After a decade of debate, by year鈥檚 end the world should finally have a rule book for mining the deep sea, Leticia Carvalho, the head of the International Seabed Authority, said in an interview.
It鈥檚 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 鈥渁bsolutely existential鈥� that the 170 nations in the authority now reach an agreement.
That鈥檚 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.
鈥淭he world agreed 30 years ago that this is an area that belongs to all of us, and we should go there collectively,鈥� Carvalho said. In a world without international rules, she said, the oceans could turn into a kind of 鈥淲ild West鈥� where each nation makes up its own.
This past 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鈥檚 deliberations and, until recently, followed its standards.
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.
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, including tuba-shaped sea sponges and delicate, featherlike corals, that live on the nodules and around them.
This article originally appeared in .
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