A Vancouver -based mining company is looking to dodge the international agency in charge of regulating mining in international waters after long negotiations that says it has not gone anywhere.
The metal company (TMC) instead look for permission From the United States to begin deep water mining in the Pacific Ocean, instead of the International International Mass Authority (ISA) of the UN affiliated.
The co -founder and CEO Gerard Barron says he thinks we could help start mining “long before we had been under the Isa road.”
“The United States regulator is open. They encourage … dialogue and consultation,” he said. “This is how companies obtain projects that move through the permissions process.”
The movement has alarmed the observers and Isa. The agency, since it was formed in 1994, and its almost 170 member countries have been working to establish regulations for mining in international waters, but has not yet ended any. He has issued exploration permits, but none for commercial mining.
The United States is not part of the ISA. It has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNClos), which established the agency and many rules for navigation, the extraction of resources and the protection of the environment.
TMC is looking for permission Through an American law That is prior to the Hard Minerals Resources Law of the Background of Sea Isa, from 1980. It wants to extract small rocks from the seabed, called polymetallic nodules, in an area of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. The nodules contain valuable minerals such as cobalt and nickel.
But the United States has never approved commercial mining in international waters and the ISA head says that authority does not have.
“Any unilateral action would constitute a violation of international law and directly undermine the fundamental principles of multilateralism, the peaceful use of the oceans and the framework of collective government established under [the UNCLOS]”Leticia Carvalho, general secretary of the ISA, said in a statement last month.
Countries control the mining mining for only 200 nautical miles of their coasts, under the terms of the UNClos. Beyond that is where the ISA based in Jamaica enters.
TMC, which was associated with the nation of the Pacific Island of Nauru, obtained an ISA exploration permit in 2011. Since then, the company has been frustrated by the rhythm of the conversations.
Environmental concerns have weighed a lot in Isa’s negotiations. Many countries, including CanadaFrance, Spain and New Zealand – asked for a moratorium in deep water mining until more about its environmental impact is known.
There are billions of tons of valuable minerals for electric vehicle batteries and energy storage at the bottom of the ocean, and a company registered in Canadian is leading the race to extract them. But marine and environmental scientists say they are likely to risk a seabed ecosystem on which little is known. Negotiations are being carried out in the International Marine Fund Authority this month in Jamaica.
“The deep sea is considered the common inheritance of humanity. So that means that it belongs to all of us, not only countries, not individual corporations, belongs to all of us,” said Travis Athenen, a Halifax headquarters for the conservation coalition of deep seas, an international group that has closely followed the MINING negotiations of Sea.
“We do not want to hurry this. We want to do well. We barely know anything about the deep sea or the impacts of mining.”
Barron says that the ISA is “very influenced, some would say, even by groups of NGOs that simply do not want to see progress.”
In contrast, the administration of US President Donald Trump According to reports, you are considering An executive order to accelerate deep water mining permits.
Barron says his company is in the first consultations with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States, which is responsible for reviewing deep mining requests. NOAA has been attacked to mass layoffs by the Trump administration, which is turning away from climatic action and research.
The company will submit a formal application in the second quarter of the year, he says.
Barron says that he believes that the application is in a “solid” legal field, and that there will be no less supervision in any environmental impact.
“There is a legal framework that the United States establishes in 1980. So we know we are in a solid field there,” he said.
But ATEN thinks that if the United States approves mining unilaterally, it could fly how the oceans are governed and lead to a free for the bottom of the sea. The main players such as China and Russia could decide to ignore the authority of the ISA and move to oceanic mining, all without environmental supervision and financial benefits for small island countries in the oceans that are extracted.
“Any other country could really start taking the international seabed,” he said.
He says that the TMC measure doubts its climatic credentials. The company has long promoted deep water mining as a more environmentally conscious and social form of extracting crucial minerals, compared to terrestrial mining.
“What this is showing is that they never cared all that.”
