Nations Denounce Deep Sea Mining Company’s Bid to Exploit Metals in the Pacific Under US Law – Inside Climate News

As delegates from member states of the International Seabed Authority entered the third and final week of high-stakes negotiations on deep-sea mining, they condemned a move made earlier this year by The Metals Co. to bypass the authority’s protocols by applying for a permit to mine in international waters under U.S. law. 

“For years, one company—The Metals Co.—lobbied this authority to fast-track exploitation, promising riches to small island developing states like mine and huge returns to

investors,” Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Republic of Palau, said last week during the ISA’s assembly meeting in Kingston, Jamaica. “These promises have proven false.” 

In April, The Metals Co. USA, a subsidiary of the Vancouver-based firm, submitted applications to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for two exploration licenses and one commercial recovery permit to mine rock-like deposits called polymetallic nodules more than 2 miles deep in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast ocean area in the Pacific that lies between Hawaii and Mexico. 

“The scale of strip mining proposed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is unprecedented. The area under consideration is the size of India,” Whipps said. “Is this the legacy we want to leave our children? A lifeless ocean floor stretching across millions of square kilometers, that could have cascading impacts on the entire Pacific ecosystem and beyond?”

The Metals Co.’s bid to mine in international waters came just days after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that charged NOAA with fast-tracking the review and issuing seabed exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits. Trump’s order invoked a law known as the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, which was passed in 1980 as a temporary mechanism for regulating deep-sea mining in international waters, said Duncan Currie, legal advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, who attended this month’s ISA meetings as an observer. 

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ISA is the only entity legally authorized to permit mining in ocean areas that lie beyond nations’ jurisdictions. An attempt to circumvent that and act unilaterally is a violation of international law, said Currie.

The ISA cannot issue such permits until it finalizes and adopts a series of rules, regulations and procedures known as the Mining Code that would govern such activity to ensure marine life is protected and ensure equitable sharing of benefits from these resources, with special considerations for developing nations. 

The Law of the Sea explicitly states that the seabed area that lies beyond any countries’ national jurisdictions and its resources is the “common heritage of mankind,” which “cannot be claimed, appropriated, or owned by any state or person.” 

The negotiations in Kingston took place from July 7 to 25. The ISA council—an elected group of 36 member states that acts as the ISA’s executive body—was meant to finally adopt the code there, according to a deadline the organization set in 2023. 

The code has been in development for more than a decade, and the ISA has come under mounting pressure from countries and companies like The Metals Co., which have been eager to move forward with their mining pursuits.

Last week, however, the council announced it would not be adopting the code, and would refrain from setting another deadline for adoption until further notice. 

“In its current state, that mining code is totally unable to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment,” said Emma Wilson, policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, who attended the ISA meetings as an observer. It will likely take another 10 to 15 years, she said, to gather the necessary scientific data needed to flesh out parts of the mining code. 

Currently, there are too many unknowns about how such industrial activity might disrupt rare and fragile ecosystems, said Patricia Esquete, a deep sea ecologist who attended the ISA meetings as an observer affiliated with the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative.

“Most of the species that live there are unknown to science,” she said. And many of them, she said, live on or in the nodules of interest to mining companies. 

Exploiting the Deep Sea

For years, The Metals Co. (TMC) claimed mining the metals found within the deep-sea mineral deposits—nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese—would be key to addressing the global climate crisis. In 2020, Gerard Barron, TMC’s chairman and CEO, said in a post on the company’s website,“Ocean nodules are a unique resource to consider at a time when society urgently needs a good solution for supplying new virgin metals for the green transition.” 

That framing brought significant pushback.

“They were greenwashing the whole industry as this thing for the benefit of humanity, that we need to go and exploit the deep sea in order to usher in the green transition and provide the minerals that are necessary to get off fossil fuels,” said Arlo Hemphill, project lead for Greenpeace USA’s Stop Deep Sea Mining campaign.

Hemphill said that narrative has shifted in the last few years, as battery manufacturers increasingly move towards making lithium-iron phosphate batteries, which are cheaper to produce. 

A new report released by Greenpeace USA last week claims the company is no longer promoting its quest to mine the ocean as a green solution, but as a matter of U.S. national security. 

Greenpeace alleges that TMC is targeting and influencing military officials and veterans, Republican members of Congress and the Department of Defense with its message that deep-sea mining is key to reducing dependence on foreign adversaries like China for critical metal supplies. 

In a post on X, Barron shared a video of himself speaking in 2024, in which he said: “I firmly believe that in order for the United States to outcompete China in the critical mineral space, we must invest in domestic capabilities to harvest and also refine seabed minerals.” 

This new narrative, Hemphill said, has nothing to do with addressing the climate crisis. “It’s a hundred percent about competition with China and national security, and U.S. defense,” he said, adding that it’s finding a receptive audience in the Trump administration. 

TMC did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in April, Barron appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before the House Committee on Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at a hearing on “Exploring the Potential of Deep-Sea Mining to Expand American Mineral Production.”

“I have come to view this as the competitive advantage of the United States—deep seabed mining is a freedom of the high seas and America already has a robust regulatory regime to regulate U.S. citizens willing to pursue it. America now also has the President willing to put this regime to good use,” Barron said in his written testimony. 

Trump’s executive order on deep-sea mining says, “The United States faces unprecedented economic and national security challenges in securing reliable supplies of critical minerals independent of foreign adversary control. Vast offshore seabed areas hold critical minerals and energy resources. These resources are key to strengthening our economy, securing our energy future, and reducing dependence on foreign suppliers for critical minerals.”

Advocates opposed to deep-sea mining say this isn’t true. 

In an introductory letter to the Greenpeace report, Randy Manner, a retired U.S. Army major general, wrote, “What we are witnessing is not a fact-based response to a military need, but an attempt by private actors to drape a speculative commercial venture in the flag of national defense.” 

Not only is the industry falsely professing to aid national security, he said, it is putting the U.S. at further risk. 

“The bedrock of national security is not simply weapons or minerals—it is global stability, rule of law, and ecological resilience,” Manner wrote. “Mining the deep ocean in defiance of international consensus would degrade all three. It would erode U.S. credibility, fracture alliances, and set a dangerous precedent for unilateral resource exploitation.”

It could also lead to disputes at sea, he said in an interview. 

“Every time that we claim part of the ocean as our own, someone is going to counterclaim it. That means you’re going to have to put ships and navy and aircraft over the area to defend that territory,” he said. Invariably, he said, “there’ll be conflict.” 

To deter such actions, the ISA council announced it will launch an investigation into contractors that may be breaching the Law of the Sea by pursuing deep-sea mining activities unilaterally, which could include aiding any other parties attempting to do so. 

Though the council did not explicitly name contractors of interest in their investigation, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition’s Currie said it is clear the probe will center on subsidiaries of TMC—namely Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. and Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd. 

The ISA has granted both companies exploration contracts to look for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone—the same area where TMC’s U.S. subsidiary has applied to mine. Once the authority adopts a Mining Code, they will be able to apply for exploitation permits to extract the mineral deposits. 

This investigation, said Wilson, the policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, sends a signal that “any attempts to mine the deep ocean beyond the bounds of international maritime law will not be accepted.” 

“It acts as a deterrent to any other industry actors who may be considering illegal pathways to mine the deep sea,” she said. 

The investigation will be carried out by the ISA’s secretary-general, Leticia Reis de Carvalho, and its legal and technical committee. Its findings are expected to be presented at next year’s annual July meetings in Jamaica. 

Militarization of the Deep Sea 

In the meantime, Currie, the legal advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said he expects lawsuits will be filed to challenge the applications of TMC’s U.S. subsidiary to explore and mine the deep sea under U.S. authority.

As the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is located between Hawaii and Mexico, Currie said, it is expected that one of the lawsuits will come from Hawaii. The state has banned deep-sea mining in its waters, specifically within three miles of the shoreline, through the Hawaii Seabed Mining Prevention Act.

“The Pacific is not a sacrifice zone. We will not stand by while a neocolonial deep sea land grab takes place that will harm our communities, disrupt our cultural connection to the ocean, and endanger our livelihoods,” said Solomon P. Kaho’ohalahala, a seventh-generation native Hawaiian descendant from the island of Lānaʻi and chair of the Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition, in a statement in response to the Greenpeace report.

Some Pacific islanders worry disrupting deep-sea ecosystems could negatively impact tuna populations that they depend on. 

“Toxic sediment plumes generated by deep sea mining operations could contaminate marine food chains, impacting migrating tuna,” said Alanna Smith, an environmental advocate from the Cook Islands and director of the Te Ipukarea Society, which provides community outreach and education on deep-sea mining. 

“This could lead to smaller fish or even population declines for Pacific peoples,” she said, speaking from Jamaica last week. 

Some advocates are worried about the geopolitical impacts of this nascent industry. 

“There is a very real risk,” the Greenpeace report says, “that deep sea mined minerals could infiltrate global supply chains and be used for military purposes, undermining the fundamental principles enshrined in UNCLOS [Law of the Sea] that the international seabed is the common heritage of humankind and must only ever be used for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all humankind.” 

Cobalt, for instance, is used to make heat-resistant alloys that go into fighter jets and ballistic missiles, said Manner, the retired Army major general. 

Nearly 40 countries have called for a global moratorium on the deep-sea mining industry, according to the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. 

Last week, Whipps of Palau; Juan Carlos Navarro, Panama’s minister of environment; and Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, France’s ocean ambassador, joined them in delivering calls during the ISA assembly to halt deep-sea mining. Poivre d’Arvor proposed a 10- to 15-year precautionary pause on the industry, echoing a growing public and scientific consensus that mining should not move forward without far more research and regulations in place. 

“History shows multilateral courage can prevail. We protected the ozone layer. We banned nuclear testing. Let us add the deep seabed to that honor roll,” Whipps said.