Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
Key developments
Still at sea
DARK OXYGEN: Scientists discovered “dark oxygen” being produced in the deep ocean, “apparently by lumps of metal on the seafloor”, BBC News reported. The study challenges the “long-held assumption” that oxygen is produced exclusively through photosynthesis, CNN reported. Ocean scientist and lead author Dr Andrew Sweetman “observed the phenomenon time and time again over almost a decade” at several locations in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific, the outlet added. Canada’s The Metals Company, which partially funded Sweetman’s research, “attempted to poke holes in the study”, according to E&E News, but Sweetman stood by his team’s findings.
O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN: The study created ripples at the ongoing seabed mining talks in Kingston, Jamaica, delegates told Carbon Brief. However, nations negotiating rules to govern the sector are also “face[d with] a critical vote” to decide who will head the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a decision “that could impact the nascent industry for years”, the Guardian wrote. Ahead of “one of the world’s most important elections…you’ve never heard of”, Foreign Policy carried an in-depth interview with Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho. Carvalho is standing for election against the ISA’s current chief Michael Lodge, “who has been criticised for allegedly having cosy ties to eager mining firms”.
RUDDERLESS WORLD: Despite heated talks, the meeting is drawing to a close with mining rules “still far from finalised”, but no mining authorised, according to the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. Malta, Honduras, Tuvalu and Guatemala announced they were joining in the call for a “precautionary pause” on deep-sea mining, taking the number of countries pushing for a moratorium, pause or ban to 31 countries, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Palau’s president lamented: “We are once again at the mercy of powerful external forces, reminiscent of colonial exploitation that scarred our history.” For a detailed breakdown of country positions, evolving science and state of play, read Carbon Brief’s new Q&A on deep sea mining, published today.
UN hunger report
FOOD INSECURITY: Around one in five people in Africa faced hunger in 2023 as “major drivers”, including climate change and conflict, became “more frequent and severe”, a new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found. More than 700 million people around the world were undernourished in 2023, the report estimated – an increase of around 150 million people compared to 2019. “Transforming agrifood systems is more critical than ever,” the director general of the FAO, Dr Qu Dongyu, said in a statement. He added that the FAO is “committed to supporting countries in their efforts to eradicate hunger and ensure food security for all”.
AFRICA IMPACTS: Food insecurity is an issue in many parts of the world, “but Africa is at the epicentre of the crisis, with hunger on the rise across the continent”, Context News said in its coverage of the report. East Africa had the highest number of people going hungry on the continent – more than 138 million people in 2023, the outlet noted. Dr David Laborde, director of the agrifood economics division at FAO, told the New Humanitarian that “hunger level remains high, higher than in 2015” – the year that countries adopted the UN sustainable development goals for 2030, which include an aim to end hunger.
DROUGHT: Meanwhile, the prime minister of Lesotho, Sam Matekane, declared a “national food insecurity disaster” as around 700,000 people in the small African country face drought-related hunger, according to the Lesotho Times. The “critical” situation needs “national, regional and international humanitarian intervention”, the president said. Lesotho and other southern Africa countries including Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi were hit by drought in recent months, scorching crops and leaving millions at risk of hunger, the Associated Press reported earlier this year. A rapid attribution study found that the El Niño weather pattern was the key driver behind this drought.
Spotlight
What Venezuela’s election means for the Amazon
In this Spotlight, Carbon Brief looks at what Venezuela’s disputed election results could mean for illegal mining in the Amazon rainforest.
Earlier this week, Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the Venezuelan presidential election by the “government-controlled electoral authority”, the Guardian reported.
The country’s opposition disputed the results as “fraudulent”, BBC News said, while protests broke out in the country’s capital of Caracas.
Pre-election polls showed Maduro, who has served as Venezuela’s president for the past 11 years, falling behind as “voters express[ed] exhaustion over Venezuela’s economic crisis and political repression”, Al Jazeera said.
According to Mongabay, there was “little room for discussion about environmental issues” in the build-up to the election amid focus on whether the vote would be “anything close to free and fair”. The outlet said that this is “despite the fact that the country has plunged into a crisis so severe that many observers now call it an ecocide”.
Amazon impacts
Venezuela is among the world’s most biodiverse countries and it holds almost 7% of the Amazon region.
In 2022, Mongabay reported that more than 140,000 hectares of primary forest were lost in the Venezuelan areas of the Amazon over 2016-20.
New Scientist also reported in 2022 that pristine forest loss in the Venezuelan Amazon “is estimated to be increasing by around 170% annually” due to “a state-sanctioned boom in gold mining”.
Luis Jiménez, the general coordinator of the Venezuelan conservation NGO Phynatura, believes that Maduro remaining in power would continue the “exponentially accelerated” destruction of the Amazon.
He tells Carbon Brief that mining has impacted “important protected natural areas” in Venezuela, such as the Canaima and Yapacana national parks, which “apart from protecting large, megadiverse forest spaces, are home to 31 Indigenous ethnic groups”.
Jiménez believes another Maduro term would continue this “extractivist economy, which in no way benefits local communities or the rest of Venezuelans”.
Indigenous rights
In 2022, the NGO Human Rights Watch “documented horrific abuses” of Indigenous peoples “by groups controlling illegal gold mines in southern Venezuela, operating with government acquiescence”.
Last year, the Venezuelan government launched a military option to “expel more than 10,000 illegal miners from the Amazon, according to an Agence France-Presse article published in Deutsche Welle.
The article noted that Maduro said illegal mining was “destroying” the Amazon.
On deforestation, Venezuela and Bolivia were the only Amazon countries to not sign a 2021 global pledge to work towards halting deforestation by 2030.
But, in 2022, Venezuela and Colombia proposed relaunching the 1978 Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, a pact between Brazil, Bolivia, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela to protect the Amazon.
The countries then met for the first time in 14 years last August, committing to act together to prevent the rainforest “from reaching the point of no return” – but stopped short of agreeing on a common target to end deforestation.
Politicians in the US, Chile, Argentina and around the world have cast doubt over the Venezuelan election results, Reuters said. Maduro has allegedly pledged to release the full voting records, a Brazilian government official told Bloomberg, amid continued protests and tension in the country.
News and views
MILKING THE SYSTEM: Big meat and dairy corporations are “mobilis[ing] significant resources to delay and derail progressive environmental legislation”, a Changing Markets Foundation investigation found. An examination of 22 of the biggest meat and dairy corporations across four continents revealed the use of distract, delay and derail tactics, mirroring those of “big oil”. Distraction tactics, such as greenwashing, steer the spotlight away from the lack of climate action, the report said, adding that companies are using “industry-funded academic research to downplay” the sector’s environmental impact. Delay tactics “ask governments to slow down any regulation by claiming that [companies] are already taking voluntary action”. Finally, the “most aggressive” derail tactics focus on political activity, including millions spent on donations and lobbying, the report said.
COP16 THREAT MONITORING: The organising committee of the COP16 UN biodiversity summit, which will be held in Cali, Colombia in October, sought to reassure delegates after online threats from a “dissident rebel group”, reported the Guardian. The organisers reiterated that “the safety and wellbeing of all participants, attendees and collaborators are our top priority”, the newspaper added. This came after threats made by the Central General Staff (EMC) in a post on Twitter that was addressed to Colombian president Gustavo Petro and said that COP16 would “fail”. The threat came during a ceasefire breakdown between the Colombian government and factions of the EMC, which is active near Cali. The organising committee has assured that it is “closely monitoring the situation and working to establish the validity of the [threats] on social media”.
NEW GROUPS: The new European parliament agriculture committee has been formed of “predominantly right-leaning” politicians, Euronews reported. The “heightened political significance” of the committee after EU farmer protests earlier this year “has attracted top-tier MEPs and lawmakers with little ties to the agricultural world”, Euractiv reported. Some “unexpected faces” in the committee formed after the June parliament elections include a “Spanish far-right YouTuber Luis ‘Alvise’ Pérez”. Meanwhile, the bloc’s yet-to-be-announced agriculture commissioner could be Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen from the European People’s Party, Politico speculated.
BIRD FLU BROILER: Extreme heat may have played a key role in the bird flu outbreak that infected five workers in the US state of Colorado earlier this month, the Guardian reported. The newspaper said the workers, tasked with culling poultry with the virus, became infected themselves, as their protective gear failed to work correctly amid extreme temperatures. CNN said temperatures at the time were above 40C, with large industrial fans being used to try to control the heat. “We understand those large fans…were moving so much air…the workers were finding it hard to maintain a good seal or a good fit either between the mask or with eye protection,” said Dr Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN.
WASTE NOT: Leaders of Pacific Island states have come to an agreement with Japan over the latter’s “controversial” discharge of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, according to the Pacific Islands News Association. Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida assured the Pacific Islands Forum that the practice was being done “in compliance with international safety standards and practices”, while Pacific leaders “emphasised the need for Japan to continue providing sincere and transparent explanations” about the process. However, Prof Robert Richmond, the director of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Kewalo Marine Laboratory, “voiced significant concerns” about the efficacy of the treatment and the monitoring programme that is currently in place, the outlet said.
DAMAGED GOODS: A cattle rancher in Brazil has had his assets frozen in the “largest civil case brought for climate crimes in Brazil to date”, the Guardian reported. Dirceu Kruger will be compelled to pay more than $50m in “compensation for the damage he had caused to the climate through illegal deforestation”, according to the newspaper. The price tag was calculated based on the number of hectares that Kruger was found to have deforested, the average greenhouse gas emissions from damaging the rainforest and a calculation of the “social cost” of carbon. The money will be paid into the country’s climate emergency fund and the rancher will also “have to restore the land he degraded so it can become a valuable carbon sink again”, the outlet said.
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE FINANCE: Dialogue Earth explored uncertainties around ocean communities being able to access “loss and damage” funding for those impacted by climate change.
US ELECTION: The “record on the environment” of Kamala Harris – US vice president and Democratic frontrunner for the country’s presidential election – was discussed on the NPR Living on Earth podcast.
GROWING PAINS: A feature in Al Jazeera looked at the “uncertain future” for women coffee farmers in the “conflict-ridden” eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
HOT WATER: The Financial Times examined the “dangerous effects of rising sea temperatures”.
New science
Indigenous food production in a carbon economy
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A new study has revealed that replacing locally harvested foods with imported market substitutes in Canada’s Inuvialuit Settlement region “would cost over C$3.1m [US$2.3m]…and emit over 1,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions” annually. The study modelled the cost of substituting local food harvests with market replacements in the region. The study found that gasoline use would add about “C$295,000 [US$213,611] [to harvesting costs] and result in 315 to 497 tonnes of emissions”, in contrast to the much higher costs and emissions associated with substituting local foods with imports. Disregarding local food systems could, therefore, “undermine emissions targets and adversely impact food security and health in Arctic Indigenous communities”, the study added.
Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces
Nature
New research found that tree bark can absorb methane from the atmosphere, meaning that the climate benefits of protecting forests “may be greater than previously assumed”. Researchers measured the methane exchange on tree stems in a range of forests in the Amazon, Panama, UK and Sweden. They found that microbes in bark could help trees to take in between 25-50m tonnes of atmospheric methane each year, with tropical forests taking in the highest levels of methane. The researchers conclude that identifying tree species that can absorb the most methane could help to tackle the global growth of the potent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Cost-effectiveness of natural forest regeneration and plantations for climate mitigation
Nature Climate Change
A new research effort has created global maps illustrating what is likely to be the most cost-effective reforestation method in 138 low- and middle-income countries. To create the maps, the researchers used machine learning to combine data on the likely implementation costs of passive natural regeneration and reforestation through plantations, as well as household survey data on the opportunity costs of reforestation, data on the most suitable tree species to plant in each area and the likely carbon accumulation in each area. The research found that plantations offer the most cost-effective form of reforestation over 54% of the land included in the study, while natural regeneration would be most effective over 46% of the land.
In the diary
- 9 August: International day of the world’s Indigenous peoples
- 11-15 August: World Water Congress and Exhibition | Toronto
- 12-16 August: Working group on benefit-sharing from the use of digital sequence information | Montreal, Canada
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Antara Basu also contributed to this issue. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 31 July 2024: Deep-sea mining talks; UN hunger report; Venezuela election and the Amazon appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 31 July 2024: Deep-sea mining talks; UN hunger report; Venezuela election and the Amazon
Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.0g. Cat Abreu is director of the International Climate Politics Hub.
From the US abduction of Venezuela’s president at the start of this year to the Iran war which rumbles on, disruption is the new normal for global geopolitics, more often than not linked to conflict over supplies of oil and gas.
Events so far in 2026 – driven largely by the desire of the Trump administration to grab control of fossil fuels around the world – show that the climate community’s approach to energy diplomacy will have to evolve if we are to operate effectively and push for climate action in such a volatile landscape.
Today’s climate and energy governance must be able to cope with trade wars, genocide, fascism, spiralling inequality and challenges to multilateralism. The increasingly dominant paradigms of economic competitiveness, energy security and green industrialisation can help drive the transition but they also challenge our collective mission to deliver an equitable green shift.
US-China rivalry dominates
Longer-term geopolitical trends that are seeing power move from West to East and North to South have fuelled a US–China “superpower rivalry”, which is pulling the global economy apart and reining in trade.
A key question will be how the fracture “lines” are drawn: by the US and China, or also by other countries or blocs? Many governments will try to remain “in the middle” between the two giants to capture economic gains from both sides. Yet despite the language of “strategic autonomy”, Washington and Beijing may be in a position to force choices via market access, export controls and sanctions.
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Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry
Two subsidiaries of The Metals Company sought to block the probe into potential contract breaches launched after the firm’s application for US-sponsored permits
At first glance, this may not seem particularly relevant for climate and energy politics. But Huawei’s exclusion from 5G operations across the political West and India following the so-called Clean Network Campaign by the US government serves as a warning of what could happen to climate green tech.
And the recent debate to cut out Chinese inverters from European markets follows the same pattern – US security forces perceive a risk and start encouraging their allies to drop Chinese technology.
The new drivers: competition and security
Despite this fracturing geopolitical and economic context, energy transition is still happening. To ensure it is effective and equitable, we need to understand what is driving it and how to adapt climate politics so that it better responds to these drivers.
Put simply, China is supplying the world with low-cost renewables (roughly 60% of critical wind and 80% of solar components), batteries, EVs and other key elements. Other countries now also want their piece of the green tech pie and are forming industrial policies to get it.
It is this new competitiveness-driven logic that will shape the quest for decarbonisation, which has shifted from cooperating around the cost of tackling climate change to rivalry for the benefits of climate action.
Over 90% of new renewables projects are now cheaper than fossil alternatives. Gas-fired power is 3–4 times more expensive than solar and wind. In 2015, most decarbonisation policies were “traditional” emissions-cutting strategies like carbon pricing or net zero dates, whereas green industrial policies now underpin the majority.
Iran war could boost fossil fuel phase-out push, says Colombian minister
Meanwhile, security has become a central driver of energy politics. We are living through the second major fossil fuel crisis in just four years. Elevated oil and gas prices will impose up to $1 trillion in additional costs on the global economy by the end of the year if disruption continues in the Strait of Hormuz. Fossil fuel supply chains have exposed countries to conflict, coercion and brutal price shocks.
Fossil fuel volatility destabilises whole economies – higher fuel costs drive up food prices, increase political instability, and push millions into poverty and hunger. This incentivises governments to shield themselves from global shocks, especially in countries that are net fossil fuel importers and home to roughly three-quarters of the world’s population.
Yet security fears can cut both ways. The same instability that makes fossil fuel dependence untenable is also sharpening concern over China’s dominance of critical clean technologies and supply chains.
Equity, cooperation and the opportunity for change
Developing countries benefit from the rapid uptake of renewables enabled by low-cost Chinese technologies. But significant fiscal space and public investment is needed for the electricity grids and infrastructure required to fully unleash the energy transition, as well as for green industrialisation to diversify revenue streams.
Despite this, industrial-scale domestic production and ownership often remain out of reach for too many countries that lack the fiscal space to allow green supply chains to flourish and compete with their traditional industrial base. But more just and diversified green tech supply chains could be achieved with concomitant support.
Can giant batteries unlock Africa’s green industrial future?
For the first time in decades, the international order is being substantially reshaped. If within this context, decarbonisation is increasingly driven by green industrial policy, energy security and competitiveness, the climate policy community must better anticipate where these debates are moving. We must speak the same language, and enter the forums where decisions are made, including security, trade and bilateral or trilateral spaces.
We should build on an enlightened self interest recognising that cooperation remains essential and beneficial. This includes using the UN climate process differently: less as an ever-expanding negotiation machine, and more as a space for norm-setting, political alignment and deal-making. In an age of fragmentation, effective cooperation must not only be framed as necessary but thought of as a strategically compelling source of resilience and shared advantage.
The post Energy transition policymaking must evolve to fit an age of rupture appeared first on Climate Home News.
Energy transition policymaking must evolve to fit an age of rupture
Low-income Indian workers, many of them migrants from rural areas hit by climate change, are paying for worsening extreme heat through lost working days and health complications, with the cost equivalent to 2% of national GDP per year, new research shows.
The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank, worked with local organisations to survey around 540 households of informal workers in three Indian cities: Ajmer, Delhi and Agra. Most had migrated from rural areas to find work in industries such as construction, brick-making, garment manufacturing and food packaging.
The survey found them struggling through long working days with little access to shade, cooling, rest or water, as well as few toilets for women. And even when they go home, many live in makeshift shelters or airless cramped rooms with barely a single fan, bringing almost no respite.
Outdoor workers are losing about 24 days of work a year due to heat, costing them nearly a tenth of their annual earnings, while indoor workers sacrifice roughly 15 days. On top of losing income, they are also bearing the cost of health problems like heat exhaustion, psychological stress and kidney damage brought on by repeated dehydration.
If the survey’s findings are extrapolated to a national level, the IIED researchers estimate that the decline in productivity and effects of kidney disease combined add up to lost wages of $78 billion each year.
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Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry
Two subsidiaries of The Metals Company sought to block the probe into potential contract breaches launched after the firm’s application for US-sponsored permits -
Most “zombie credits” locked out of new UN carbon market after China and India snub
Fears of a flood of environmentally-dubious carbon credits have faded, with most old projects not able to transition to new UN market
Vishram Meena, 45, from Alwar in Rajasthan, has worked on construction sites in Ajmer for more than a decade, toiling for 10 to 12 hours a day carrying materials and mixing cement in the full sun.
In May 2024, on one of the hottest days, he collapsed after feeling dizzy and suffering a nosebleed. His wife and colleagues managed to get him to hospital where he was diagnosed with heat stroke. He has since returned to the same building work because the family needs the money.
“I went back because what else could I do? We are not machines. We are human beings. The heat is killing us slowly,” he was quoted as saying in a report on the survey’s findings.
“Victorian-era” conditions
Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, described some of the stories from workers about their experiences of extreme heat as “genuinely horrifying”.
Kusum, a tailor at a garment manufacturing and export unit in Kapashera, Delhi, recounted how the machines for ironing finished garments are in the same tiny room where workers are making the clothes, with steam and hot air building up through her shift.
Fans are too far apart to move the air and nothing has changed in over a decade, she said, adding that “in summer, the unit feels like a furnace”.
“These are Victorian-era working conditions and they’re completely unacceptable in the 21st century,” said Bharadwaj. She called for stepped-up social protection from the government to pay people for days they are unable work due to heat, as well as micro-insurance schemes with payouts triggered by temperature measurements.
This money would help families buy food and pay medical bills when their income dips if they fall ill or cannot work their usual hours due to soaring temperatures.
Climate change-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders
The aim of the IIED study, Bharadwaj added, is to get policy-makers’ attention by showing the scale of damage extreme heat is doing to India’s GDP in an economy whose growth relies on service-led industries. “If the workers within them start falling sick, you know it’s the economic growth which is going to get impacted,” she told a webinar to present the research.
“Whether [policymakers] care about the workers or not, at least they would care about the GDP, and therefore then invest in their care,” she explained.
Labour code leaves out heat
However, Bharadwaj noted that a 2026 reform to India’s labour law bringing a range of regulations together in one code does not include heat-related protections for workers and only applies to businesses above a certain size. She urged the government to introduce a temperature threshold above which all workers would be able to stop their activities.
IIED and its partners have also carried out a similar study in Bangladesh which will be published later this month, showing that extreme heat is costing its workforce the equivalent of nearly 1.4% of GDP.
Shakirul Islam, chairperson of the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) in Bangladesh, said the government had introduced stricter safety policies for garment-making companies after the Rana Plaza complex collapsed in 2013. But, he said, these rules are rarely followed by manufacturers, especially at the level of smaller subcontractors.
The workers’ welfare centres that do exist are open mainly during work hours so they are difficult to visit. Some companies also make saline water available for heat stress, which is no good for those with high blood pressure, he noted.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
Archana Shukla Mukherjee, CEO of India’s Change Alliance, which also partnered with IIED on the survey, said it was time to hold both the government and businesses accountable for finding solutions to the intensifying problem of extreme heat’s effects on workers.
She said that employee state insurance schemes should identify heat stroke as an occupational disease while companies along the whole supply chain should start putting in place heat protection measures, including for informal workers and migrants.
If the tools and mechanisms available to help workers do not reach the most vulnerable and marginalised people, “then I think we are not doing something right,” she said.
The post Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds appeared first on Climate Home News.
Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds
A United Nations investigation into deep-sea mining firms will continue after the world’s top maritime court rejected their bid to suspend the inquiry triggered by a US-backed push to extract critical minerals from the ocean floor.
In two orders issued on Saturday, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) declined to halt an inquiry launched by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) into whether permit holders, including Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML) and Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), have breached their obligations under UN exploration contracts.
The two companies are subsidiaries of Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC), which earlier this year sought permits from the United States to commercially mine the deep seabed in an area already covered by its UN exploration licences, bypassing the ISA’s regulatory process.
The inquiry was opened after TMC’s move raised questions over whether its subsidiaries had complied with their contractual obligations to the ISA, which regulates mining in international waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. TOML and NORI sued the ISA last June for allegedly targeting them “in breach of due process” and without “good faith”.
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UN seabed regulator defends authority as mining firms seek to halt inquiry
Campaigners accused deep-sea mining frontrunner The Metals Company of obstructing an inquiry into its subsidiaries. The firm says it is being targeted without procedural basis -
Flood deaths in West African cities raise fraught issue of slum evictions
Deadly floods expose poor urban planning, over-population and spread of informal settlements on disaster-prone land – a problem authorities are struggling to manage -
Most “zombie credits” locked out of new UN carbon market after China and India snub
Fears of a flood of environmentally-dubious carbon credits have faded, with most old projects not able to transition to new UN market
While allowing the inquiry to proceed, the court ordered the ISA to ensure the companies receive due process. Judges said the regulator must explain the factual and legal basis of its inquiry, clarify the procedures being followed and provide TOML and NORI with a meaningful opportunity to respond.
The companies seeks to mine an area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which holds vast reserves of critical minerals like nickel, manganese and rare earths but is also home to a little-studied deep ocean ecosystem with thousands of unnamed species.
In response to the court’s ruling, the ISA welcomed the decision, saying the inquiry “remains in effect” and would continue “with due regard to all applicable legal requirements”.
Last week, during an annual meeting of its member governments, ISA secretary-general Leticia Carvalho said the resources in the ocean floor are “the common heritage of humankind” and upheld the agency’s role as “more important than ever”.
TMC also welcomed the court decision in a statement and claimed that judges ruled to “protect the rights of TMC subsidiaries”.
“Contractors like NORI and TOML, who have together spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the promise of a fair regulatory framework, should be informed of the factual and legal basis of any non-compliance inquiries, understand the procedure being applied, and receive a meaningful opportunity to respond,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.
Environmental groups said the ruling allows scrutiny of the companies’ actions to continue.
Louisa Casson, deep-sea mining campaigner with Greenpeace, said the “entire litigation has been an egregious waste of time and money”, which was part of the industry’s “textbook distraction tactic” meant to delay the consequences of the inquiry.
“If the inquiry confirms that TMC’s subsidiaries are breaching their contracts, governments must send the strongest possible signal that complicity in unlawful deep sea mining will not be tolerated,” she said.
While investigation is still ongoing, NORI’s contract is set to expire this week and is up for review. Governments asked the ISA to report back and make “make appropriate recommendations” by the next ISA assembly, its main decision-making body set to take place next week from July 27 to 31.
The court ordered both the ISA and TMC to submit a report on how they complied with the ruling by August 31, and called on both to “cooperate and refrain from any action that might lead to
aggravating the dispute”.
The post Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry
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