Trump takes a big step towards the sea floor mining in international waters

President Trump has ordered the United States government to take a big step towards extracting vast areas of the ocean floor, a step that almost every other country in the world considers borders for this type of industrial activity.

The executive, signed on Thursday, will circumvent an international treaty for decades that every major coastal country except the United States has approved it. This is the latest example of the Trump administration’s willingness to ignore international institutions and is likely to make a cry of the country’s competitors and allies alike.

The matter “creates the United States as a global leader in exploring and developing minerals at the sea floor inside and outside the national specialization,” according to The text issued by the White House.

Mr. Trump will guide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to accelerate companies ’permits in both international and American territorial waters.

Parts of the ocean floor are placed by nodules the size of potatoes that contain valuable minerals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese necessary for advanced technologies that the United States considers decisive to its economic and military security, but it is increasingly controlled by supply chains by China.

No mining on the sea floor occurred on a commercial scale. Technological obstacles are high, and there were serious concerns about environmental consequences.

As a result, in the 1990s, most countries agreed to join the independent international bottom power of the sea that would govern the ocean bottom mining in international waters. Because the United States is not signed, the Trump administration depends on it The 1980 law is mysterious The federal government enables the issuance of sea floor mining permits in international waters.

Many countries are keen to see the sea bottom mining becomes a reality. But so far, the prevailing consensus that economic necessities should not follow precedence over the risk that mining may harm the fishing industry and peripheral food chains or may affect the primary role of the ocean in absorbing carbon dioxide that aims to the planet from the atmosphere.

Mr. Trump’s order comes after ISA’s delay in creating a sea bottom mining regulatory framework. The authority still did not agree on a set of rules.

The executive order can pave the way for the Metal Company, a prominent mining company at the sea floor, to receive an urgent statement from NOAA to become active for the first time. The company publicly circulated in Vancouver, British Columbia, It was revealed in March It will ask the Trump administration through a subsidiary of the United States to agree to compensation in international waters. The company has already spent more than $ 500 million to carry out exploratory work.

“We have a ready -to -produce boat,” Gerard Baron, CEO of the company, said in an interview on Thursday. “We have a way to treat materials in a partner -friendly nation. We just miss the permit to allow us to start.”

Mining is expected to be permitted in the end, companies, like it, have invested intensively in developing technologies to eat ocean floors. They include ships with huge claws that extend to the sea floor, as well as independent compounds associated with the huge spaces that roam the ocean bottom.

Some analysts asked about the need to rush towards the sea floor mining, given that there is an abundance of nickel and cobalt currently from traditional mining. In addition, the manufacturers of the electric car batteries, which is one of the main markets of minerals, moves towards battery designs that depend on other elements.

However, future demand expectations for minerals are still high. The escalating trade war of Mr. Trump with China is threatening to limit the access of the United States to some of these critical minerals, which include rare land elements that are also found in small amounts of sea floor nodules.

American geological survey He has estimated These nodules in one area of ​​the East Pacific region, known as the Claarion-Clipperton region, contain more nickel, cobalt and manganese more than all the combined ground reserves. This region, in the open ocean between Mexico and Hawaii, is around half of the US continental size.

Metals contract sites are located in the Clarion-Clipperson, where the ocean depth is about 2.5 miles. The company will be the first to apply for an exploitation permit under the 1980 law.

Mr. Baron blames an “environmental activist” in ISA for delaying the creation of a bases book that his company can play, which led him to advance directly to the United States government instead.

In a statement submitted to the New York Times last month, a NOAA spokeswoman, Mourin Olieri, said that the current operation under American law provided a “comprehensive review of the environment, consultations between agencies and public suspension.”

Under the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations have exclusive economic rights on the waters of 200 nautical miles from its coast, but international waters are subject to the state of ISA. Since the sea law entered into force, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent representatives to meetings at the headquarters of the Sea Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, which created the impression that the United States was intending to honor the terms of the treaty, although the Senate was not officially ratified.

He has called more than 30 countries to Delay or endowment At the beginning of the sea floor mining. A group of auto and technology companies including BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo, Apple, Google and Samsung Have Pledge Sea bottom minerals. Actor Ed presented the Hawaii case in January US floor protection lawWhich would prevent NOAA from issuing licenses or permits for sea floor mining activities.

ISA negotiating spent more than a decade Formulation The book of mining rules, which will cover everything from environmental rules to the payments of kings. Although he pledged to end it by this year, negotiators seemed unlikely that they would be able to do this deadline.

However, other major global powers such as China, Russia, India and many European countries – which generally supported the move quickly to extract them in international waters – objected to the intention of the Minerals Company to obtain a permit from the United States government.

A lot of hesitation on the sea floor comes from his lack of studies by scientists. For example, the Polimatic nodules are located in the Claarion-Clipperton region, for example, in a cold world, still inhabited by living organisms that marine biologists faced only in rare missions.

“We think that half of the species that live in this field depends on nodules for part of their development,” said Matthew Gianni, co -founder of the deep sailor coalition.

Mr. Gianni said that the roads proposed by companies to receive them will mainly destroy these ecosystems, and the pillars of deposits caused by mining can spread to wider areas, which leads to suffocation of others.

The Mineral Company, which has conducted its own environmental research a decade ago, said these concerns are exaggerated. “We believe that we have enough knowledge to start and prove that we can manage environmental risks,” Mr. Baron said in a press statement last month.

Access to the deep ocean is expensive and technologically complex, and is not completely different from traveling to another planet. “Humanity has scratched the surface only,” said Beth Orkut, a microbiologist at the Beglo Ocean Laboratory Laboratory. Deep seas covers about 70 percent of the Earth.

The disturbing ecosystems in the depths of the seas can be, as it seems, as it seems, widespread effects.

“The ecosystems themselves are really important in the main global courses that allow the ocean to be a producer, create fish and shellfish, and feed people,” said Lisa Levin, a designer of the oceanic at the Scripps Institute of Oceanic Sciences. “And all of these ecosystems are interconnected, so if you destroy one, it is possible that we do not even understand what is happening to others in many ways.”

The biggest result may be the loss of entire ecosystems before scientists have an opportunity to understand them. This will be a loss for the type of science that can feed unexpected discoveries, such as new medications or new visions about how life is formed on Earth or can be formed on other planets.

Dr. Levin said: “If we want to work in the depths of the seas, we must be ready to abandon these ecosystems.”

Erik Lipton The reports contributed.