Bangkok – The Trump administration plan to allow the extraction of deep sea metals in the Pacific Ocean would unequivocally violate international law, said experts, attempting to sell minerals – used in batteries, weapons and smartphones – open to the challenge by other nations.
President Donald Trump signed an executive decree last month to accelerate the development of the mine industry in the deep sea, including in international waters over limits governed by a treaty, most nations are signators. The order said that measures are necessary to “counter the growing influence of China on the mineral resources of the seabed”.
Unilateral measures on the extraction of depths by the United States, said legal experts, also have the potential to weaken its legitimacy by trying to apply international law in general, including freedom of navigation in flash point waters such as the Southern China Sea or to fight illegal fishing.
“It is dangerous for the United States to throw the book of rules,” said Duncan Currie, an international lawyer, who advises conservation groups and testified to the congress last month on the risks of the extraction of deep sources.
The prefiguration of the executive decree, drew up the NASDAQ the company METALS, or TMC, which was at the forefront of the ambitions to exploit the seabed, in March, requested exploration and extraction permits under the American umbrella for the areas of the Pacific Ocean.
He attempts to bypass the international authority of seabed, or Isa, a United Nations organization forced to establish rules by consensus for the extraction of deep waters in international waters. Under the ISA jurisdiction, TMC worked with the Tonga and Nauru to explore their areas allocated in a vast Pacific band, but now says that Isa failed by not agreeing on the rules after several decades of effort.
Critics of the emerging industry say that copper, cobalt, manganese and nickel found in the nodules the size of the potato which line parts of the seabed are already abundant on earth. They warn that the flap of nodules at depths of several kilometers will cause irreparable damage to an oceanic environment still poorly understood by science.
In the midst of a general retirement by large companies of commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the deep -sea extraction companies have recently emphasized defense and security for mineral supply. Previously, nodules were presented as a source of metals necessary for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, which would reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
According to the testimony of the Currie congress, the arguments for the exploitation of extra -sea extraction are based on errors. The domination of China in the cobalt and nickel markets is due to computer processing that minerals imported from Congo and Indonesia and the exploitation of deep mothers would not significantly change this equation. A growing proportion of batteries in electric vehicles was no longer based on cobalt and nickel
“TMC has promised the people of Nauru's jobs and prosperity,” said Shiva Gounden, head of the Greenpeace Pacific. “But it took the first chance that he had his back in Nauru and he will do the same in any other country in the Pacific,” Gounden said in a statement.
Gerard Barron, CEO of TMC, said that the company's partnerships with Tonga and Nauru remain “solid from the rock”.
“They were also disappointed with the lack of performance at Isa,” he told Radio Free Asia.
The case made by Barron and the Trump administration is that the exploitation of the sea of depths is a legitimate freedom in waters beyond the national jurisdiction – an idea which has become obsolete of international law has evolved over the decades.
The United States has not ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on Sea Law, which governs international waters and has also established the authority of the seabed, but in practice recognizes and tries to enforce its principles.
The United States in 1970 has also officially recognized that a maritime treaty law accepted by most countries would establish the rules even for states that did not leave them.
“In the past thirty years, the United States engaged In the acts which support the object and the aim of the law of the law, said Coalter G. Lathrop, director of the law firm International Sovereign Geographic, in a blog article this month for the European Journal of International Law.
Despite this, Trump's decree seems to be a new lease for life for Metals.
At the end of March, it had only $ 2.3 million in cash and short -term debt of US $ 10 million. This week, he announced a sale of shares from the company which will collect around $ 37 million, according to a regulatory file with the Securities & Exchange Commission. TMC said that money would maintain it afloat until he obtained an American license for commercial exploitation.
Its American application has been criticized by France, China and other countries. A coalition of civil society organizations on the Pacific Island called on TMC to be put on black list by the authority of the seabed and Nauru and Tonga to end their agreements with the company.
Currie said that the UN Treaty has many obstacles to TMC making its ambitions.
“This questions whether metals raised by TMC under a unilateral permit could be sold,” he told Radio Free Asia.
TMC is a Canadian company while ALLSEAS, the company that has the ship and the mining equipment used by TMC, is Swiss. The two countries said Currie, RFA, has obligations under the United Nations Treaty to ensure that their nationals do not participate in violations.
TMC also has an agreement for the treatment of metals with a company based in another nation signatory to the Treaty – Japan.
TMC's prospectus for its sale of shares recognizes the possibility of legal consequences if it obtains an operating permit issued by the United States.
The ISA and many nations which are signatories of the law of the maritime treaty “are likely to consider such a permit as a violation of international law,” he said.
This could “affect the international perceptions of the project and could have implications for logistics, treatment and market access”, including judicial disputes in the judicial systems of the countries of the treated members.
Trying a unilateral route to exploit international seabed risks severe geopolitical repercussions “could be American interests that are burned,” Greenpeace's militant at sea Deep Sea, Louisa Casson said.
“Going against sea law could trigger impacts far beyond the exploitation of the deep sea-for maritime limits, freedom of navigation and other security interests,” she told RFA.
Published by Mike Firn and Tajun Kang.