The White House’s executive order last month purports to authorize mining in international waters – against the authority of a U.N. regulatory body.
In recent years, deep-sea mining has emerged as a polarizing issue in the Pacific Islands, and the nascent industry is not yet regulated. Now the region is contending with another challenge: the potential breakdown of international rules that might be the marine environment’s last defense.
The Pacific seabed is estimated to hold billions of dollars worth of manganese, cobalt, copper, and nickel, which are used to make smartphones, batteries for electric vehicles, and solar panels, and which are also crucial to the defense and aerospace industries.
But mining these resources would disrupt ocean ecosystems, including endangering thousands of undiscovered species. Polymetallic nodules – lumps of minerals that accrue on the seabed over millions of years – cannot be removed from the ocean floor without disturbing large amounts of sediment, the surrounding environment, and the creatures that live on the nodules themselves.
For the rest of this article: https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/as-pacific-islands-caution-against-seabed-mining-the-us-prepares-to-trash-the-rules/