Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho has now been named officially as the next Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority, the ISA, after winning the election. That could change the course of deep sea mining. So if you're interested in finding out what's going to happen to deep sea mining going forward as of January 2025, then this is the episode that you're going to want to watch and listen to here on 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. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And I am proud and happy to let you know that Leticia Carvalho, the Brazilian oceanographer, won the election to become the next Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority by
quite a number. She was able to get 79 votes, while her predecessor, 64-year-old Michael Lodge, who served as the ISA Secretary General for the last two terms, received 34 votes, so just destroying him, doubling the
votes. Very happy to say that. Carvalho, who's 50 years old, currently works as an international civil servant for the United Nations Environment Program, the UNEP, was declared the winner on August 2nd, and this is actually the time that we actually published the last episode on August 2nd, or two episodes ago, where I discussed why Leticia should be involved in this the isa who should be the leader she's an oceanographer she understands that transparency is really important and so she's
going to begin her leadership on january 2025 january 1st 2025 she will be the first woman the first oceanographer and the first representative from latin america to serve in this position. Huge, huge news coming out of the ISA meetings that just wrapped up in Jamaica on August 2nd. What's interesting is commercial scale deep sea mining hasn't begun anywhere. But there's a huge push from mining companies to start to explore and start to rapidly ramp
up this type of activity. And Lodge, he's been accused of kind of supporting the mining companies and ramping it up and also not being as transparent as the ISA should be. Now the ISA should be a body, is designed to be a body that's in the middle. It's supposed to promote deep sea mining, but also in a sustainable manner,
but also protect the ocean and protect the marine habitats and protect humankind. So there's two, as I mentioned in the last episode, I discussed this in Friday's episode or two episodes ago, there's sort of two combating forces a lot of times, which really requires one thing. And Lechisa Carvalho has been running her election campaign, if you will, on this, which is transparency. You
have to be transparent. As an international seabed authority, you have to be transparent in how all these activities are conducted. And so the way Lodge did it wasn't that great. In Mongabay News they mentioned, during his time as Secretary General between 2016 and 2024, Lodge pushed for the finalization of the mining code as a set of rules that would allow deep sea mining exploration to begin. However, This is really important. This code was not ultimately finished under
his tenure. Lodge has also been accused of advocating for mining companies, which goes against the ISA Secretariat's duty for remaining neutral and keeping the ISA's process and procedures unnecessarily opaque. More recently, Lodge has also been embroiled in allegations that he misused agency funds and that one of his supporters tried to bribe Cavallo to drop out of the election in exchange for another high-level position within the ISA.
Lodge, however, has refuted all of these claims. They're just alleged. It hasn't happened. They haven't seen evidence that provides this. However, you know, he's out. so whatever happens to him it doesn't matter anymore from you know going forward with deep sea mining his uh code mining code wasn't put forth there's you know it was really interesting over the last you know 10 years or less you know like 2016 i remember talking
to dr andrew thaler and i'm like Where's this deep sea mining going? And he's like, hey, man, he's like, in 2030, we might see some action. But before that, we probably won't see some action. And that was really it. There were a lot of countries who were just like, we have a moratorium on deep sea mining, there's and that's still going. And there's 32 countries who continue to support that
moratorium, even with the changes that have been happening recently. And, you know, last five years or so, you started to see large really push to create this mining code. And it can never really be agreed upon by the end of these meetings that happen every year in Kingston, Jamaica, every summer in July. And so, you know, there's it's always been weird. It's like, why all of a sudden this push? You know, we're always taking a precautionary approach. We're always taking a conservative approach.
So why all of a sudden this push? And then you start to hear allegations that, hey, you know, Lodge might be more on the mining company side than on the environment side and on the people side. Because that's what really happens here. When we start to talk about deep sea mining or any kind of issue that relates to the ocean, there are people who pay for this. These are the people in the countries where the mining is happening or anything that's happening that's going to change the ocean
dynamics. We have no idea how deep sea mining is going to change the ocean. In fact, last week I also talked about this dark oxygen where you saw the nodules that are wanting to be mined actually produce a high enough voltage to separate oxygen from the hydrogen modules in water to produce more oxygen at the bottom of the ocean. And we're starting to see that when we start to see more oxygen, we start to see more biodiverse areas and habitats in
the deep sea, which we're not expecting to see. Maybe you see a special area like hydrothermal vents, but that's a completely different podcast. That's a completely different habitat. To see it where you see actual oxygen that's being produced, and you're seeing more biodiverse areas, more animals in there, now we're talking about a really important discovery. and we're just getting into that. All of a sudden, if we start to mine those areas, then we're going to see that disappearance of
oxygen. We're going to see the disappearance of those animals. But we also don't know what's going to happen to those areas when you take all those nodules out, or you disturb the bottom by digging into the bottom. We have no idea. And the countries that are closest to that will pay for that price. And right now, we just don't know where the money.
I doubt deep sea mine is going to happen off the coast of developed countries. It's probably going to happen off the coast of developing countries, who they don't necessarily have a huge say. Or other countries can bribe them to say, hey, you know what? Let's start in your area, and we'll give you a school, or we'll build all these things for you. That's what happens in a lot of these international agreements, especially when it comes down
to the environment. I remember, you know, stories from the International Whaling Commission, the IWC, where you see countries like Japan and Norway and Iceland in the past have, you know, supported other countries, smaller countries, who may not have the same resources they do, and started to, all of a sudden, there's schools and buildings that are being built on those, on these small island countries, and all, to get votes, and they'll vote the same way they want at the IWC when
they talked about the moratorium on whaling. This happens all the time. This is not something that's new. But to have a system that is, you know, like an international body, authority to say, hey, we're going to try and keep things as transparent as possible. We want to make sure that everybody knows what's going on. We're not going to sway one side or the other or one way or the other. And we're just going to help to get this process going. Can we do deep sea mining and be
sustainable? Will this help mankind? We don't know. At this point, we just don't know if that's going to happen. And there's really no rush in doing that. Now, what's interesting is one mining company in Canada, Canadian based The Metals Company, really interesting name called TMC. As you can see, I'm a little biased, but has repeatedly expressed its intention to apply for an exploitation license later
this year, even before the mining code was finished. But that's not gonna happen because Cavarlo has said that she believes granting such a license before regulations are in place would be a source of litigation. So advocates for deep sea mining say the seabed minerals are needed to fulfill metal shortages and provide materials for renewable energy technologies such as electric car
batteries. Yet critics say deep sea minerals are unnecessary for such technologies and that deep sea mining could irreparably damage the seabed and overall marine environment, which they are correct. Like I said, the fact that we don't know what's gonna happen, the fact that we are running into this blindly is scaring the hell out of all of us. This is something that we cannot... and will not put up with. We've done this before. We did this
with a lot of other technologies. Fossil fuels, we do it all the time. We run into situations, mining we did, like, you know, mining on land. And, you know, was it tar sands, right? Digging for tar sands. And the extra, like, the waste that is produced from mining and from tar sand oil and gas production is horrible. You see these wastewater ponds that have been awful. We've regulated that in Canada and the US. I'm
not sure about other countries. I'm sure about other countries. They've probably done very similar ones where they've put in regulations for mining. But the tar sands kind of just, they just get to do whatever they want, it seems. Where companies are coming in from other countries, they're providing jobs, short-term jobs, destroying our environment, destroying
the global environment. and then putting out wastewater pans and not even cleaning them up, which costs like hundreds of millions of dollars of cleaning up, and they're not made to clean them up. This is ridiculous. This is something that we can't, this is what happens when we rush into things for short-term money. And it just goes off all the time. This is something
that we need to stop. And so coming at a new leadership with an oceanographer from Brazil, from Latin America, to start saying, hey, we need to be transparent. We need to stay true to the mandate of the ISA. We need to stay true to that. We need to be as transparent as possible. We need to hear all sides. We need to discuss. There's a lot of things that we need to discuss, and we're not even close to finishing these mining regulations. Why rush into it? And why issue permits
when we don't have to? And I think that's a really great way of moving things forward. I think it's really important. And Matt Gianni, who's the co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, thinks the same thing, too. It's a group of NGOs that campaign against deep sea mining. He said he was surprised by the number of country delegates that came to this year's ISA meeting or sent in their proxy votes for the election, and also that such a large majority voted for
Carvalho. We don't always get these types of wins. This is a big win. This is something that we should celebrate. He said, this is a historic moment for the ISA, and we congratulate Leticia Carvalho and the government of Brazil for her election. The ISA has an opportunity to champion a new way forward for sound ocean governance that prioritizes the precautionary principle and secures the health of the deep sea and its benefits for future generations. Now, with that said, this is a
win. It does not mean that we aren't going to be doing deep sea mining in any future. It doesn't mean that this is the end of the deep sea mining campaign. Letitia Carvalho has a duty to be transparent, but she also has a duty to balance that, making sure that we're protecting the environment, but also making sure that deep sea mining is the right thing to do going forward and it'll be done properly and making sure those regulations are
in place. So going in with a precautionary approach is very good, but let's be honest, the ISA is there. At some point it might and will probably put out, you know, permits for deep sea mining. So this will be interesting to see what's going to happen forward. I have a lot more confidence in the ISA now that Letitia Carvalho is the leader. This is something that I really like, you should like as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. You know, there's so
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to do the whole podcasting thing and trying to figure out the new technology. So I'd love to hear your feedback on that. and the show, hit me up on Instagram at How to Protect the Ocean. And thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, especially one where we get to discuss such a great win for the issue of deep sea mining. Thank you so much for listening this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great