The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has asked Secretary General Leticia Carvalho to investigate whether or not The Metals Company and any other licensed seabed mining companies have violated their contracts under a UN treaty that prohibits unilateral mining.
The ISA has issued 30 contracts, most of them under the previous Secretary General. The contracts were granted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a multilateral treaty that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. Two of them went to Canadian company The Metals Company to mine in international waters under a set of regulations yet to be created if deep sea mining is approved by the ISA. The ISA is still investigating environmental and other concerns and has no specific timeline for approving mining.
The Canadian company is now suggesting it will move forward with uniliateral deep sea mining in international waters under the authority of U.S. President Donald Trump. The U.S. has no legal authority over international waters and an effort to mine unilaterally would constitute a violation of international law.
TMC’s subsidiaries Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) and Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML), will also be expected to comply with contractual obligations to act in accordance with the international legal framework.
According to the ISA, a contractor’s rights under a contract may be suspended or terminated if, “in spite of warnings by the Authority, the contractor has conducted his activities in such a way as to result in serious, persistent and willful violations of the fundamental terms of the contract… or if the contractor has failed to comply with a final binding decision of the dispute settlement body applicable to him.”
Among other remedies the Council “may suspend or terminate the contract if any of the listed grounds are met.”
Thirty-seven countries have called for a moratorium on seabed mining until its environmental impacts are better understood.
