining should even proceed, there are doubts about whether licenses will be issued and under what conditions. Regardless, the failure to establish a regulatory framework before the deadline — for environmental standards, royalty payments, environmental impact assessments, inspection or compliance — means that whatever happens next will take the ISA into unchartered territory.
The organization is “sleepwalking into a legally uncertain situation,” Ambassador Hugo Verbist, head of Belgium’s delegation, told the ISA Council on Friday as the organization’s 36-nation policymaking body concluded more than two weeks of negotiations in Kingston, Jamaica.
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea established the ISA in 1994 to regulate the industrialization of the seabed in international waters and to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment. The ISA had been slowly developing regulations, called the mining code, before Nauru, a South Pacific island nation of 8,000 people, sped things up by triggering a so-called two-year rule in the Law of the Sea treaty. That provision required the ISA to complete the mining code by July 9, 2023, or accept mining applications under whatever regulations exist at the time.
All mining contractors must be sponsored by an ISA member state and Nauru is the sponsor of The Metals Company, a Canadian-registered venture formerly known as DeepGreen. Nauru invoked the two-year rule shortly after The Metals Company told potential investors that it expected to begin mining by 2024, according to US securities filings. The Metals Company also holds contracts sponsored by two other small South Pacific island nations to prospect for cobalt, nickel and other metals used to make electric car batteries.
Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland and other countries, meanwhile, have indicated that they would not approve any mining contracts until robust environmental protections for the seabed are enacted.