A little-known organisation is meeting this week in a conference centre in Jamaica. The rules the International Seabed Authority (ISA) are drafting could have immense impact.
That’s because this United Nations body has the power to permit – or deny – mining on the deep seabed, outside any nation’s exclusive economic zones. Boosters say the billions of tonnes of critical minerals like nickel, manganese, copper and cobalt lying in metal-dense nodules on the seabed could unlock faster decarbonisation and avoid supply shortages.
