The United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA) has given itself a timeline for setting rules and oversight for companies that want to mine the ocean floor for minerals.

At its annual meeting, the ISA’s 36-member policymaking Council said it would work “with a view” to adopting regulations in 2025. The agreement came after hours of closed-door negotiations at the organisation’s headquarters on the last day of a two-week meeting.

Industry response

Gerard Barron, the Metals Company’s chief executive, a Canadian-based mining start-up that has teamed with the small island nation of Nauru to pursue the first license to start industrial-scale mining, said he remained optimistic that his company would secure the approval they needed to start the effort within the next several years.

The Metals Company and Nauru, along with the delegation from China, which also has been aggressively pursuing seabed mining, pushed unsuccessfully at last week’s meeting for the Seabed Authority to set a goal of finalizing the regulations by 2024.

One of the biggest questions now is when Nauru will submit an application to begin industrial-scale mining. It may do so before the regulations are finalised, knowing that it will likely take at least a year for the application to be reviewed and then to be acted on by the Seabed Authority.

If Nauru and the Metals Company must wait until the regulations are finalised, seabed mining would begin no sooner than 2026 amid continued opposition.

“We are no longer in a ‘what if’ scenario, but rather ‘what now’,” Nauru’s ambassador to the ISA Margo Deiye said during the session, adding that her government planned to soon apply for a mining contract.

Photo: The Metals Company

Ocean campaigners response

Ocean campaigners remain worried about a possible green light for industrial exploitation of the high seas, with the ISA yet to have agreed on a process for reviewing license applications.

“This roadmap negotiated behind closed doors does not reflect the rapidly growing concern and opposition to deep sea mining,” said Sofia Tsenikli, speaking on behalf of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, Greenpeace and WWF, among other advocates.

“A mining application could be made at any time. A moratorium is urgently needed,” she added.

Next week, the ISA Assembly and its 167 member states will discuss for the first time a “precautionary pause” in mining, supported by about 20 countries, including France, Chile and Brazil.

Environmentalists who have teamed up with nations like Costa Rica to challenge seabed mining have said the delay would give them more time to enlist additional countries that want to see a long-term pause or even a moratorium on the practice. Nearly two dozen nations have now endorsed some form of a hold, up from just a handful a year ago.