Metals bosses enjoy front row seat at UN deep-sea mining negotiations

Dozens of mining industry representatives joined government negotiating teams at high-stakes United Nations talks charting the future of controversial deep-sea mining last month.

Climate Home News identified at least 33 executives and employees of companies directly involved in the nascent deep-sea mining industry on the list of state delegations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) annual meeting.

The little-known UN agency is tasked with setting the rules for the extraction of minerals found on the vast ocean floor in international waters. No such activity is currently taking place at commercial level yet.

But this year’s summit came at a pivotal moment, as any member state could now theoretically apply for a mining contract on behalf of a company. That is after a deadline to establish mining rules triggered by the island-nation of Nauru lapsed earlier in July.

The meeting pitted a handful of countries pushing for the ISA to introduce regulations and issue permits against a growing coalition calling for a halt to operations until the full environmental impacts are known.

Mining companies claim that minerals like nickel and cobalt extracted from polymetallic nodules lying on the seabed are needed in batteries and will help speed up the energy transition. An area of the Pacific Ocean floor known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone, which is under the control of the ISA, contains a high concentration of the golf ball-sized nodules.

Environmental campaigners and several governments dispute the industry’s claims, saying that more mining isn’t necessary and deep sea operations will damage ecosystems we still know little about. More than 750 marine scientists signed an open letter calling for a ban on the practice until robust scientific evidence can back it up.

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Countries bring delegations to the meeting mostly made up of government officials, but also including scientists, corporate lobbyists and, to a lesser extent, NGO representatives.

Unlike non-governmental agencies that can apply for observer status, private companies do not have an official way to participate at the ISA talks. But industry representatives routinely attend the meetings, usually by embedding in the delegations of the countries sponsoring their mining licenses.

A lead negotiator told Climate Home News that the number of industry representatives at the talks last July was similar to that seen in previous years but, for the first time, they took part in the small-room negotiations.

“Each country has the right to include in its delegation whoever it chooses,” they added. “But it is very telling when a delegation brings a contractor into the close negotiations limited to member states. It shows who is influencing its decisions.”