Deep Sea Mining: Time for a leadership change

The big topic in the ocean today is deep sea mining. And at the head of it is the leadership of the International Seabed Authority, the ISA. And there's been somebody who's been in charge for quite some time who's been quite controversial in many circles. So is it time for a leadership change that will take deep sea mining into the direction where most people want it to go? and that is stay at a moratorium. We're gonna find out on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean

podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. This is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about deep

sea mining. This is something that, it's a topic that we've been talking about for quite some time here on the podcast, it's been in the news, and the reason why it's been in the news is there was a recent meeting, a summer meeting of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, occurred in July, and there were some developments, some good developments that we've seen, and

probably some not so good developments that we've seen. The big development was that we saw more and more people, or more and more countries, add their voice to saying no to deep sea mining. So currently, there's just different categories for that. So currently the moratorium and the alliance is Palau, Fiji, Samoa,

and the federal states of Micronesia. The precautionary pause are countries including Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Germany, Panama, Vanuatu, Dominican Republic, Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Finland, Portugal, Monaco, Kingdom of Denmark, Greece, Malta, Honduras, Tuvalu, Guatemala, and Austria. And then the moratorium is New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, UK. Mexico and Peru and then a fall all-out ban is France So 32 countries say no in one

way or another to deep-sea mining now. We have seen some countries increase their Interest and increase their action towards deep-sea mining. We've seen Norway increase. There's Denmark I believe they started to explore they want to do some more quote-unquote research and it's it's a really interesting thing that's happening because This often happens, we have the International Seabed Authority, which is there to have essentially two functions, right? It's to, you know, basically it

has two mandates. So it's to authorize and control mining, as well as for the common heritage of all mankind, and to protect the marine environment from

harmful impacts. that's really interesting those are two almost a what people can argue opposing men mandates don't really fit and it reminds me of here in canada where i live out in bc and even just uh... federally the department of fisheries and oceans or fisheries notions canada and i think it's climate change a coast guard i think so i forget what the names are now But Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, essentially in Canada, the federal government, has

the mandate for aquaculture to promote aquaculture, but also to keep the marine environment healthy. Those are two mandates that some could argue don't really go

hand in hand. Others can argue that it does. But where the controversy came in Canada was that when it was supposed to be testing for diseases within aquaculture facilities, it presented studies that said, no, we don't think that these studies are saying that there's a significant problem with parasites and diseases and viruses within the aquaculture fish population to the point where it's affecting the wild salmon populations. OK, well, sure, DFO does some great work.

There's no doubt about it. I used to work for DFO. I know firsthand some of the studies that they've done across the

country have been fantastic. But how can you present a study that's from the government, not necessarily in all the time that are in primary journals, and you put out a technical report uh... saying you know something that that you know your mandate kind of goes against you try to protect the environment but also try to promote aquaculture and this is controversial just as i'm saying this i can hear the arguments happen was dfo their scientists they present the

science is up to you know that the policy makers to do the interpretation and i get that But just in the eyes of the public, the eyes of conservationists, the eyes of people who are involved in aquaculture, they have very different approaches and outlooks on these two what seems to be opposing mandates. And it's the same thing with the International Seabed Authority, the ISA. When you have a mandate to, one, to authorize and control mining for the common heritage of all mankind, and

to protect marine environment from harmful impacts. Now, you know, looking at that first mandate, you're looking at, hey, look, our planet's in the crapper. We have greenhouse gases, we have climate change. We need to do something to change it. A lot of significant portion of greenhouse gases is produced not only by the fossil fuel industry, but also by

gas powered vehicles, right? And so when you have gas powered vehicles, you're always emitting some sort of greenhouse gas, whether it be methane, whether it be carbon dioxide, whether it be something else that contributes to climate change. So the more cars, the more gas powered vehicles we have on the road, the more

we have climate change. As long as we keep selling gas-powered cars, we're not going to clean up the planet from these CO2 and methane gases from leaking out into the environment and contributing more to climate change. But if we put in electric vehicles, there's no emissions in the actual vehicle itself. One

can argue that there is in the making of the battery and so forth. But when you look at the overall, when you compare the gas-powered vehicle to the electric vehicle, you're looking at overall, there's no emissions when you actually use the vehicle, of an electric vehicle. And so there's a benefit there. You're taking away the greenhouse gases that are contributing to climate change when you're driving and the actual act of driving an electric vehicle. So

it's better. Now here's the problem, to make the batteries that are now the batteries, you need specific metals, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and so forth. You can find those in mines on land, but there are serious problems with the mines, where they are, how they're being run, the human rights violations that are happening there, so there's a

lot of pressure to get the metals from elsewhere. And there's metals in these small little nodules I talked about last episode, which if you haven't seen it or you haven't listened to it, go back to the app after this episode, go back to the last episode. You can take a look about talking about dark oxygen, how these nodules produce potentially oxygen or help produce oxygen

in the deep sea. here we're in a situation where it's like hey there are these nodules that have these metals that can be easily mined or not easily but mined in the deep sea we need to take it we know we need to take these metals and produce those metals so that we can make these batteries here are the couple problems with that one we don't know the damage we're going to do to deep sea right deep sea mining it's not going to be

easy it's not going to be it's something with the deep sea we don't really understand and i take you back to the deep sea horizon the leak that happened there how detrimental it was to the gulf of mexico and to the people other people who use the gulf of mexico for fishing for tourism and so forth how bad that was and how bad it still is in in some terms to the poisoning of the environment and the water quality and the still the ramifications that we're paying the

consequences that we're paying for it as we speak and that's been what 10 20 or 10 to 15 years almost since it happened uh so it's it's a problem right we need to ensure that we are we understand the deep sea better before we start messing around with it and especially now with this dark oxygen thing that we've we've discovered and need more research on is there is actual oxygen being produced in the deep sea in the dark And it's really thought

to be done by these nodules, because they increase the voltage that allows the separation of oxygen from water. So there's more oxygen in the deep sea than we originally thought. We thought that it would be decreasing, but it's actually increasing in some spots. And then the biodiversity increases in those spots. So more research needs to be done there. So we'd almost say, hey, this moratorium or this precautionary pause that some of these countries are looking for, that might be a good idea at

this point. The ISA continues to push so that we start to explore and start to do more quote unquote research to see, hey, is this actually viable? Can we take out enough nodules and will it be profitable for those companies to actually do it? Now, with that said, with this push for these for these mandates, for these two mandates, one authorized and control mining for

the common good, a common heritage of all mankind. and to protect the marine environment from harmful impacts, is really run by this ISA, but really run by the leader of this ISA. And for the longest time, the leader has been a British lawyer. I'm looking at the article for his name. It's Lodge. I'm trying to see what his full name is. and And so there's a battle for this leadership. And the reason why is that a lot of people have said that trust is

broken and leadership is missing. And this is Leticia Carvalho, who is sponsored by the Brazilian government. And she's here to say, hey, I'm running for the leadership for this because the trust is

broken and leadership is missing. uh... later than this is the you know what the i say they're gonna be voting for this uh... for this leader uh... who's gonna be it's gonna be facing critical votes that could impact the nascent industry for years to come so who will be the next leader So, you know, right now the battle for leadership might be, you know, might sound like it to the average person, like, you know, a remote technical concern, but the election of the

authority secretary, according to this article in the Guardian, General, comes at a pivotal moment for the deep sea mining and therefore the future of the world's oceans. The cause for pause on exploitation of the seabed are intensifying. What happens in the movies when you don't listen to scientists? Bad stuff happens. And we're already seeing it in real life with climate change. When scientists were talking about 30, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, now we're not listening. And look

at the situation we're in now. We're now considering deep sea mining to help with climate change, which could further destroy the planet or hurt the planet. Now, the ISA, just to give a little background, is governed by 168 member states plus the European Union. So it has those two mandates, and so during Lodge's eight year tenure, he has been accused of closeness to the mining industry, overstepping his neutral role, and of presiding over an authority that

lacks transparency. And so a New York Times piece published earlier this month also accused him of pushing countries to accelerate the start of deep sea mining. Of course, he denies those claims.

Now, Cavallo, a Brazilian oceanographer and international diplomat, says it is time For meaningful transformation at the Seabed Authority, the current deep divide of views among the state parties in the Council is heavily due to the lack of trust and leadership on top of whatever scientific gaps we may have or asymmetry of knowledge between the members. the problem. not mad at, to say, hey, look, there are some serious concerns that some

very smart people and accomplished people are considering. And there's also the mining companies who are like, hey, we need to get on this right now. We've invested a ton of money into exploring the deep sea to get deep sea mining. We wanna make sure that we can mine at some point soon because time is money at this point. And they wanna get into production as soon

as possible. So, so far, you know, in terms of contracts, the authority has issued 31 exploration contracts sponsored by 14 nations in an area covering about 1.5 square kilometers of the world's seabed, mostly in the equatorial Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico. And these also, these areas, just to let you know, have been explored in some cases in certain areas, and they're very, very, very diverse when you're looking at the actual seabed.

They're very diverse in animals. These contracts with countries including China, Russia, South Korea, India, Britain, France, Poland, Brazil, Japan, Jamaica, and Belgium allow exploration of the seabed but not commercial mining, so just exploration. No exploitation contracts which would permit mining to go ahead have been issued yet, but efforts by industry in some states have accelerated the race to mine. So there are some people who are trying to get ahead and

seeing what they can do. One firm called the Metals Company, TMC, based in Canada, I'm not happy about that. And partnered with the Pacific states of Nauru and Tonga and Kiribati has said it will apply for permission to mine later this year before rules and regulations are likely to be in place. Now, here's the problem right there in that sentence. Before rules and regulations are in place, they want to mine for commercial purposes. right before

the rules and regulations are in place. This is the problem when we start to move forward on something that's developed. It takes time to understand the environment that you're going to exploit. Essentially, you're going to be digging up on the surface or the seabed, and you're going to be moving things around. We need to know what the effects are going to be in that. And I just don't know if we're going to be able to find out enough information before this goes. And now

they want to move before the rules and regulations are in place? That seems a little bit presumptive there. I just don't like the fact that this is something that, you know... we need to go. So Cavallo, who's running for this leadership, claims it is Lodge's alleged close relationship with the company that is the problem. Trust she claims began to ebb away in 2018 after the Secretary General appeared in a video wearing a hard hat with the Deep Green logo on it. Deep Green is the

former name of the metals company. What is intriguing is the leadership of multilateral of a multilateral organization embracing one company's demands, pushing it into the ISA's council's process to develop mining code," she says. So that's the problem, right? So you're having this leader who's like, seems to be pushing what's being said by this company saying, hey, look, this is what we need to do, but we don't even have rules and regulations

yet. We don't even understand what the problem is. We haven't even explored the deep sea to the point where we know what's gonna happen. I mean, we just found out about dark oxygen. We just found out about it. I can't tell you enough how big this discovery is, how big it is to the deep sea and our

understanding of the animals that are into the deep sea. At this point, we were looking at hydrothermal vents and how animals are surviving in really high temperatures and under sulfur conditions, sulfuric acid conditions. It's crazy to see that happening. Now we know we have areas where there's pockets of increased oxygen. It's insane. So she goes on to say, Cavalli goes on to say, there is a problem with being seen to be too close to a company that is

driven by results for its investors. Again, see that conflict of interest. ISA is a regulatory body with a dual mandate, determining the rules and procedures for deep sea mining while protecting the deep sea ecosystems. That means you would think that there is a precautionary approach that needs to be taken, right? A precautionary approach. But that doesn't seem to be happening. It seems like we are continuing to move forward without saying, hey, look, this is not really good.

We need to make sure that we're not just doing it for investors. We're doing this to protect the ocean. This is going to have much more consequences to the

world than it is for these investors. So I think it's really important now Cavallo has worked in the as a regulator in the Brazil's oil industry Which is really interesting and she believes the rules governing deep-sea mining will take time and that no mining application should be approved before they are Complicated before they're completed now look I'm biased already, but I like Cavallo. I like the fact

that she's taking a precautionary approach. I hope she gets put into power because this is gonna be something that will be needed, right? And we know Kiribati is backing Lodge in getting the leadership again. And we know Kiribati is one of the countries that wants to start mining. So right then and there, there's a problem. Right. So you're backed by this country, but they want to

start commercial mining. You have been accused of being too close to mining companies wearing their hard hats in videos saying, hey, we need to start deep sea mining. But you're also moving forward with some of the things are trying to push and accelerate deep sea mining aspiration and commercial deep sea mining. I'm sure what goes along with that. without even having rules and regulations in place. This makes no sense whatsoever.

And just judging based on what's happened in the past in terms of how the meetings have gone in Kingston, how hotels have been switched and how, you know, observing nonprofit organizations and experts have been put in different rooms so that delegates have to move rooms or call the people who they need to you know, who they need to confide in to be like, hey, what's going on here? This is what this country is saying that

we need to do. They want to go ahead with deep sea mining. What's the problem? Where are the risks? All this kind of stuff. They were in a different room and they weren't even allowed to go into the room where the negotiations were happening. It doesn't provide a lot of transparency. It doesn't allow for critique. It doesn't allow for transparency. It's sketchy. It's

sketchy at best. And that's not good. You want this process, you know, if there is going to be deep sea mining, which I don't believe there should be, but if there is going to be deep sea mining, you want to make sure that the process is transparent. You want to make sure that the rules and regulations are not only going to be put in place, you know, that are going to be more in the cautionary approach, but you want to make sure that they're enforced. And

that's a lot of work to put in place. It's a lot of work to put in place. So, I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, where everything is going to go. Lodge did not interview for this article, so we didn't really get, you know, his side on this, but it seems like Carvalho is somebody who is willing to be transparent, somebody who is willing to keep the ocean's health in mind, but still you know, be able to put those rules and regulations in place to

mine. I mean, I think it's inevitable that deep sea mining is going to happen, but how it's going to happen is a very important. It's a very important process. We need to make sure we're doing it properly. And we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect the deep sea, because we know nothing about the deep sea. We know very, very little about the deep sea. And so discoveries like we talked about in the last episode with the dark oxygen, that's going

to be something that needs to be explored more. And we need to make sure that we know more about it before we make any crazy claims that we need to do some deep sea mining. So that's it for me today. I would love to hear your point of view. Who do you think should get into power? Do you think it should be Carvalho or do you think it should be Lodge? I would love to know what

you think. If you're on Spotify, listening to this on Spotify, I'll put a poll and you tell me which ones you think, you tell me which person you think should be going in. And yeah, that's it. If you want to leave a comment on the YouTube video, you can do that because I'm doing video podcasting now on Spotify and on YouTube, but also still doing the audio thing. So look me up on Apple, look me up on Spotify, look me up on Overcast or whatever app you love to

listen to on your podcast. I will be there. And if I'm not, let me know and I will try and get on it. I'm trying to be on every podcast app that I know that is available. But also, if you want to get a hold of me, you can do so by DMing me at HowToProtectTheOcean on Instagram. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. And I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy conservation.