Decisión aplazada: Concluidas las conversaciones sobre la explotación minera en aguas profundas
Published: Saturday, Jul 22nd 2023, 04:40
Actualizado el: Viernes, Oct 13th 2023, 14:12
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The International Seabed Authority (ISA) failed to reach an agreement on regulations for deep-sea mining or how to handle mining projects after two weeks of talks. At the end of the meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, the 36 member states only agreed to aim for a regulatory framework by 2025. This was supposed to have been done already, as the deadline for regulating commercial extraction of resources from international waters had passed a day before the meeting began on July 9. Nauru, the sponsor of a subsidiary of the Canadian company The Metals Company, had announced two years prior that it would submit a deep-sea mining application, triggering a clause in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). After the deadline passed, ISA must process mining applications even without a regulatory framework. The delegates in Kingston could not agree on how to handle the now possible applications. The mining is for manganese nodules on the seabed between Mexico and Hawaii in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. These contain resources that can be used in the production of batteries for electric cars, although studies have questioned their necessity for the energy transition. Researchers have identified potential severe damage to the largely unexplored deep-sea ecosystem from mining. More than a dozen states, including Switzerland, are advocating for no deep-sea mining to be allowed until the environmental impacts are better understood.
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