The UK government may have broken the law by approving the transfer of two deep-sea mining licences for exploration of mineral-rich seabed in the Pacific Ocean to an “opaque” company with ties to a US lobby group, according to Greenpeace.
The campaign group has taken the first step to kick-start a legal challenge over the government’s decision to facilitate the transfer of the permits it sponsors in the Clarion Clipperton Zone to Glomar Minerals following the bankruptcy of their previous holder, a Norwegian firm called Loke Marine Minerals.
The licences, overseen by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body, grant exclusive rights to explore an area of the ocean larger than England for potato-sized polymetallic nodules. These nodules contain minerals such as copper, cobalt and nickel, which are used in both clean energy technologies and defence applications.
No extraction can take place in the Clarion Clipperton Zone until countries agree on a mining code under drawn-out and increasingly contentious ISA negotiations.
Polarised debate
The debate over the nascent industry has grown increasingly polarised since US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to fast-track deep sea mining, including in international waters – a move widely seen as an unilateral measure aimed at circumventing the ISA’s authority.
Marine scientists argue that mining the seabed could cause severe, and likely irreversible, damage to ecosystems by destroying habitats, releasing toxic plumes and creating noise pollution. Over a dozen countries, including the UK, have called for a moratorium on deep sea mining until there is enough scientific evidence to assess its impact.
Greenpeace said the UK government’s sponsorship of the exploration licences now held by Glomar Minerals “flies in the face” of its public position on the practice.
In a letter warning Britain’s business secretary of upcoming legal action if its decision is not reviewed, the environmental group said the government had acted unlawfully by failing to consider cancelling the licences. It argued that Glomar Minerals is effectively controlled by foreign states or nationals, which it claims breaches ISA rules.
The ISA regulations say activities in a license area should be carried out by people or companies that possess the nationality of the country sponsoring the contract, or are effectively controlled by them or their nationals, without giving more specific details. If entities from different states are involved, then each state needs to sponsor the license, according to the rules.
Ties to DC lobby group
Glomar Minerals assumed control of the licences last year after acquiring Loke’s British subsidiary, UK Seabed Resources, which first secured the contracts in 2013 when it was owned by US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Although Glomar Minerals is headquartered in the UK, the company appears to be largely managed by executives and investors based overseas. Its chief executive is Walter Sognnes, a Norwegian energy executive who also led Loke at the time the company filed for bankruptcy.
One of Glomar’s listed directors and principal controllers is Washington-based Raphael Diamond, the founder and executive chairman of Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a US lobby group that brings together military and business leaders. SAFE advocates reducing reliance on foreign supply chains, including for critical minerals, on national security grounds.
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In April 2025, SAFE publicly welcomed Trump’s executive order on deep sea mining, saying “we must make sure we don’t cede access [of seabed nodules] to our adversaries”. In a recent report, the group argued that “the United States should out-compete China to be the first nation in the world to commercialise deep-seabed minerals”.
The US is not a full member of the ISA as it never ratified the UN convention that underpins it and therefore cannot directly sponsor ISA contracts.
“Opaque” ownership
Greenpeace has raised concerns about what it describes as Glomar’s “opaque” corporate structure and funding arrangements. Incorporation documents list the company’s majority shareholder as a firm based in Delaware, a US state known for corporate secrecy laws that do not require public disclosure of owners or directors.
Company filings show that in June last year, Glomar entered into a loan agreement for an undisclosed sum with another Delaware-registered entity, MHG Funding. Under the terms of the agreement, the lender could gain sweeping control of Glomar’s assets, including “all licences”, in the event of a default.
The lender is listed as Louis Mayberg, an American financial investor and philanthropist. A donor to the Democratic Party, Mayberg funded SAFE and served on the group’s board until at least the end of 2024, according to the most recent available records.
Climate Home News had not received a response to questions sent to Glomar, SAFE and Louis Mayberg at the time of publication.
In a December press release announcing the UK government’s decision, Glomar said its priority “remains closing knowledge gaps and contributing to a robust scientific understanding of the deep sea environment”.
US permitting process fast-tracked
As governments vie to secure access to critical minerals, the race to mine the ocean seabed has been heating up, spurred on by the Trump administration and efforts by countries to break their dependence on China.
Japan said this week it had conducted the first test mission to lift seabed mud within its national waters that is rich in rare earths to a scientific ship, soon after China cut off exports to its Asian rival amid a diplomatic row.
Last month, The Metals Company (TMC) – another deep-sea mining hopeful that holds exploration licences under the ISA, which it obtained via Nauru – became the first company to seek approval to collect nodules in the Clarion Clipperton Zone from the US authorities under an accelerated process run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The company’s CEO Gerard Barron told Reuters he hopes to obtain the permit by the end of the year.
The ISA has repeatedly said it has an exclusive mandate to oversee activities in the Pacific Ocean area and any unilateral action would violate international law and undermine ocean governance.
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Greenpeace worries that licences ending up in “the wrong hands” could open the door to “destructive deep sea mining that could harm marine wildlife”.
Erica Finnie, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the “opaque structure” of Glomar makes it hard for the UK government to have full oversight of the exploration licences and the individuals involved.
“The licences should be held by independent scientific bodies with a genuine interest in doing research, as they are in other countries, instead of companies seeking to profit from mining the seabed,” she added.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Department for Business and Trade said it would not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
The post UK government faces legal challenge over deep sea mining permits to “opaque” firm appeared first on Climate Home News.
UK government faces legal challenge over deep sea mining permits to “opaque” firm
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New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to “urge” developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, an intergovernmental policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was “modest”, adding that meeting the doubling target would require “strong growth” of close to 20% in 2025.
More cuts likely
The OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025, but several nations announced cuts to climate finance last year. The most notable was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration but the UK, France, Germany and other wealthy European countries also pared back their contributions.
Joe Thwaites, international finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said developed countries were “not on track” to meet the adaptation funding goal.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said adaptation finance is needed to expand flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems and resilient health services as the world warms, bringing more extreme weather and rising seas. “When that money fails to arrive, people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods – and in the worst cases, their lives,” he warned.
Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 “a drop in the ocean”, considering that the United Nations estimates the annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.
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If confirmed, a failure to meet the goal is likely to further strain relations between developed and developing countries within the UN climate process. A previous pledge to provide $100 billion a year of total climate finance by 2020 was only met two years late, a failure labelled “dismal” by the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and many other Global South diplomats.
Missing that goal would also raise doubts about donor governments’ commitment to meeting their new post-2025 adaptation finance goal. At COP30 last year, governments agreed to urge developed countries to triple adaptation finance – without defining the baseline – by 2035.
African and other developing countries have pointed to lack of funding as a key flaw in ongoing attempts to set indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change.
Speaking to climate ministers from around the world in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Turkish COP31 President Murat Kurum stressed the importance of climate finance. “It is easy to say we support global climate action,” he said, “but promises must be kept.”
He said the COP31 Presidency will use the new Global Implementation Accelerator and recommendations in the Baku-to-Belem roadmap, published last year, to scale up climate finance – and will hold donors accountable for their collective finance goals.
He noted that developed countries should this year submit their first reports showing how they will deliver their “fair share” of the new broader finance goal set at COP29 in 2024, to deliver $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. They are due to report on this once every two years.
Broader climate finance
The OECD data shows that the overall amount of climate finance – including funding for emissions cuts – provided by developed countries grew fast in 2023 before declining in 2024. In contrast, the amount of private finance developed countries say they “mobilised” increased in both 2023 and 2024, pushing the top-line figure to a record high.
While the OECD does not say which countries provided what amounts, data from the ODI Global think-tank suggests that the 2024 cuts to bilateral climate finance were spread broadly among wealthy nations.
Thwaites of NRDC welcomed the fact that overall climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries exceeded $130 billion in both 2023 and 2024. He said that this was “well above earlier projections” and “shows that when rich countries work together, they can over-achieve on climate finance goals”.
But Sehr Raheja, programme officer at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said these figures are “modest” when set against the new $300-billion goal.
“While the headline total figure of climate finance remains alright,” she said, “declining bilateral climate spending raises important questions about the predictability of high-quality, concessional public finance, which has consistently been a key demand of the Global South.”
She also lamented that loans continue to dominate public climate finance and that mobilised private finance is concentrated in middle-income countries and on emissions-reduction measures rather than adaptation projects. “Private capital continues to follow bankability rather than climate vulnerability or need,” she added.
Ritu Bharadwaj, climate finance and resilience researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the figures painted an outdated picture as climate finance has since declined as rich countries shrink their overseas aid budgets and increase spending on defence.
Last month, the OECD published figures showing that international aid – which includes climate finance – fell by nearly a quarter in 2025. The US was responsible for three-quarters of this decline. The OECD projects a further decline in 2026.
With Thursday’s climate finance report, the OECD is “publishing a victory lap for 2023 and 2024 at almost the same moment its own aid statistics show the funding base eroding underneath it,” Bharadwaj said.
The post New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance
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