United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to expand the controversial but financially lucrative practice of deep-sea mining in a bid to lock down US access to critical minerals and metals beneath the seabed.
The order, which Trump signed in private on Thursday, seeks to jump-start the mining of both US and international waters as part of a push to offset China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals industry.
“The United States has a core national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in deep-sea science and technology and seabed mineral resources,” Trump said in the order.
The order directs the US administration to expedite mining permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resource Act of 1980 and to establish a process for issuing permits along the US outer continental shelf.
It also orders the expedited review of seabed mining permits “in areas beyond the national jurisdiction”, a move likely to cause friction with the international community.
The White House says deep-sea mining will generate billions of metric tonnes of materials, while adding $300bn and 100,000 jobs to the US economy over the next decade.
Environmental groups are calling for all deep-sea mining activities to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.
“The United States government has no right to unilaterally allow an industry to destroy the common heritage of humankind, and rip up the deep sea for the profit of a few corporations,” Greenpeace’s Arlo Hemphill said.
Deep-sea mining targets resources such as potato-sized polymetallic nodules from depths of 4,000 to 6,000 metres. The nodules contain critical materials, including manganese, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel, which are used by the defence, aerospace, energy and tech industries.
Access to critical minerals has become increasingly politicised due to the industry’s outsized dependence on China, one of the US’s largest trading partners and one of its greatest geopolitical rivals.
Trump’s executive order gives the US Secretary of Commerce 60 days “to expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licences and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction”.
The sea floor remains a region of the world that is still relatively unexplored. More of the moon has been mapped than the sea bed, about three-quarters of which remains unmapped.
The UN’s International Seabed Authority has set regulations on deep-sea mining, but the US is not a member of the organisation and has never ratified its relevant agreements.
Under international law, the US has the right to deep-sea mining within its territorial waters – 200km (124 miles) from shore. Still, Trump is also pushing to expand mining into international waters by invoking the “obscure 1980 law that empowers the federal government to issue seabed mining permits,” according to The New York Times.
Recent deep-sea mining efforts have targeted the island of American Samoa, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean.
Earlier this month, the California-based deep-sea mining company Impossible Metals asked the Trump administration to launch a commercial auction for access to minerals around American Samoa, whose waters are under US jurisdiction.
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