Featured

Good morning everyone, Mr. Chairman, Dear Delegates,

On this day of discussions dedicated to the Two-Year Rule, which could see seabed mining begin long before there is sufficient scientific data to ensure the effective protection of our greatest ally in the climate crisis, the deep ocean, I wish to address you to bring the voice of my generation. 

Before that, I would like to thank and congratulate Vanuatu for its decision to join the call for a precautionary pause; along with twelve other states, including the pioneer country, Palau, and Chile, the Federated States of Micronesia, France, Fiji, Germany, New Zealand and Panama, who reiterated their positions at this meeting.

I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Hinano, Uncle Sol, Jonathan, Alanna, the representatives of the Pacific Peoples whose voices must resonate here. The Pacific communities they represent will be the ones directly impacted by the decisions you, the delegates, make here. As part of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition delegation, I am speaking today to bring the voice of another group that is not well represented here: those of my generation and the next.

My name is Anne-Sophie, I am the French representative of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, and with the #LookDown collective, which I created with the activist Camille Etienne here, we have mobilized tens of thousands of young people asking our governments to take a stand against deep sea mining, first in France, then today in Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other countries around the world. Today more than ever, these tens of thousands of young people are watching you. 

Dear delegates, we are witnesses to the decisions you will make in the coming months. These decisions that will be taken here, in the shelter of this conference center, will have irreversible consequences, for biodiversity as for the climate. The young people whose voices I represent today must be an integral part of these decisions, because they will affect our lives.

Delegates, the science is clear: we do not have the luxury of opening the Pandora’s box of deep-sea mining. We cannot afford to sacrifice our greatest ally in the climate crisis, the deep ocean, on the altar of the extractivist model that is already a thing of the past.

The living conditions of my generation, and those of the next, will already be profoundly altered by the devastating impacts of the environmental crisis. Deep-sea mining will only exacerbate them. And you still have the power to prevent it. 

Dear delegates, you, who represent the member states of the Council of the International Seabed Authority, must be at the helm of the decisions that will impact our lives. You must ensure that my generation, your children’s generation, will have a healthy ocean, that is, livable conditions on land. 

When you make your decisions here, I ask you to keep in mind the cry of those tens of thousands of young people of my generation. We are standing on a narrow and decisive line: you are at the place where you can choose to have the courage to take that step aside, to listen to the scientists, and not to make decisions that will send us into the abyss of history. 

It is now or never. 

We have a very brief comment on DR 104. It is not only the costs and expenses incurred by the Authority that the contractor must be liable for, but all effects, including environmental effects, of the violation. This would seem obvious, and is completely missing, due to the lack of a liability regime. The polluter pays principle requires nothing less.

Effective compliance is dependent on effective control, and the issue of effective compliance has yet to be discussed by the Council. A recent example of the issue of effective control and compliance is the takeover of UK Seabed Resources by Norwegian company Loke Minerals. It seems blindingly obvious that effective control has changed from the United States to Norway, yet like previous takeovers such as DeepGreen’s takeover of Nautilus’s ownership of Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML), and other issues with TMC subsidiaries the LTC does not investigate the new owners and, in practice, new operators, at all. Not only are changes in control going uninvestigated, longstanding issues of effective control like the question of where effective control of The Metals Company and NORI lies, are not being pursued. This is not only contrary to the principle of common heritage of humankind, which underpins the Convention and which is reinforced by BBNJ, but is, as was shown in a paper for the ISA by Andre Rojas and Freedom Ka Phillips, inconsistent with the requirements of UNCLOS. Of course effective control of UK Seabed Resources in any sense has now changed to Norway. 

So to address  the concept of effective compliance, as is required by the liability provisions of Article 139 of the Convention, without addressing effective control is meaningless.

A brief comment relating to 101bis

We take the floor simply to remind the room of a recent whistle-blowing incident, where scientists aboard the TMC ship, the Hidden Gem, put their jobs on the line in order to signal the spill of sediments during the NORI test mine, that had been given the green light by a sub-group of the LTC under silence procedure at the end of last year.

We note that this draft regulation suggests that whistle-blowing incidents be followed up by independent investigations, but of course no such thing happened in the instance of the NORI spill, although this would have seemed like the next logical step.  

This feeds into a wider concern: we know that contractors have violated the terms of their contracts under the exploration regulations, but we are yet to be informed of the nature of the violations or the names of the contractors concerned and the ISA has never taken punitive action. We would suggest that if a contractor has been found to be non-compliant during exploration, they should be automatically barred from exploitation.

On behalf of the DSCC, WWF and TBA21.

Starting with the first paragraph of this regulation, we would like to take this opportunity to stress that even if mining operations are restricted to a certain area, words on paper will not be enough to restrict the effects of those operations. The ocean and the life it holds is characterised by its connectivity – it cannot be bound by artificial demarcations imposed by human hands. Plumes are carried by numerous forces, the destruction of organisms in one area will affect those in another, and recent studies have found that noise from one mine alone could travel 500km, resulting in potentially fatal impacts on a multitude of marine life, including iconic species such as whales. 

We would also like to express our concern that the term “Plume dispersal” in paragraph 2 bis fails to account for plume trajectory, composition and biological effects, including the effects of chemical contamination of the water column. 

We share Germany’s concerns regarding the addition of adaptive management. We suggest adaptive management is misplaced in the context of deep-sea mining, due to the irreversible and permanent nature of damage. Once a species is wiped out, no amount of ‘adaptation’ will bring it back. Adaptive management must not be used where it is inconsistent with the precautionary approach – such as when there is inadequate information and where the damage could be significant, as is clearly the case here.

Environment Working Group

Bula Madam Facilitator,

We have some brief overarching comments on this section which serve as our comments on the whole Annex. We support DOSI’s intervention and emphasise that this Annex cannot be developed properly as there is simply not enough scientific information to do so, for any of the three types of mining (nodules, cobalt-rich crusts and hydrothermal vents). As our friends at DOSI often note, we are many years or even decades away from even being in a position to establish the environmental baseline. 

Secondly,  in terms of process, and building on Pew’s intervention on independent scientists, we’d like to draw delegates’ attention to the fact that an EIA is only as good as the process under which it takes place. There is no proper structure to consider EIAs; limited provision for independent scientific evidence and peer review  of applicant’s evidence; no hearing including of cultural perspectives; and no appeal or review of decisions or recommendations. There is no scientific committee, and no place for stakeholders to submit independent scientific information and make comments on the applicant’s scientific evidence.  So these concerns are applicable throughout.

Bula Madam Facilitator,

We want to join others in thanking you for your leadership and for your transparency and good humour.

We have 2 short comments.

Firstly in the definition of ‘environmental effects” we support Germany in the removal  of ‘material’ from environmental effects

Secondly we would observe that  the current definition of “Cumulative environmental effect” only covers effects from mining; not other effects. This is a major omission.

We thank the United States for their suggestion on the definition of cumulative environmental effects.

We draw the attention of delegates to the definition of cumulative effects from the BBNJ Agreement in Article 1 (8)

Vinaka

Environment working group

This intervention is for DSCC, Oceans North, WWF and TBA 21.

We support the statements just made by Greenpeace.

On Environmental Impact Statements, we agree with comments made in earlier sessions that EIA and EIS should be merged.

As has been noted earlier, EIA processes should be consistent with the BBNJ Agreement, where there is no such split. An EIA is simply the process and an EIS the report: in BBNJ there is no such split. The split has brought confusion, duplication, and omissions.

Subject to these observations:

Like the rest of the Regulations, this Regulation does not include provisions for full public participation, including access to information and participation in the EIA and EIS process and access to review procedures, including ongoing processes. Commenting on work that has gone before is not enough. For example, there is currently no framework for  stakeholders to introduce independent scientific information, traditional knowledge, cultural perspectives and other matters. 

On the final report, there should not be a ‘substantive’ qualification in para 3(c ). This was also discussed in the previous regulation. Cultural and social aspects should not be excluded.

Nor should there be a restriction to “main” uncertainties and knowledge gaps in para 3(b). The relevance of uncertainties and knowledge gaps is highly relevant to the ability to assess impacts. 

We support the inclusion of traditional knowledge, which is not currently included here, but also of free prior and informed consent, a key requirement under, for example, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Labour Organization Convention 169. 

Vinaka

Seabed mining would cause significant pollution, including noise throughout the water column.

But it is not acceptable to only “reduce” or “control” pollution such as noise. No pollution including noise should be permitted. The effects of noise on marine mammals was well documented in Thompson et al in the journal Marine Science in February.   Disturbance on any scale is likely to be long lasting and irreversible, and noise from deep-sea mining would add to other noise in the marine environment, from ships. This is why it must be prevented, not just reduced or controlled.

We support New Zealand’s intervention.

Para 1 would allow any discharge as long as such discharge is permitted in the Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan. This does not address the amount of discharge, rate of discharge, components discharged, or manner of discharge.  The wording “is permitted in accordance with” is too vague. Better yet is not allowing the discharge to the ocean in the first place.

In para 2 and 2bis a threshold of ‘serious harm’ is too high. Article 142 speaks of “harmful effects”

Reg 51

As proposed, paragraph (b) would only require an operator to  “Apply best endeavors to improve Mitigation and management measures to ensure the effective protection of the Marine Environment from harmful effects,

This is far short of  ensuring effective protection.

The need for the Environmental Compensation Fund underlines that deep-sea mining will inflict damage on the marine environment, inconsistent with article 145 of UNCLOS and other international commitments to protect the environment.

The provision on the Environmental Compensation Fund also brings to light the complete absence of discussion in the Council to date of liability, despite the African Group proposing a discussion 4 years ago in 2019.

In the absence of a liability regime, or any attempt to follow the advice of the Seabed Disputes Chamber and engage in the development of further rules regarding responsibility and liability under international law under Article 304, this Fund is  ineffective.

This provision also highlights the absence of an appropriate definition of effective control consistent with the Convention, since contractors may have only thinly capitalised shell companies in sponsoring States and then leave when damage was caused, as was  noted by the Seabed Disputes Chamber in the seabed Advisory Opinion.

DR 55

Article 145 of UNCLOS demands “effective protection” of the marine environment and prevention of damage to the marine environment and its inhabitants – anything weaker contravenes these provisions and transgresses the environmental ethics of the 21st century. We would like to reiterate our objection to permissive language such as “limit”, “reduce” and “control”.  The ISA does not have the mandate to authorise limited, reduced, or controlled damage to the marine environment.

The concept of  “environmental damage outside of consented activity” speaks volumes: consenting, or approving a contract, will cause environmental damage.

The idea that a compensation fund can be used to implement measures to “prevent” damage is flawed and misleading. The point has just been made: by the very nature of compensation, the damage would already have been done. How does the Authority propose to prevent damage, other than by stopping mining, when mining has already begun? 

Deep-sea mining simply must not go ahead unless and until it can be clearly demonstrated that there will be no damage to the marine environment. Given the irreversible nature of damage, compensation would be too little, too late.

Vinaka

Financial working group

Thank you for giving me the floor.  This intervention is on behalf of Oceans North and the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition,  and is to further highlight the issue of environmental externalities raised this morning by  Brazil and  Costa Rica, and yesterday by Jamaica. 

The International Seabed Authority has a duty to ensure that activities in the Area are undertaken for the ‘benefit of humankind as a whole’, with particular consideration given to the interests and needs of developing States. Such an aim requires a thorough and realistic assessment not only of what the international community stands to gain, but also what it stands to lose from deep-sea mining, including accounting for the environmental costs. 

With respect to the claimed gains, the 2022 filing by TMC to the US Securities and Exchange Commission is indicative of the uncertainties that would permeate the industry as a whole. The filing states (and I quote) that “there can be no assurance that any future development activities will result in profitable metal production operations.” [unquote] It further stresses that technology in the sectors that deep-sea minerals would supply is changing rapidly, resulting in fluctuating demand for these minerals, significantly affecting profitability. In addition to this, the current indications are that deep-sea mining in the Area is likely to result in economically insignificant revenues on a global scale.

All this to say: the benefits for humankind as a whole are highly speculative.

As for the costs, science indicates that DSM will result in biodiversity loss, damage to fisheries, disruption of carbon cycling, and diminished marine genetic resources. Such costs have not yet been quantified, but cannot be disregarded. We therefore welcome the Council’s decision in November to commission a study to assess the value of ecosystem services and natural capital of the Area, as well as of the potential environmental costs associated with deep-sea mining, and while we await that study, we hope to see these matters reflected in Council’s deliberations this week, and not simply shelved pending the report. Environmental externalities are of critical importance not just intrinsically, but practically, as their consideration will change the finance and taxation regime. When discussing monetary income from deep sea mining, it must be weighed against the enormous environmental, cultural, and social cost.

Finally, we would like to stress once again that value cannot always be measured in dollars. In our discussions, we ask that delegates also account for the intrinsic value, the cultural value, the existence value of life in the deep, and that they consider not only what is beneficial for humankind as a whole, but for all life on this blue planet.