Following this year’s UN COP17 biodiversity conference, Carbon Brief’s journalists hosted a livestream to explain what happened at the summit.
Carbon Brief’s Orla Dwyer and Aruna Chandrasekhar have been on the ground in Yerevan, Armenia, over the past two weeks, covering the negotiations.
They were joined on the livestream by associate editors Dr Giuliana Viglione and Daisy Dunne, who were following the talks from Washington DC and London, respectively.
Carbon Brief has also published its 10,000-word explainer of COP17, which lays out the key outcomes in detail.
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Orla and Aruna kicked off the livestream by explaining the biggest issues at the event, including biodiversity finance and the first “global review” of progress towards reversing nature loss.
The four journalists then took live questions from the audience in an “ask me anything” format, covering issues such as “nature-harming subsidies”, marine biodiversity and the status of the Cali fund, which is meant to raise private-sector finance.
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
The post CB Live: Carbon Brief’s team at COP17 on the nature talks’ key outcomes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CB Live: Carbon Brief’s team at COP17 on the nature talks’ key outcomes
At India’s ocean technology institute in Chennai, scientists have been developing a range of hi-tech mining equipment that can operate 5 or 6 kilometres underwater – from a remote-control submarine to a seabed soil tester and slurry pump.
Their task: to ensure that India is ready if deep-sea mining takes off by building the technology and knowledge about how – and where – critical minerals can be extracted from the depths of the ocean, even as dozens of nations call for a moratorium on this activity.
After a series of successful deep-water equipment tests in recent years, government officials say big strides have been made.
“(India) has made significant progress in building the scientific and technological foundations for deep-sea mining,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which oversees the institute, told Climate Home News.
Deep-sea ambitions
Highlighting the country’s ambitions, it signed a second contract last year with the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN body that regulates the deep ocean floor, to explore polymetallic sulphides, which contain minerals such as copper and zinc – key ingredients in clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and storage batteries.
Besides the two polymetallic sulphide contracts, it holds an ISA exploration contract for polymetallic nodules in the Central Indian Ocean Basin. China and South Korea are the only other countries with three ISA exploration contracts directly under government control.
Yet deep-sea mining is controversial for its potential impacts on the ocean floor, a little-studied, undisturbed ecosystem that should be protected by a precautionary pause on the activity, marine scientists say.
A coalition of 46 countries is pushing for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, until enough scientific evidence shows the ecosystem impacts can be reduced.
Despite this push, ISA contract-holders are still racing to develop the technical capabilities to mine the ocean floor, betting that commercial-scale operations will eventually be permitted and prove economically viable. India, an emerging clean-tech powerhouse, does not want to fall behind competitors, government officials told Climate Home News.
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Since India obtained its first ISA exploration contract more than two decades ago, extensive survey work has been undertaken in the 75,000-square-km contract area in the Central Indian Ocean Basin, which is estimated to hold hundreds of millions of tonnes of polymetallic nodule resources, according to the Indian government.
More recently, survey work has identified several potential locations in the polymetallic sulphide areas.
The seabed survey work and the deep-sea mining tools being developed in Chennai put India among only a small group of countries to have made such progress. China is another leader in mapping the ocean floor for potential mineral resources that could one day be extracted.
At a meeting in Jamaica in July, the ISA continued negotiations on rules for commercial deep-sea mining but failed to adopt the Mining Code. Delegates agreed that further work had to be carried out to resolve outstanding issues, with the ISA tasked with devising a roadmap towards hopeful adoption.
Technical and regulatory hurdles
Even if a regulatory framework is established, commercial development remains a distant prospect in the exploration contract areas awarded to India by the ISA, government officials and experts say.
“There is still quite a distance to be covered to convert the resource to reserves,” the ministry spokesperson said.
Pradeep Singh, an ocean governance expert at the Oceano Azul Foundation, a Portugal-based international nonprofit, described India’s deep-sea mining programme as being firmly in “an exploratory phase”.
“There is still a lot more work left to be done in order to achieve sustained extraction technology, address operational hurdles (such as shipboard processing and trans-shipment), and develop onshore refining,” Singh told Climate Home News.
“It would also appear, from publicly available information, that none of the programmes will be ready to move into the exploitation phase anytime soon,” Singh added.
Deep-sea real estate
Instead, the government’s longer-term vision for India’s ISA contracts is centred on “a combination of mineral/resource security, indigenous technology development, scientific capability and eventual industrial readiness”, the ministry spokesperson said.
But for as long as deep-sea mining remains commercially unviable, Singh said securing exploratory licences may be more about “real estate and as a projection of dominance”.
“The competition at the moment – if any – is more about investing in deep-sea operational capabilities rather than mineral resource extraction itself (which is currently not competitive),” Singh said.
Threat to ocean biodiversity
In tandem with India’s deep-sea mineral survey work, years of research by government environmental scientist Dr. Rengaiyan Periasamy on Indian Ocean ridges highlight the risks that future deep-sea mining poses to ocean biodiversity.
“Our studies have led to the discovery of more than 10 new species,” Periasamy told Climate Home News from the Kochi-based Centre for Marine Living Resources & Ecology, which also operates under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
They warn that deep-sea mining could cause habitat destruction, persistent sediment plumes and disruption of ecosystem processes throughout the water column, with potentially irreversible impacts occurring before many species and ecosystems are fully understood.
Major fisheries could also be severely impacted, according to campaigners.
“No country has conducted enough scientific research to capture the full scope of environmental impacts of deep-sea mining,” said a spokesperson for the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition, an international environmental advocacy group focused on protecting deep-ocean ecosystems.
“We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about any deep-sea environment,” the spokesperson added.
The post India builds deep-sea capacity in bet on critical minerals future appeared first on Climate Home News.
India builds deep-sea capacity in bet on critical minerals future
Climate Change
Woodside adds geotechnical surveys in endangered whale foraging area to risky Scott Reef drilling plans
SYDNEY, Wednesday 4 November 2026 — In response to Woodside recently submitting geotechnical survey plans at Scott Reef to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), the following comments can be attributed to Hannah Schuch, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“‘Geotechnical survey’ is a vague term for high-volume subsea blasting, and Woodside wants to do this in significant foraging habitat for endangered pygmy blue whales, and within metres of vulnerable turtle nesting grounds at magnificent Scott Reef – it’s ludicrous.
“This plan from Woodside piles on the existing harms that could come from its reckless plans to drill for gas at Scott Reef, which WA’s environmental watchdog deemed ‘serious, significant and irreversible’ in a letter to Woodside that was published just last week.
“Pygmy blue whales rely on Scott Reef as a feeding area on their migrations up and down the WA coast. Scott Reef is the last foraging ground for this endangered species before Perth, thousands of kilometres south.
“Industrial activity at Scott Reef, like drilling or blasting, could force whales away from vital habitats and off their migration pathways and, according to independent expert analyses, have deadly consequences for pygmy blue whales and green turtles – it is a completely unacceptable plan and should not be allowed to go ahead.
“The risks to marine life from Woodside’s reckless nature and climate-wrecking plans at Scott Reef are overwhelming. The Federal Environment Minister has an opportunity to define Australia’s record on nature protection by saving Scott Reef once and for all.”
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Media contact
Emma Sangalli on 0431 513 465 or emma.sangalli@greenpeace.org
High res images and footage of Scott Reef can be found here
Brazil’s COP30 presidency has unveiled a much-anticipated plan to halt forest loss around the world, saying a global target to end deforestation by 2030 remains within reach using existing national and international tools, but requires more finance behind it and everyone to go “faster and further”.
COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago told a press conference to launch the new roadmap in Brasilia that, while some countries pushed back against a global blueprint, it was developed as a way to inspire governments, business and civil society to focus on meeting commitments to protect forests.
“It’s all processes that already exist. All instruments that already exist. That’s one of the best conclusions: everyone can start acting today,” do Lago said.
The voluntary deforestation roadmap, along with another on transitioning away from fossil fuels, was promised by Brazil in the final hours of last year’s COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém after countries could not agree to include it in the formal Mutirão outcome.
Do Lago reiterated on Tuesday that the roadmap is not an official UN document, but rather a guide to implement targets already agreed three years ago at COP28 in Dubai, when countries took stock of national climate policies and agreed to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
Last year, global deforestation declined by 15% – the largest drop in recent years, achieved in large part thanks to Brazil’s tougher enforcement against illegal expansion of cattle-ranching – but countries remain far off track for the drop needed to achieve the COP28 target.
Former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, a close ally of newly re-elected President Lula da Silva and one of the main advocates of the roadmap, celebrated its launch and described it as “not a new path but a new way of walking” towards the global goal.