Environmental groups are urging a moratorium on deep-sea mining ahead of an international meeting in Jamaica where an obscure U.N. body will debate the issue amid fears it could soon authorize the world’s first license to harvest minerals from the ocean floor. More than 20 countries have called for a moratorium or a precautionary pause.
FILE - A rainstorm moves over the Atlantic Ocean after passing through Camden, Maine, at sunset Aug. 1, 2023. Environmental groups on Wednesday Oct. 25, 2025 urged a moratorium on deep sea mining ahead of an international meeting in Jamaica where a U.N. body will debate the issue. ahead of an international meeting in Jamaica where an obscure U.N. body will debate the issue, amid fears it could soon authorize the world’s first license to harvest minerals from the ocean floor.
“Sea mining is one of the key environmental issues of our time, and this is because the deep sea is among the last pristine areas of our planet,” said Sofia Tsenikli, from the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a Netherlands-based alliance of environmental groups. Mining companies say that harvesting minerals from the deep sea instead of land is cheaper and has less of an environmental impact. But scientists and environmental groups argue that less than 1% of the world’s deep seas have been explored, and“It has the potential to destroy Earth’s last wilderness and endanger our largest carbon sink while proving itself neither technical nor financially feasible,” said Bobbi-Jo Dobush from The Ocean Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
Much of the exploration is focused in an area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which spans 1.7 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico. Exploration is occurring at depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet .
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