President Donald Trump wants federal agencies to submit quick mining requests in the depths of the seas in an attempt to make the United States a global leader in the emerging industry.
Trump issued an executive on Thursday announcing that American policy includes “the creation of a strong local supply chain for critical minerals derived from sea bottom resources to support economic growth, industrial materials, and military alert.” He described the mining at the sea floor as the necessity of the economic and national security necessary to confront China.
“Our nation must take immediate measures to accelerate the responsible development of mineral resources at the sea floor, measure the nation’s donations of minerals at the sea floor, stimulate the American leadership in its associated extraction and processing techniques, and ensure safe supply chains of the defense sectors, infrastructure and energy.” Executive order He says.
Increasingly, mining companies were keen to scrape the ocean bottom CobaltManjiniz, Nickel And other minerals that can help make batteries for mobile phones and electric cars. But scientists have warned that this process can change the sea bottom in an irreparable way, killing very rare naval creatures that have not been called or studied, and depending on how to transport minerals into the surface – it risks the introduction of minerals into fish fisheries on which many Pacific peoples depend.
This aims to start the industry led by the small Pacific countries such as Nauu, which seeks economic growth, but it faces growth A response from the indigenous defenders Those who fear the permanent consequences of extracting the deep sea.
“This extraction has not been considered in mind about resource care,” said Solomon Kahohalala, a Hawaiian citizen, an audio critic for the potential manufacture of the sea floor at the United Nations. On Thursday afternoon, he read the executive order while attending The Permanent Forum of the United Nations on the issues of the indigenous population In New York City, he said that he surprised the language that emphasizes the dominance of the United States, which chanted a similar language in another The executive order issued last week The opening of the Pacific Ocean islands, the national heritage, the national marine fishing for commercial fish.
“It seems that there is no vision of what we are doing in the long run,” he said. “He does not talk about what we look forward to to care for resources for generations that have not yet been born. This is a completely different perspective that I carry as an original person.”
Specifically, Trump wants the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Interior to reach an urgent operation to approve mining requests at the sea floor over the next 60 days. The request coincides with mining companies that express their interest in applying for permits through these agencies during the past few weeks.
Last month, Canada -based metal company Declare I planned to submit an application to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the US Department of Commerce, to remove the sea floor in international waters through the solid metal resources law at the sea floor of 1980. Then last week, the impossible mineral company announced that it had it. Present A request to the Ocean Energy Management Office, which is under the supervision of the US Department of Interior, was asked to rent part of the sea floor near the American Samoa through the 1953 law called the Law of the Foreign Land of the Continental.
Both companies have transformed their strategies to search for ways to start commercial mining after they were tired of delaying the United Nations Sea Football Authority, which is in the midst of a process over the years to reach regulations to govern the new industry. Mining companies spent years in submitting inputs on the proposed bases, along with environmental advocates and indigenous populations such as kahoʻohahahala.
Trump’s executive order also calls on federal agencies to write a report on mining opportunities in the depths of the seas inside American waters and international waters, and to create a plan to draw a map of priority areas for mineral extraction at the sea floor. Among the other directives, the executive order calls for a report “about the feasibility of an international mechanism to exchange benefits to extract mineral resources at the sea floor” in international waters.
The Metal Company announced last month that it will exceed the United Nations process for requesting approval of mining from the United States Reaction Of the United Nations and environmental groups. The non -profit center of the environment for biological diversity said in a press statement on Thursday that the executive order “contradicts the efforts made by the global community to adopt binding regulations that give priority to environmental protection.”
“The deep ocean belongs to everyone and protects it is the global duty of humanity,” said Emily Jeffrez, a prominent lawyer at the center. “The sea floor environment is not a platform for” America first. ”
