Trump takes a major step towards submarine mining in international waters

President Trump has ordered the US government to take a major step towards mining vast areas below the sea.

The executive order, signed Thursday, will circumvent decades-old international treaties ratified by all major coastal states except the United States. This is the latest example of the Trump administration's willingness to ignore international institutions, and is likely to spark protests from the country's rivals and allies.

According to a text released by the White House, the order “establishes it as a global leader in submarine mineral exploration and development both within and outside the national jurisdiction.”

Trump's order directs the promotion of mining permits in both the National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration's international waters and US territory.

Part of the seabed is covered with potato-sized nodules containing valuable minerals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese. These are essential to advanced technologies that the United States considers to be important to economic and military security, but its supply chain is increasingly controlled by China.

No commercial scale submarine mining has been carried out to date. The technical hurdles were high and there were serious concerns about the environmental impact.

As a result, in the 1990s, most countries agreed to join independent international submarine authorities that dominate the seabed mining of international waters. Because the United States is not a signatory, the Trump administration relies on an obscure 1980 law that allows the federal government to issue submarine mining permits in international waters.

Many countries want to see undersea mining become a reality. But so far, it has been that economic orders should not take priority over the risk that mining could damage fisheries and marine food chains, or that it could affect the essential role of the ocean in absorbing carbon dioxide that warms the planet from the atmosphere.

Trump's order comes after years of delays at the ISA in setting up a regulatory framework for undersea mining. Authorities have not yet agreed to the set of rules.

The executive order paves the way for metal companies, a well-known undersea mining company, to receive the first permission from NOAA to actively mine. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based public company announced in March that it would be asking the Trump administration to approve mining in international waters through its US subsidiary. The company has already spent more than $500 million on exploratory work.

“We have production-ready boats,” Gerald Baron, the company's chief executive, said in an interview Thursday. “We have the means to process materials in friendly partner nations of the Alliance. We are missing out on permission to allow us to start.”

In anticipation of mining as a final allowance, companies like him have invested heavily in developing technologies to mine the seabed. They include a ship with huge claws that stretch to the seabed, and a self-driving vehicle mounted on a giant vacuum cleaner that scrutinizes the bottom of the ocean.

Some analysts have questioned the need to rush towards submarine mining, given the current excess of nickel and cobalt from traditional mining. Furthermore, manufacturers of electric vehicle batteries, one of the main markets in metals, are heading towards battery designs that rely on other factors.

Nevertheless, the projection of future demand for metals generally remains high. And Trump's escalating trade war with China threatens to limit America's access to some of these important minerals. These include rare earth elements that can also be found in trace amounts of submarine nodules.

The US Geological Survey estimates that nodules in a single belt in the Eastern Pacific, known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone, contain more nickel, cobalt and manganese than all ground reserves combined. The area in the open ocean between Mexico and Hawaii is about half the size of the continent of the United States.

The Metals Company's contract site is located in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, with the oceans averaged around 2.5 miles deep. The company will first apply for exploitation permission under the 1980 law.

Baron denounced the ISA's “environmental activist acquisition,” leading him to establish a rulebook that his company could play and instead apply directly to the US government.

In a statement provided to the New York Times last month, NOAA spokesperson Maureen O'Leary said existing processes under US law stipulate “opportunistic environmental impact reviews, interagency consultations and public comment opportunities.”

Under the 1994 United Nations Sea Law Convention, the country has exclusive economic rights ranging from the coast to 200 nautical miles, but international water is under the jurisdiction of ISA. Since the marine law came into effect, the State Department sent representatives to a meeting at the headquarters of submarine authorities in Kingston, Jamaica, creating the impression that the United States was meant to respect the terms of the treaty, even if the Senate had never formally ratified it.

Over 30 countries are requesting delays or pauses at the start of submarine mining. Many automakers and tech companies, including BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo, Apple, Google and Samsung, have pledged to not use submarine minerals. In January, Hawaii's leading dysfunction introduced the US Seabed Protection Act. This prohibits NOAA from issuing licenses or permits for submarine mining activities.

ISA negotiators have spent more than a decade drafting the Mining Rules Book, which covers everything from environmental rules to royalty payments. Despite the pledge to complete it by this year, negotiators seemed not to meet that deadline.

Nevertheless, other major world powers, such as China, Russia, India, and several European countries, have generally supported moving quickly to mine into international waters, but have opposed the metal company's intention to obtain permission from the US government.

Much of the reluctance to mine the seabed comes from how unstudied it is by scientists. For example, the poly-based nodule of the Clarion Clipperton Zone is located in a cold, still, black world, inhabited by creatures encountered only on rare missions by marine biologists.

“We believe that half of the species that live in the area rely on nodules for part of the development,” said Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deepsea Conservation Union.

The way companies are proposing mine would essentially destroy those ecosystems, Gianni said, and the sediment feathers caused by mining can spread across a wider area and choke others.

Metals Company, which has conducted its own environmental research for 10 years, says these concerns are exaggerated. “We believe we have enough knowledge to prove we can manage environmental risks,” Baron said in a news release last month.

Reaching the deep sea is expensive and technically complicated, completely different from traveling to another planet. “Humanity has only damaged the surface,” said Beth Oakut, a microbiologist at the Bigelow Institute for Marine Science. The deep sea covers about 70% of the Earth.

Intrusive deep-sea ecosystems are as remote as they appear to be, and can have a much wider ripple effect.

“The ecosystem itself is really important in the major global cycle that allows the oceans to be productive, produce fish and shellfish and feed people,” says Lisa Levin, oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “And all of these ecosystems are interconnected, so if you destroy it, we probably don't even understand what will happen to others in many ways.”

The greatest result is that scientists lose their entire ecosystem before they have the opportunity to understand them. It is the loss of the kind of science that can drive unexpected discoveries, such as new drugs, how life has been formed on Earth, or new insights that could form on other planets.

“If we want to mine deep waters, we need to try and give up on those ecosystems,” Dr. Levin said.

Eric Lipton contributed to the report.