Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Deep Sea Mining: Time for a leadership change

Transcript

Deep Sea Mining: Time for a leadership change · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
The big topic in the ocean today is deep sea mining.
0:04
And at the head of it is the leadership of the International Seabed
0:08
Authority, the ISA. And there's been somebody who's
0:11
been in charge for quite some time who's been quite controversial
0:16
in many circles. So is it time for a
0:19
leadership change that will take deep sea mining into the direction where
0:22
most people want it to go? and that is stay at
0:25
a moratorium. We're gonna find out on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
0:28
podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody,
0:35
welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. This
0:38
is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up
0:42
for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking
0:45
action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about deep
0:49
sea mining. This is something that, it's a topic that we've been
0:53
talking about for quite some time here on the podcast, it's been in
0:56
the news, and the reason why it's been in the news is there was a recent meeting,
0:59
a summer meeting of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston,
1:03
Jamaica, occurred in July, and there were
1:07
some developments, some good developments that we've seen, and
1:10
probably some not so good developments that we've seen. The big development was
1:14
that we saw more and more people, or more and more countries,
1:18
add their voice to saying no to deep sea mining. So currently, there's
1:22
just different categories for that. So currently the moratorium
1:26
and the alliance is Palau, Fiji, Samoa,
1:30
and the federal states of Micronesia. The precautionary
1:34
pause are countries including Chile,
1:38
Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Germany, Panama, Vanuatu,
1:43
Dominican Republic, Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Finland,
1:46
Portugal, Monaco, Kingdom of Denmark, Greece,
1:51
Malta, Honduras, Tuvalu, Guatemala,
1:55
and Austria. And then the moratorium is
1:59
New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, UK. Mexico
2:04
and Peru and then a fall all-out ban is
2:07
France So 32 countries say no in one
2:10
way or another to deep-sea mining now. We have seen some
2:14
countries increase their Interest and
2:17
increase their action towards deep-sea mining. We've
2:21
seen Norway increase. There's Denmark I believe they started
2:24
to explore they want to do some more quote-unquote research
2:29
and it's it's a really interesting thing that's happening because
2:34
This often happens, we have the International Seabed Authority, which
2:38
is there to have essentially two functions, right?
2:42
It's to, you know, basically it
2:45
has two mandates. So it's to authorize and control mining,
2:50
as well as for the common heritage of
2:53
all mankind, and to protect the marine environment from
2:57
harmful impacts. that's really interesting those
3:01
are two almost a what people can argue opposing men
3:04
mandates don't
3:08
really fit and it reminds me of here
3:11
in canada where i live out in bc and
3:15
even just uh... federally the department of fisheries and
3:19
oceans or fisheries notions canada and i think it's climate change
3:22
a coast guard i think so i forget what the names are now But Fisheries
3:25
and Oceans, DFO, essentially in Canada, the federal government, has
3:29
the mandate for aquaculture to promote aquaculture, but also
3:33
to keep the marine environment healthy. Those
3:36
are two mandates that some could argue don't really go
3:40
hand in hand. Others can argue that it does. But where the
3:43
controversy came in Canada was that when it was supposed to
3:46
be testing for diseases within aquaculture facilities,
3:51
it presented studies that said, no, we don't think that
3:54
these studies are saying that there's a
3:58
significant problem with parasites and
4:02
diseases and viruses within the aquaculture fish
4:06
population to the point where it's affecting the wild salmon populations.
4:11
OK, well, sure, DFO does some great work.
4:14
There's no doubt about it. I used to work for DFO. I know firsthand some
4:17
of the studies that they've done across the
4:21
country have been fantastic. But how can you present
4:25
a study that's from the government, not necessarily in all
4:28
the time that are in primary journals, and
4:32
you put out a technical report uh... saying you
4:35
know something that that you know your mandate kind of goes
4:39
against you try to protect the environment but also try to promote aquaculture and
4:42
this is controversial just as i'm saying this i can hear the arguments
4:46
happen was dfo their scientists they present the
4:49
science is up to you know that the policy makers to do
4:52
the interpretation and i get that But just in
4:56
the eyes of the public, the eyes of conservationists, the
5:00
eyes of people who are involved in aquaculture, they have very different
5:04
approaches and outlooks on these two what
5:07
seems to be opposing mandates. And it's the same thing
5:11
with the International Seabed Authority, the ISA. When
5:14
you have a mandate to, one, to authorize and
5:17
control mining for the common heritage of all mankind, and
5:21
to protect marine environment from harmful impacts. Now, you
5:25
know, looking at that first mandate, you're looking at, hey, look, our
5:29
planet's in the crapper. We have greenhouse gases, we have climate change. We
5:33
need to do something to change it. A lot of significant portion of
5:37
greenhouse gases is produced not only by the fossil fuel industry, but also by
5:40
gas powered vehicles, right? And so when you have gas powered
5:44
vehicles, you're always emitting some sort of greenhouse gas,
5:47
whether it be methane, whether it be carbon dioxide, whether it be something else that
5:51
contributes to climate change. So the more cars, the more gas powered vehicles
5:54
we have on the road, the more
5:57
we have climate change. As long as we keep selling gas-powered cars, we're
6:01
not going to clean up the planet from these CO2 and
6:05
methane gases from leaking out into the environment and
6:09
contributing more to climate change. But if we put in electric vehicles,
6:13
there's no emissions in the actual vehicle itself. One
6:17
can argue that there is in the making of the battery and so forth. But
6:21
when you look at the overall, when you compare the gas-powered vehicle to
6:24
the electric vehicle, you're looking at overall, there's no emissions
6:28
when you actually use the vehicle, of an electric vehicle. And
6:31
so there's a benefit there. You're taking away the greenhouse gases that
6:34
are contributing to climate change when you're driving
6:39
and the actual act of driving an electric vehicle. So
6:42
it's better. Now here's the problem, to make the batteries that are
6:45
now the batteries, you need specific metals, cobalt,
6:49
nickel, manganese, and so forth. You can find those
6:53
in mines on land, but there are serious problems with
6:56
the mines, where they are, how they're being run,
7:00
the human rights violations that are happening there, so there's a
7:03
lot of pressure to get the metals from elsewhere. And
7:06
there's metals in these small little nodules I talked about
7:10
last episode, which if you haven't seen it or you haven't listened to
7:13
it, go back to the app after this episode, go back to the last episode. You
7:17
can take a look about talking about dark oxygen, how these
7:20
nodules produce potentially oxygen or help produce oxygen
7:24
in the deep sea. here we're in a situation where it's like hey
7:27
there are these nodules that have these metals that can be easily mined or
7:31
not easily but mined in the deep sea we need to take it
7:34
we know we need to take these metals and produce those metals so
7:37
that we can make these batteries here are the couple problems with
7:41
that one we don't know the damage we're going to do to
7:45
deep sea right deep sea mining it's not going to be
7:48
easy it's not going to be it's something with the deep sea we don't really understand
7:52
and i take you back to the deep sea horizon the leak that happened there
7:56
how detrimental it was to the gulf of mexico and to the people other
8:00
people who use the gulf of mexico for fishing for tourism
8:03
and so forth how bad that was and how bad it still is
8:07
in in some terms to the poisoning of the environment
8:10
and the water quality and the still the ramifications that we're paying the
8:14
consequences that we're paying for it as we speak and that's been what 10 20 or
8:18
10 to 15 years almost since it happened uh so it's
8:22
it's a problem right we need to ensure that we are
8:26
we understand the deep sea better before we start messing around with
8:29
it and especially now with this dark oxygen thing
8:33
that we've we've discovered and need more research on
8:37
is there is actual oxygen being produced in the
8:40
deep sea in the dark And it's really thought
8:43
to be done by these nodules, because they increase the voltage that
8:47
allows the separation of oxygen from
8:51
water. So there's more oxygen in the deep sea than we originally
8:54
thought. We thought that it would be decreasing, but it's actually increasing in some spots.
8:58
And then the biodiversity increases in those spots. So more research needs to
9:01
be done there. So we'd almost say, hey, this moratorium or this precautionary pause
9:05
that some of these countries are looking for, that might be a good idea at
9:09
this point. The ISA continues to
9:12
push so that we start to explore and start to do more
9:15
quote unquote research to see, hey, is this actually viable? Can
9:19
we take out enough nodules and will it be profitable for
9:22
those companies to actually do it? Now, with that said,
9:26
with this push for these for these mandates, for
9:29
these two mandates, one authorized and control mining for
9:33
the common good, a common heritage of all mankind. and to
9:36
protect the marine environment from harmful impacts, is really run
9:40
by this ISA, but really run by the leader of this
9:43
ISA. And for the longest time, the
9:47
leader has been a British lawyer. I'm looking
9:50
at the article for his name. It's Lodge. I'm
9:54
trying to see what his full name is. and
10:17
And so there's a battle for this leadership. And the reason why
10:21
is that a lot of people have said that trust is
10:24
broken and leadership is missing. And this is Leticia Carvalho,
10:28
who is sponsored by the Brazilian government. And
10:32
she's here to say, hey, I'm running for the leadership for this because the trust is
10:35
broken and leadership is missing. uh... later than
10:39
this is the you know what the i say they're gonna be voting for this uh...
10:42
for this leader uh... who's gonna be it's gonna be facing critical
10:46
votes that could impact the nascent industry for years
10:50
to come so who will be the next leader So,
10:53
you know, right now the battle for leadership might be, you
10:57
know, might sound like it to the average person, like, you know,
11:00
a remote technical concern, but the election of the
11:03
authority secretary, according to this article in the Guardian, General, comes
11:07
at a pivotal moment
11:12
for the deep sea mining and therefore the future of the world's oceans. The
11:17
cause for pause on exploitation of the seabed
11:21
are intensifying. What
11:36
happens in the movies when you don't listen to scientists? Bad
11:40
stuff happens. And we're already seeing it in real life with climate
11:43
change. When scientists were talking about 30, 40 years ago, 50 years
11:47
ago, now we're not listening. And look
11:50
at the situation we're in now. We're now considering deep sea mining to help with
11:54
climate change, which could further destroy the planet or hurt the planet.
11:58
Now, the ISA, just to give a little background, is governed by 168 member states plus the
12:01
European Union. So
12:06
it has those two mandates, and so during Lodge's
12:09
eight year tenure, he has been accused of
12:13
closeness to the mining industry, overstepping his neutral
12:16
role, and of presiding over an authority that
12:20
lacks transparency. And so a New York Times piece
12:24
published earlier this month also accused him of pushing countries to accelerate
12:27
the start of deep sea mining. Of course, he denies those claims.
12:31
Now, Cavallo, a Brazilian oceanographer and
12:34
international diplomat, says it is time For
12:38
meaningful transformation at the Seabed Authority, the current deep divide
12:42
of views among the state parties in the Council
12:45
is heavily due to the lack of trust and leadership on top of whatever
12:49
scientific gaps we may have or asymmetry of
12:53
knowledge between the members. the problem. not
13:14
mad at, to say, hey, look, there are some serious concerns that some
13:17
very smart people and accomplished people are considering. And
13:22
there's also the mining companies who are like, hey, we need to get on this right
13:25
now. We've invested a ton of money into exploring the
13:28
deep sea to get deep sea mining. We wanna make sure
13:32
that we can mine at some point soon because time
13:35
is money at this point. And they wanna get into production as soon
13:39
as possible. So, so far, you
13:43
know, in terms of contracts, the authority has issued 31 exploration
13:47
contracts sponsored by 14 nations in an area covering
13:51
about 1.5 square kilometers of the world's seabed,
13:55
mostly in the equatorial Pacific between Hawaii and
13:58
Mexico. And these also, these areas, just
14:02
to let you know, have been explored in some cases in
14:05
certain areas, and they're very, very, very
14:09
diverse when you're looking at the actual seabed.
14:13
They're very diverse in animals. These contracts with
14:17
countries including China, Russia, South Korea, India,
14:21
Britain, France, Poland, Brazil, Japan, Jamaica, and
14:24
Belgium allow exploration of the seabed but not commercial mining,
14:27
so just exploration. No exploitation contracts
14:31
which would permit mining to go ahead have been issued yet, but
14:35
efforts by industry in some states have accelerated the
14:39
race to mine. So there are some people who are trying to get ahead and
14:42
seeing what they can do. One firm called the
14:45
Metals Company, TMC, based in Canada, I'm not
14:50
happy about that. And partnered with the Pacific states of Nauru and
14:54
Tonga and Kiribati has said it will apply for
14:57
permission to mine later this year before
15:01
rules and regulations are likely to be in place. Now, here's the problem right
15:04
there in that sentence. Before rules and regulations are in place, they
15:08
want to mine for commercial purposes. right before
15:12
the rules and regulations are in place. This is the problem when we start to move
15:15
forward on something that's developed. It takes time to understand the
15:19
environment that you're going to exploit. Essentially,
15:23
you're going to be digging up on the surface or
15:26
the seabed, and you're going to be moving things around. We
15:30
need to know what the effects are going to be in that. And I
15:33
just don't know if we're going to be able to find out enough information before this goes. And now
15:37
they want to move before the rules and regulations are in place? That
15:41
seems a little bit presumptive there. I just don't like
15:44
the fact that this is something that, you know... we need
15:48
to go. So Cavallo, who's running for this leadership, claims it is
15:51
Lodge's alleged close relationship with the company that
15:54
is the problem. Trust she claims
15:58
began to ebb away in 2018 after
16:01
the Secretary General appeared in a video wearing a hard hat with
16:04
the Deep Green logo on it. Deep Green is the
16:07
former name of the metals company. What is intriguing is
16:11
the leadership of multilateral of
16:14
a multilateral organization embracing one company's demands, pushing
16:19
it into the ISA's council's process to develop mining
16:23
code," she says. So that's the problem, right? So you're having this leader
16:27
who's like, seems to be pushing what's being said by this company saying,
16:31
hey, look, this is what we need to do, but we don't even have rules and regulations
16:34
yet. We don't even understand what the problem is. We haven't even explored the
16:38
deep sea to the point where we know what's gonna happen. I mean, we just
16:41
found out about dark oxygen. We just found out about it. I
16:44
can't tell you enough how big this discovery
16:48
is, how big it is to the deep sea and our
16:52
understanding of the animals that are into the deep sea. At this point, we
16:55
were looking at hydrothermal vents and how animals are surviving in
16:59
really high temperatures and under sulfur conditions, sulfuric acid
17:03
conditions. It's crazy to see that happening. Now we
17:06
know we have areas where there's pockets of increased oxygen. It's
17:10
insane. So she goes on to say, Cavalli goes on to say, there
17:13
is a problem with being seen to be too close to a company that is
17:16
driven by results for its investors. Again,
17:20
see that conflict of interest. ISA is a regulatory body with
17:24
a dual mandate, determining the rules and procedures for deep sea mining while
17:27
protecting the deep sea ecosystems. That means you would think that
17:31
there is a precautionary approach that needs to be taken, right? A
17:34
precautionary approach. But that doesn't seem to be happening. It
17:38
seems like we are continuing to move forward without
17:41
saying, hey, look, this is not really good.
17:45
We need to make sure that we're not just
17:48
doing it for investors. We're doing this to protect the ocean. This is going to
17:51
have much more consequences to the
17:55
world than it is for these investors. So I think it's really
17:58
important now Cavallo has worked in the as a regulator in
18:01
the Brazil's oil industry Which is really interesting and she
18:05
believes the rules governing deep-sea mining will take time and that
18:08
no mining application should be approved before
18:12
they are Complicated before they're completed now look I'm
18:16
biased already, but I like Cavallo. I like the fact
18:20
that she's taking a precautionary approach. I hope she gets
18:23
put into power because this is gonna be something that
18:27
will be needed, right? And we know Kiribati
18:31
is backing Lodge in getting the leadership again.
18:36
And we know Kiribati is one of the countries that wants to start mining.
18:40
So right then and there, there's a problem. Right.
18:43
So you're backed by this country, but they want to
18:46
start commercial mining. You have been accused of being too
18:50
close to mining companies wearing their hard hats in videos saying,
18:54
hey, we need to start deep sea mining. But you're also moving
18:58
forward with some of the things are trying to push and accelerate deep
19:01
sea mining aspiration and commercial deep sea mining. I'm
19:05
sure what goes along with that. without even
19:08
having rules and regulations in place. This makes no sense whatsoever.
19:13
And just judging based on what's happened in the past in terms
19:16
of how the meetings have gone in Kingston, how hotels
19:20
have been switched and how, you know, observing nonprofit organizations
19:24
and experts have been put in different rooms so that delegates have to
19:28
move rooms or call the people who they need to
19:32
you know, who they need to confide in
19:35
to be like, hey, what's going on here? This is what this country is saying that
19:39
we need to do. They want to go ahead with deep sea mining. What's the problem? Where
19:42
are the risks? All this kind of stuff. They were in a different room
19:46
and they weren't even allowed to go into the room where the negotiations were happening.
19:51
It doesn't provide a lot of transparency. It doesn't allow for critique.
19:56
It doesn't allow for transparency. It's sketchy. It's
19:59
sketchy at best. And that's not good. You want this
20:02
process, you know, if there is going to be deep sea mining, which
20:06
I don't believe there should be, but if there is going to be deep sea mining, you
20:09
want to make sure that the process is transparent. You want to make sure that the rules and
20:12
regulations are not only going to be put in place, you know, that
20:16
are going to be more in the cautionary approach, but you want to make sure that they're enforced. And
20:21
that's a lot of work to put in place. It's a lot of
20:24
work to put in place. So, I think it'll be interesting to
20:27
see, you know, where everything is
20:31
going to go. Lodge did not interview for this
20:35
article, so we didn't really get, you know, his side
20:38
on this, but it seems like Carvalho is somebody who
20:42
is willing to be transparent, somebody who is willing to
20:46
keep the ocean's health in mind, but
20:50
still you know, be able to put those rules and regulations in place to
20:53
mine. I mean, I think it's inevitable that deep sea mining is going to
20:56
happen, but how it's going to happen is a very important. It's
21:01
a very important process. We need to make sure we're doing it
21:04
properly. And we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can to
21:07
protect the deep sea, because we know nothing about the deep sea. We know very, very
21:10
little about the deep sea. And so discoveries like we
21:14
talked about in the last episode with the dark oxygen, that's going
21:17
to be something that needs to be explored more. And we need to make sure
21:20
that we know more about it before we make any crazy claims
21:24
that we need to do some deep sea mining. So that's it for me
21:28
today. I would love to hear your point of view. Who do
21:31
you think should get into power? Do you think it should
21:34
be Carvalho or do you think it should be Lodge? I would love to know what
21:38
you think. If you're on Spotify, listening to this on Spotify, I'll put a
21:41
poll and you tell me which ones you think, you tell me which person
21:44
you think should be going in. And yeah, that's
21:48
it. If you want to leave a comment on the YouTube video,
21:52
you can do that because I'm doing video podcasting now on Spotify and on
21:55
YouTube, but also still doing the audio thing. So look
21:58
me up on Apple, look me up on Spotify, look me
22:02
up on Overcast or whatever app you love to
22:05
listen to on your podcast. I will be there. And if I'm not, let me
22:08
know and I will try and get on it. I'm trying to be on every podcast
22:12
app that I know that is available. But also, if you want to get
22:15
a hold of me, you can do so by DMing me at HowToProtectTheOcean
22:20
on Instagram. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. And
22:23
I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to
22:26
Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy conservation.