ISA

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Our first speaker at ASftS#7 was Alanna Smith. She is the director of the environmental organisation Te Ipukarea in the Cook Islands. Last year the Cook Islands signed three Seabed minerals exploration licences. One of the companies involved is the Belgium-based dredging company DEME. As Alanna was in Jamaica following the 28th meeting of the council of the ISA, the International Seabed Authority, she agreed on prerecording a video statement.

From: Is the fate of our deep sea in the hands of mining companies?

Between 2013-19 Sandor Mulsow was head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at ISA. The mission of the ISA is to authorize and control development of mineral related operations in the international seabed considered the common heritage of mankind and also protect the ecosystem of the seabed in The Area beyond national jurisdiction.

From: Why do we need a moratorium on deep-sea mining?

This ‘hot’ asset did not remain in American hands. It ended up in Belgium, home to the original OMA-partner Union Minière. In 2013, Belgian company Global Sea Minerals Resources (GSR) received an exploration license from the International Seabed Authority (ISA) for a precisely named area in the Pacific. GSR’s application had been supported by Umicore (successor of Union Minière), which acted as GSR’s patron. The application explicitly mentioned USA-3 as the target area. Apparently, the ISA had never had a formal grip on this part of the ocean. The ‘deposit’ had been sliding down, as a private asset, through a genealogy from one private heir to another. And now, the time for extraction is ripe, with GSR at the forefront of deep-sea mining. It shares the license area with the island state of the Cook Islands, in accordance with ISA’s rules.

From: Undo Enclosures

Meanwhile representatives of various scientific disciplines from around the world, express their concerns about the recently approved exploration contracts for research into possible deep-sea mining. About a million square kilometres of the international seabed has been outsourced to individual governments and companies. According to the scientists, there is a difference between scientific research to understand how deep-sea ecosystems function and support vital processes and the activities carried out under exploration contracts of the International Seabed Authority - ISA. The former serves to learn and discover, improving scientific knowledge about the largest ecosystem on Earth, while the second serves to assess the economic potential for extraction.

From: A Seat for the Sea #7