Michael Lodge, the head of the United Nations-affiliated agency with jurisdiction over international ocean waters, has pushed diplomats to accelerate the start of industrial-scale mining on the bottom of the Pacific, members of the International Seabed’s governing board said. Authority in Interviews.
The criticism from Mr Lodge, who has served as secretary-general of the authority since 2016, comes as the diplomats struggle to decide how to respond when the authority receives an application for commercial seabed mining in international waters, which is expected to take place later. will happen this year. year.
It would be the first request submitted by the 28-year-old authority and the first time in history that an entity is seeking permission to mine the floor of an ocean on an industrial scale. The authority is still writing regulations that would regulate the process.
Diplomats from Germany, Costa Rica and elsewhere say they believe Mr Lodge, who is believed to be a neutral facilitator, has gotten out of line by resisting efforts by some councilors that could delay approval of the first mining proposal .
Mr Lodge called the complaints “a bold and unsubstantiated allegation, without facts or evidence”, in a letter he sent to the German government on Friday.
The dispute is not just a bureaucratic squabble between diplomats; it is an expression of greater tensions over who controls the agency and how quickly it must open one of the world’s last remaining pristine places to the metal mining industry.
The Metal Company, a publicly traded Canadian start-up sponsored by the Pacific nation of Nauru, aims to plunge an unmanned, bulldozer-shaped vehicle about 4 km to the ocean floor, where it would suck up rocks containing cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. Those metals are important ingredients in batteries for electric vehicles.
The Metals Company expects to start winning 1.3 million tons of the wet rocks starting as early as next year before expanding to 12 million tons per year, totaling approx 240 million tons over two decades and generate an estimate $30 billion in revenue. It has an agreement with a Japanese company that will, at least initially, extract the metals from the rocks.
Mr Lodge, a British lawyer, has in the past ridiculed concerns about potential environmental damage, arguing that ocean mining is no more harmful than the same activity carried out on land for centuries.
“They see an opportunity to wield power over governments and potentially stop a new ocean activity before it begins,” said Mr. Lodge on environmental groups during a 2021 interview with The New York Times. “Turtles with straws in their noses and dolphins are very, very easy to gain public sympathy.”
Politics in the United States
From the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.
- MAGA and Martinis: A combative young Republican group in New York, staunchly right-wing and Trump-friendly, is wary of the official GOP establishment‘s more moderate path.
- Kamala Harris: During her first trip to Iowa as vice president, Harris described Republican efforts to ban abortion nationwide as immoral and extreme. She formulated the issue as part of a wider battle for healthcare and privacy.
- Florida: A national vote-out-of-the-vote group and the NAACP challenged a state law which prohibits the use of digital signatures on voter registration forms, bringing a federal lawsuit against the state similar to those in Texas and Georgia.
- Phil Murphy: New Jersey’s top election enforcement officer sued the state governor and three aides for what the official said was an attempt to oust him in retaliation for comments he made about political fundraising rules.
More recently, Mr. Lodge challenged some of the 36 members who sit on the board of directors of the International Seabed Authority, several diplomats said in interviews, after questioning how quickly the agency would finalize mining regulations or suggest changes to how the agency would handle mining. applications.
“This goes beyond what a secretariat decision should be,” Gina Guillén Grillo, Costa Rica’s representative to the seabed authority, said at a meeting on March 8. “The council is formed from the member states and we are in charge and the secretary-general has administrative functions.”
The council represents 167 countries that have ratified the agreement United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seaas well as observer countries such as the United States which have not ratified the law but are still participating in the debate.
Mr. Lodge has held various positions with the International Seabed Authority since 1996 Secretary-General’s second four-year termwhich ends in 2024. He was elected to the post by members of authority.
The German government sent its concerns to Mr Lodge in a letter last week.
“It is not the secretariat’s job to interfere in decision-making,” Franziska Brantner, Germany’s minister for economic affairs and climate action, said in the statement. Letter dated March 16 to Mr. Lodge, a copy of which was provided to The Times. “In the past, you have actively opposed positions and decision-making proposals from individual delegations.” Ms Brantner added that the German government is “seriously concerned about this approach”.
Mr Lodge wrote back to Mrs. Brantner the next day, saying it was his job to ensure that the authority respects the “legal framework” of maritime law. He added that it was incorrect to suggest that he had opposed positions taken by delegations from individual countries. And he reminded the German delegation to respect him and his staff and “not to try to influence them in fulfilling their responsibilities”.
In a statement to The Times, Mr Lodge’s office added that he “attaches great importance to the conservation and protection of the marine environment”, and that he is working “to ensure that decision-making processes surrounding economic activity in the deep seabed based on the best available scientific knowledge.”
But a growing number of countries — including Germany, Costa Rica, Chile, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, France and several Pacific islands — have said in recent months that they don’t believe enough data has yet been collected to confirm the impact mining would have on aquatic life. As a result, they have called for a “precautionary pause” or formal moratorium on any mining in international waters.
The debate has intensified over the past year as the Metals Company has made it clear that it plans to seek approval this year to begin mining as early as 2024.
Nauru, the small Pacific nation that sponsors the Metals Company, invoked a legal provision in 2021 that it says requires the International Seabed Authority to accept a commercial mining application by July. The authority, according to Nauru and the Metals Company, would then be required to review the application and allow mining to begin even if environmental regulations were not finalized.
“Nevertheless, the council ‘will consider and preliminarily approve an exploitation work plan,’ Nauru wrote in a statement. memo to the authority this month.
The Metals Company has prepared a line-up former offshore oil drilling vessel to serve as a platform for ocean mining management, and it has built an underwater vehicle, tested late last year, that can hoist 3,200 tons of polymetallic rock from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
The Metals Company effectively controls three of them 30 “exploratory” contracts the seabed authority has approved, any of which can be shifted to “exploitation” mode, meaning industrial mining. China controls five of those contracts – more than any other country – and others are sponsored by Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, Russia, Singapore and several other island nations. But the Metals Company has been by far the most aggressive to start mining.
Some members of the authority argue that the agency is under no obligation to approve an application from the Metals Company and Nauru until the regulations are complete.
“There can be no exploitation of the deep seabed without agreeing on a set of rules and regulations that guarantee high environmental standards and sound scientific knowledge,” says Hugo Verbist, the Belgian representative on the board of the seabed authority, said Thursday while the authority began discussing how to proceed.
The Times reported this last year that, according to documents dating back more than a decade, the International Seabed Authority shared internal data with a director of Metals Company that helped the company choose one of the most valuable locations in the Pacific Ocean to launch its mining operations. A lawyer for Mr. Lodge said no rules were broken in the data sharing.
At the March 8 meeting where diplomats met virtually to discuss how to handle a mining application if it is received this year, some delegates proposed revisions to the permitting process that would bolster the council’s ability to block the start of mining. Mr Lodge warned deputies not to change established procedures.
Mr Lodge said he had no intention of challenging any delegation’s proposals. But his comments were interpreted that way by a number of countries, including Germany, France and Costa Rica.
“It is crucial that the authority’s secretariat fully respects its duty of neutrality,” Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, the French ambassador for oceans, said in a statement to The Times when asked about Mr Lodge’s comments.
the metal company, in a three-page statement to the Times, said agreed with Mr. Lodge. “The Secretary General is working to ensure that the ISA and its member countries comply with their legal obligations,” the company said.