Trump signs controversial order to boost deep-sea mining industry | Environment News

The Executive Order will help the private mining companies of deep water to access nodules rich in minerals at the bottom of the sea.

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order to expand the controversial but financial practice of deep water mining in an attempt to block the United States access to critical minerals and metals under the seabed.

The order, which Trump signed in private the day of Thors, seeks to boost the mining of American and international waters as part of an impulse to compensate for the sunken control of China of the critical mineral industry.

“The United States has a basic national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in sea science and technology and the mineral resources of the seabed,” Trump said in the order.

The order directs the administration of the United States to accelerate mining permits under the Law of Hard Resources of the 1980 department funds and establish a process for issuing permits along the United States external continental platform.

It also orders the accelerated review of the mining permits of marine beds “in areas beyond the national jurisdiction”, a movement that probably causes friction with the international community.

The White House says that deep water mining will generate billions of metric tons of materials, while adding $ 300 billion and 100,000 jobs to the United States economy during the next decade.

Environmental groups are asking that Allep-sea mining activities are prohibited, warning that industrial operations at the bottom of the ocean could cause loss of irreversible biodiversity.

“The United States government has no right to unilaterally allow an industry to destroy the common heritage of humanity and destroy the deep sea to obtain the benefit of some corporations,” said Arlo Hempill de Greenpeace.

Deep water mining is aimed at resources such as polymetallic nodules of the size of a potato from depths or 4000 to 6,000 meters. The nodules contain critical materials, including manganese, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel, which are used by defense, aerospace, energy and technology industries.

Access to critical minerals has been politicized more and more due to the huge dependence of the industry in China, one of the largest commercial partners in the United States and one of its greatest geopolitical rivals.

Trump’s executive order gives the United States Secretary of Commerce 60 days “to accelerate the process to review and issue marine fund exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond the national jurisdiction.”

The bottom of the sea remains a region of the world that is still relatively unexplored. It has mapped more than the moon than the seabed, of which they run out of mapping.

The UN International Marine Fund Authority has established regulations on deep water mining, but the United States is not a member of the organization and has never ratified its relevant agreements.

According to international law, the United States has the right to deep water mining within its territorial waters at 200 km (124 miles) from the coast. Even so, Trump is also pressing to expand mining to international waters invoking the “dark 1980 law that allows the federal government to issue mining permits from seabed,” according to the New York Times.

The recent deep -waters mining efforts have attacked the island of the American Samoa, an American territory in the Pacific Ocean.

Earlier this month, the Deep Water Mining Company based in California Impossible Metals asked the Trump administration to launch a commercial auction for access to minerals around the American Samoa, whose waters are under the jurisdiction of the United States.