US President Trump signed an executive order this week to fast-track a process that purports to permit US-affiliated companies to mine the deep-seabed in North American and international waters, despite the country not being a member of the International Seabed Authority.

It’s a move that has already been widely condemned by environmental groups and campaigners around the globe as “an environmental disaster in the making” and an attempt to “open one of Earth’s most fragile and least understood ecosystems to reckless industrial exploitation.”

The order seeks to expedite permitting from US agencies to facilitate the commercial extraction of minerals like cobalt, nickel, and manganese from deep-sea environments both within US waters and far beyond US national jurisdiction. 

Deep sea mining could threaten many fragile, slow-growing species found nowhere else on Earth while recent studies have provided clear evidence of the long-term damage it causes and the decades-long, slow and minimal recovery those impacted areas undergo.

Based on some known mining explorations zones – test zones in the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean – such fragile species include cold-water corals, glass sponges, and xenophyophores – a species of single-celled creatures that build critical habitat for other species in these remote ecosystems.

The executive order this week intends to speed up the permitting process for international waters laid out in the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, which was passed by Congress in 1980 after declining to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The order also allows for permitting in US waters under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

In response to the order, Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at the Centre for Biological Diversity, said: “The deep ocean belongs to everyone and protecting it is humanity’s global duty. The sea floor environment is not a platform for ‘America First’ extraction.”

The International Seabed Authority has been working for years to develop a ‘mining code’ that would regulate mineral exploitation in international areas. The latest ISA negotiations highlighted deep divisions among member states but reaffirmed growing calls for a moratorium on commercial deep-sea mining until strong environmental safeguards and scientific understanding are in place.

More than 30 countries now support a pause on deep sea mining. The US President’s action bypasses the ISA’s multilateral process and directly contradicts efforts by the global community to adopt binding regulations that prioritise environmental protection.

“We won’t let this administration give mining companies free rein to destroy the sea floor and the amazing, mysterious animals living there,” said Jeffers. 

Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organisation established to protect both people and the planet has called the executive order “a life raft for an untested, opaque industry” and one that science tells us “poses enormous threats to ocean ecosystems for little gain.”

Earthjustice Legislative Director for Lands, Wildlife, and Oceans Programme, Addie Haughey, said: “It is yet another bid to give away our nation’s public lands and waters, this time coupled with an attempt to circumvent international law to exploit our shared global oceans for corporate profits.”

The Order, signed by US President Donald Trump on Thursday, April 24 aims to establish the US as a global leader in seabed mineral exploitation and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction – developed, according to a press release from the White House “to counter China’s influence in the seabed mineral resource space.”

It instructs the Secretary of Commerce to expedite the process for reviewing and issuing exploration and commercial recovery permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act and provide a report identifying private sector interest for seabed mineral exploration, mining, and monitoring in the US Outer Continental Shelf.

Oceana, a global advocate for the ocean has called the Order a “clear case of putting mining companies’ greed over common sense.”

Dr Katie Matthews, Oceana chief scientist and senior vice president, said: “Any attempt to accelerate deep-sea mining without porter safeguards will only speed up the destruction of our oceans. 

“By spurning the international process, the US also weakens its ability to demand cooperation and compliance from other nations in issues like illegal fishing. We should be protecting, not undermining, the health of our oceans.”

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