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An unprecedented territory grab for extraction

Deep sea mining is a speculative industry. Everywhere it has tried to launch, it has failed. From Norway to New Zealand, efforts to exploit the seabed have crashed into a wall of opposition: legal challenges, parliamentary blocks, and fierce resistance from local communities, scientists, the fishing industry, and environmental groups. The world is not waiting for deep sea mining; it is actively mobilising against it.

As scientists increasingly warn of potentially irreversible ecological destruction to the planet’s last pristine wilderness, independent financial audits have exposed the industry’s underlying economic model as it underestimates its own financial and legal risks. A powerful coalition of over 43 governments, Indigenous activists, hundreds of scientists, and corporate giants, from the fishing industry to major automakers, has formed a global line of defence to keep the deep ocean off-limits to mining.

Major global banks such as BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and the Asian Development Bank have refused to finance these projects. Faced with international deadlock and financial stress, key players in an increasingly desperate industry have abandoned multilateral diplomacy. Instead, they have pivoted to a dangerous geopolitical gamble: teaming up with the Trump administration to unilaterally claim the global commons in blatant defiance of international law.

A unilateral power grab

Deep sea mining isn’t just an environmental disaster, it is a unilateral power grab disguised as a resource war, and a modern iteration of colonial history in the Pacific. For centuries, Western empires exploited Pacific nations; today, Global North corporations are attempting a new wave of “blue colonisation.” By treating the Pacific Ocean as an empty warehouse of commodities, tech ventures are undermining the sovereign rights, cultural heritage, and birthright guardianship of Indigenous Pacific peoples who have protected and been sustained by these waters for generations.

But the rush by global superpowers and corporations to seize deep sea minerals has become a critical catalyst for unity across the Pacific. While a few states (such as Nauru, Cook Islands, and Tonga) sponsor exploration contracts, a powerful regional front is forming to resist what local leaders and Indigenous advocates describe as a new wave of resource exploitation.

Key Priorities for the July 2026 ISA Session

The July International Seabed Authority (ISA) Council session represented a critical crossroads for the protection of our global commons. This gathering offered a pivotal opportunity for responsible governments to wrestle control of the timeline away from commercial actors, reject corporate bullying, and prioritise precaution for the common good. Fast- tracking the Mining Code is not a neutral administrative step; it is a monumental, irreversible trigger that opens the floodgates to commercial exploitation. The only way to finalise these regulations this year would be for governments to abandon their legal obligations to protect the marine environment and deny safeguarding global equity. Rushing this process would permanently erode multilateral norms and inadvertently validate lax, unilateral mining pathways.

Governments have the opportunity and tools to diffuse this threat and demonstrate global cooperation for the common good at the International Seabed Authority.

• Governments have the tools to create major barriers to unlawful mining efforts and defend this global commons. The legal obligations of 170+ governments to constrain any companies or nationals from participating in unlawful deep sea mining are clear. This provides the opportunity to shut off access to personnel, offshore engineering, ports, financing, processing, refining, and markets for unlawful mining. A recent legal opinion concludes that Allseas’ May 2026 contract to operate deep sea mining machinery for The Metals Company under unilateral U.S. authorisation triggered the obligation under international and Dutch law for the Dutch government to intervene against this corporate violation.123 Failing to do so would constitute a breach of its binding obligations under UNCLOS.
• Unless the ITLOS Seabed Disputes Chamber decides to order a suspension of the ISA’s inquiry into any contractors involved in unilateral mining, the ISA’s advisory commission and governments should conclude the ISA inquiry into whether any contractors are supporting unilateral efforts, and support punitive consequences for any companies breaching their obligations. It would be untenable for contractors to retain internationally legitimate rights to exploration while simultaneously participating in a violation of international law.
• This common ground across delegations is that the international community does not want mining to start right now, and is not ready to adopt a Mining Code that would open the gates to exploitation applications. Governments can join the 43-strong coalition calling for a moratorium, and show their support for the centrality of science-based decision-making at the Assembly by supporting a resolution tabled by Vanuatu.
• The ISA Council is due to establish a roadmap for the next phase of its work. Progressive governments must stand united to ensure this decision formalises strong pre-conditions before any mining can begin – including having enough scientific knowledge to make informed decisions. Adopting flawed, premature regulations will not stop unilateralism; it will only legitimise bad faith action. Rushing to adopt weak regulations means falling into a trap set by corporate actors who are trying to make a mockery of international law. Whereas agreeing a clear set of conditions for international approval of mining would help the ISA to shield itself from receiving commercial mining applications submitted under false expectations of the Mining Code being ready for adoption.

A line in the sand

As geopolitical tensions rise and the erosion of international norms by a few rogue actors breeds global instability, it is vital that governments act decisively to safeguard the collective interest. There is no better place to demonstrate the power of international cooperation than over the high seas, the waters that connect all continents. This collective strength is already proven, buoyed by the historic success story of the Global Ocean Treaty dedicated to protection, which triumphantly entered into force in January 2026.

The biggest threat to our oceans is not industrial fisheries or deep sea mining machines. It is the infection of doom and gloom that fools us into thinking we are powerless to stop things from getting worse.

But people power and international cooperation are showing their resilience. Despite intense corporate headwinds, the Global Ocean Treaty is now law, and deep sea mining has been successfully held back from the Arctic to the Pacific. We can win big together—even in the toughest of times.

As Greenpeace, we know we can win historic victories for the oceans. People before us in our movement had a harder time and they fought – and won. Putting Antarctica off-limits to mining and drilling during the Cold War.

Stopping deep sea mining through international agreement can signal a shift. It builds on the growing momentum that when Indigenous peoples are included and involved in decision-making, nature and the life-support system it provides for us all win. It’s a site battle where we can agree to limit private greed for the common good.

Governments who believe in the importance of international cooperation, the rule of law and science need to stand up and make progress where they can.

The threat of deep sea mining represents a new potential source of conflict over minerals, environmental degradation, and unilateral efforts to seize resources and territories in breach of international law. This is the last thing the world needs right now.

Published by Greenpeace International, July 2026

The Stakes for the ISA and Deep Sea Mining for 2026 and Beyond

Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.

Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output.

On Wednesday, Britain’s prime minister chaired an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee. These are usually reserved for wars, terrorist attacks, riots and pandemics – but this one was on the extreme heat and drought the UK has been suffering since May. 

With many countries facing far worse with fewer resources than the UK, the issues to be discussed at the UN’s COP17 summit in Mongolia – often overlooked – should be nearer the top of policy-makers minds.

But what is COP17?  What will be decided and announced there over the next two weeks? How does it relate to climate change and how will it help restore the lands on which we all rely for our food, water and other essential resources? Climate Home News explains all below.

What is COP17?

It is the conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The parties are 196 governments, which includes all of the countries recognised by the UN.

The convention was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at the same time as the other two larger “Rio trio” conventions on climate and biodiversity. 

While the climate convention’s COP takes place every year, the UNCCD COP happens only once every two years. COP17 will be its seventeenth gathering.

What is desertification?

It is the process by which land degrades and becomes more like a desert, making it harder – and sometimes impossible – to grow crops or graze livestock there.

Climate change and other human activities – like excessive irrigation which depletes ground water – are making this process worse, causing poverty, hunger, health problems, forced migration and loss of species.

It’s a widespread problem. The UN estimates that half a billion people live within areas that have experienced desertification since the 1980s and that two-fifths of the world’s land is degraded.

What has it got to do with climate change?

The planet’s climate is heating up, mainly due to humans burning fossil fuels, and drying out its land. This kills plants and exposes the soil which can then be blown away by wind and washed away by water.

Without a top layer of soil, plants struggle to grow again and the land gets closer to being a desert. So combating desertification is a way of adapting to climate change.

It is also a way of lessening the pace of climate change, as land degradation releases carbon dioxide previously stored in healthy soils and plants.

What will be negotiated at COP17?

The main issue is what form a new initiative to tackle drought could take. The last COP saw Africa push hard for this to be a protocol – a kind of binding sub-treaty to the UNCCD.

But the US, Europe, Argentina and others argued that would take too long to set up, cost too much and take money away from what can be spent on the ground. They prefer a legally weaker alternative – a framework instead of a protocol. 

Negotiations went late into the last night of talks in Riyadh, with the Saudis hosting informal consultations, but eventually governments had to agree to disagree and pick up talks again in Ulaanbaatar. 

As Earth dries out, countries fail to reach drought agreement

Governments will also negotiate a new policy on protecting rangelands and pastoralists from degradation. Rangelands are areas where animals graze. They cover around half the Earth’s land and include almost everything other than forest, deserts, farms, glaciers and cities. Pastoralists are people who herd animals on these rangelands, often moving from place to place to find fresh pasture. 

COP17 host country Mongolia has a lot of both – and pushed successfully for the UN to declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It is keen to agree a decision at COP17 bringing those issues more to the forefront of the UNCCD.

Negotiators will also debate the UNCCD’s post-2030 strategic framework, which they hope to adopt at COP18 in 2028. Campaign groups like the World Wildlife Fund want a stronger focus on biodiversity and nature-positive food systems.

What will happen when?

The COP will formally open with a ceremony on Monday August 17, followed by opening statements by governments and the adoption of the agenda.

Negotiations will begin, mostly behind closed doors for two weeks until the closing plenaries on Friday August 28.

While talks rumble on in the background, the second week will see senior government representatives including ministers get involved, with a “high-level segment” running from August 24-26.

They will discuss issues like drought resilience, finance and pastoralist communities. This is likely to be when any announcements – of new funding, for instance – are made.

On Monday August 24, there will also be an open dialogue between government officials and civil society members. Here, local practitioners are likely to share stories of how they are helping their communities reverse land degradation. UNCCD prides itself on being a bottom-up convention.

Unlike climate COPs, which often end a day or two over time, UNCCD COPs usually finish on the evening of their last day and – while they have gone late into the night – have never run into the next day.

What else should we watch out for?

At the last COP two years ago, host Saudi Arabia led the creation of an initiative called the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to help 80 of the poorest nations deal with drought.

It received $12 billion in pledges, mainly from Gulf-based development finance institutions. Saudi Arabia is expected to report back on whether these pledges have been delivered and how the money will reach those in need now.

There are also hopes that governments will announce financial support for Mongolia’s Rangelands Flagship Initiative, which aims to mobilise investment in projects to fight land degradation.

Who will preside over COP17?

While the last five and the next two climate COPs have been or will be presided over by men, COP17 will be woman-led with Mongolia’s foreign minister, Battsetseg Batmunkh, as president.

This will also be the first COP for the UNCCD’s new executive director Yasmin Fouad. Before being appointed environment minister in her native Egypt, Fouad was a scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification. She played a key role at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022.

Although Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP presidency is ending, the Gulf power house will likely continue to be influential. It has supported the COP financially as part of the Riyadh-Ulaanbaatar action agenda and will be following up on initiatives announced two years ago.

While Saudi Arabia is often blamed for obstructing progress at climate talks, as a desert nation it is generally thought to have played a constructive role at UNCCD COPs.

What are the negotiating dynamics?

The UNCCD has six main negotiating groups: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and developed donor countries. Governments can also speak in their own capacities.

While divisions between the Global North and Global South do exist at UNCCD COPs, they are not as stark as at climate COPs. The Global South’s umbrella group – the G77 and China – usually only speaks on finance issues, on which developing countries tend to be united.

Civil society groups are present but not as vocal or as confrontational as at climate COPs. There are generally no protests and campaigners tend to try to hold governments accountable more quietly. There are likely to be far fewer journalists than at climate COPs too.

What role will the US play?

While the US has left the UN’s climate convention, it remains in the UNCCD and is expected to bring a delegation of officials from its departments of agriculture and state. It is likely to resist any renewed push from Africa for a drought protocol.

The post Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia?

Helen Phillips’ book, ‘Hum’, is set in a dystopian near future, in a city suffering the effects of climate breakdown and with dire air quality. Robots (the Hums) press advertising messages during conversations, meetings and even as they carry out medical procedures.

The Hums are vehicles for these ad messages, which are often for products like cosmetics, sweets or anything that might be relevant during interactions with humans. This advertising is poorly disguised, and merges with sentiments that lean towards concerns of well-being, convincing people how much better off they’ll be if they make a purchase.

While the novel is futuristic, the insidious way advertising permeates daily life is resonant of how adverts show up in our world today. And these ads are directly contributing to the worsening future climate Phillips describes in her book.

Already by the summer of 2026, Europe had seen a 57% increase in wildfires in just four years with western Europe recording the hottest ever June and July on record. We’re facing droughts and floods, as well as predicted hikes in food costs or even chronic food shortages – and that’s before the expected additional effects of a strong El Niño later this year.

Frequent flying and bigger burgers

A portion of this climate breakdown is fuelled by over-consumption in richer countries, particularly of products that are high carbon – for which advertising can take some of the blame. Research shows that adverts drive citizens to consume about a third more goods and services in general, over and above what they might have purchased.

Yet despite a clear link between promoting high-carbon behaviours and climate breakdown, little advertising regulation exists in the UK. Take frequent flying for instance, one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can partake in.

EasyJet’s latest ad campaign is called “Drop Everything”. It encourages consumers to book cheap flights departing within the next 48 hours for presumably short or weekend getaways. Rather than promoting a specific destination, “Drop Everything” promotes a mindset that encourages indiscriminate consumption of flying. The ads were shown on billboards with clever creative slogans, as well as on digital media and through influencer campaigns.

Overall, flight numbers are increasing. The UK Civil Aviation Authority reported the highest number of UK passengers in the first quarter of 2026 (more than 61 million, breaking previous records for travel between January and March). It seems we’re still not joining the dots between flying and a worsening climate.

And how about meat consumption? Scientists advocate for less meat-eating, especially beef which has the highest carbon footprint of nearly all foods. Yet adverts from McDonald’s proliferate, helping make it one of the highest-volume sellers of fast-food chain beef burgers. In 2024, the outdoor advertising budget for McDonald’s UK rose to £86 million, an increase of 71% on previous years.

Small share for sustainability

While over half of UK ad professionals feel increasingly queasy about their profession and its effects on the climate crisis, the people running the show – the UK trade bodies – prefer to focus on the growth advertising brings.

In the first three months of 2026, they stated that UK advertising spend increased by 9.3%, reaching a total of £11.7 billion for that quarter, fuelling consumption and market growth.

But how many of those adverts actually promote low carbon goods and services? Kantar’s Sustainable Ads Tracker shows the percentage of ads featuring sustainability messaging in 2026 is around 4.3%. That’s woefully low, and much of this is made up of messaging that promotes recycling.

PR firm working for Shell wins COP30 media contract

Additionally, the ad industry continues to happily produce adverts for the large oil and gas corporations that are fuelling climate breakdown. These adverts only narrowly pass the Advertising Standards Authorities’ advertising codes, allowing the continued greenwashing of the world’s most polluting brands.

There is essentially no leadership from the UK trade bodies, likely because they are directly funded by the brands and advertisers themselves. They are essentially ‘ad shushing’ – pushing for indiscriminate growth and directing attention to their sustainability awards, while confusingly denying that adverts drive higher consumption overall.

Let’s ‘un-shush’

Where does this leave us as we are subjected to hundreds, if not thousands, of persuasive advertising messages every day that support high-carbon lifestyles? Most ad professionals are unable to push back against this agenda at work, often due to the threat of job loss. The advertising trade bodies won’t take the lead as they work in service to big brands and advertisers.

NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit

So, who can push for the changes we need? Members of the public.

Through pressuring our city officials and governments, we can force through restrictions, such as the watershed bans on unhealthy foods on TV before 9pm in the UK. Through supporting the efforts of organisations such as Ad Free Cities and others, we can help achieve bans on outdoor advertising for fossil fuels, aviation, meat and even single-use plastics in cities and regions such as Amsterdam, The Hague, Edinburgh, Florence, Uppsala and many more.

If we’re serious about climate change and stopping big global brands pushing their high-carbon products onto us, then advertising restrictions are one of the best ways to achieve this. If we don’t want a world like the one Phillips describes in her book, we need to make our voices heard above the advertising noise.

The post Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles