Global Debate on Deep-Sea Resource Management

After a decade of debate, by year’s end the world should finally have a rulebook for mining the deep sea, Leticia Carvalho, the head of the International Seabed Authority, said in an interview.

It’s her job to help make it happen. And in the past year, the Trump administration has made the task far more urgent. She called it “absolutely existential” that the 170 nations in the authority now reach an agreement.

That’s because the Trump administration has said it will start unilaterally issuing permits for seabed mining in international waters, the vast stretches of the ocean that are not the domain of any one country. Regulators in the United States are now considering applications from companies that want to mine in these areas for valuable minerals, a practice that is environmentally controversial and has never been done on a commercial scale.

“The world agreed 30 years ago that this is an area that belongs to all of us, and we should go there collectively,” Ms. Carvalho said. In a world without international rules, she said, the oceans could turn into a kind of “Wild West” where each nation makes up its own.

This week, the seabed authority that she leads began its annual meetings in Kingston, Jamaica, to try to end the impasse. The authority was created in 1994 under a global treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as an independent body to regulate use of the seafloor in international waters, which cover nearly half the planet.

The United States has not ratified the U.N. convention, but has observer status at the authority’s deliberations and, until recently, followed its standards.

“It was quite extraordinary that such assertive messaging is coming out from the secretariat already, ahead of this meeting,” said Pradeep Singh, an expert on ocean governance at the Oceano Azul Foundation, a Portuguese science and advocacy group, who has attended several years of the authority’s meetings. He is among the experts concerned that rushing to complete the rules this year might lead to sloppy work.

Reaching an agreement on these rules, often called a mining code, would make history. The authority has been locked in debate over what the rules should look like for more than a decade. At the same time, the potential environmental toll of the industry has come under increasing scrutiny.

A completed mining code wouldn’t necessarily give the greenlight for commercial mining. But The Metals Company, which is leading the race to the seafloor, has told investors it will be ready to start mining by the end of 2027 with the assistance of the Trump administration.

Much of the activity would happen in the Pacific Ocean in an area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico. There, the ocean floor is blanketed with fist-sized nodules of valuable minerals and metals including cobalt, nickel and manganese that have accumulated over millions of years. (Some countries, like Japan, are planning to mine for similar resources in territorial waters rather than international ones.)

By some estimates, these deep ocean riches could eclipse all land-based reserves. But accessing such remote areas is technologically complex and costly. Some critics say that the industry may not turn a profit.

Scientists also say mining would damage deep sea ecosystems. There, all manner of animals exist, like tuba-shaped sea sponges and delicate, featherlike corals, that live on the nodules and around them. A scientific study of a Metals Company test run found that collecting nodules could reduce the abundance and biodiversity of seabed life by 30 percent.

Ms. Carvalho was elected to run the authority last year, and, as a trained oceanographer, she is its first secretary-general with a background in science. She is also a former oil industry regulator from Brazil.