A United Nations-affiliated body plans to scrutinize whether companies seeking to mine the deep seas for critical minerals are violating a key international treaty and should lose valuable contracts.
It’s a move that could complicate President Donald Trump’s push to unleash mining in international waters without global safeguards in place.
The International Seabed Authority is planning to probe whether private companies are complying with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, a treaty that designates seabed minerals as the “common heritage of mankind,” requires that ISA regulate extraction and bars countries or companies from going it alone.
UNCLOS, which the U.S. has yet to ratify, applies to 168 countries that signed the treaty and the companies they sponsor.
