Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) is an international NGO working to defend our shared natural environment and human rights: ejfoundation.org
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One of the things that we should be learning from the triple planetary crisis is that we cannot continue extracting in the same way that we have done. That’s the definition of insanity.
I am concerned that instead of protecting what we need to protect today, we are destroying a very important ecosystem for humanity, one of the last ecosystems and last areas, pristine areas in the planet that we depend on.
We're seeing from science about severe, irreversible damage that deep-sea mining can cause. Indigenous peoples and the communities that are closer to the ocean will be the ones to be more impacted and first impacted.
The Pacific Ocean has been already subject to a lot of destructive activities, including the nuclear tests, fisheries destruction, now with the impacts of climate change. So, in addition to that, mining the deep sea bed in that area will increase these impacts, perpetuating these systemic inequalities that we're seeing.
There are many alternatives that even industry have highlighted. There are a lot of ways that we can do the transition without destroying the oceans and without, by the way, increasing the destruction of ecosystems. We should have caution and use humanity’s intelligence to find other alternatives for these minerals that today the just transition is needing.
There is a responsibility of all states, of course, to respect, protect, and fulfill all human rights, including the right to a healthy environment. But there is a specific, bigger responsibility of industrial wealthy nations that have contributed the most to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. They have the responsibility to implement a precautionary approach, which means that deep-sea bed mining should be either banned or have a moratorium, so that states have some time, at least, to gather more information to have a final decision. This is something that, as a Special Rapporteur, I definitely recommend to do.
A right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a reminder in law about something that Indigenous peoples have known and that humans should have known: that we’re part of nature, and that we need clean air. We need healthy ecosystems and healthy oceans to live. We cannot continue extracting everything. We have to think about how to repair and restore all ecosystems, including coastal ecosystems and oceans, instead of increasing the damages that humanity already has done.
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) is an international NGO working to defend our shared natural environment and human rights: ejfoundation.org
Subscribe to EJF: youtube.com/channel/UCymOLQE4_vBQBzUKXTBfYwQ
Find us on Twitter: twitter.com/EJFoundation
Facebook: facebook.com/ejfoundation
Instagram: instagram.com/ejfoundation
One of the things that we should be learning from the triple planetary crisis is that we cannot continue extracting in the same way that we have done. That’s the definition of insanity.
I am concerned that instead of protecting what we need to protect today, we are destroying a very important ecosystem for humanity, one of the last ecosystems and last areas, pristine areas in the planet that we depend on.
We're seeing from science about severe, irreversible damage that deep-sea mining can cause. Indigenous peoples and the communities that are closer to the ocean will be the ones to be more impacted and first impacted.
The Pacific Ocean has been already subject to a lot of destructive activities, including the nuclear tests, fisheries destruction, now with the impacts of climate change. So, in addition to that, mining the deep sea bed in that area will increase these impacts, perpetuating these systemic inequalities that we're seeing.
There are many alternatives that even industry have highlighted. There are a lot of ways that we can do the transition without destroying the oceans and without, by the way, increasing the destruction of ecosystems. We should have caution and use humanity’s intelligence to find other alternatives for these minerals that today the just transition is needing.
There is a responsibility of all states, of course, to respect, protect, and fulfill all human rights, including the right to a healthy environment. But there is a specific, bigger responsibility of industrial wealthy nations that have contributed the most to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. They have the responsibility to implement a precautionary approach, which means that deep-sea bed mining should be either banned or have a moratorium, so that states have some time, at least, to gather more information to have a final decision. This is something that, as a Special Rapporteur, I definitely recommend to do.
A right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a reminder in law about something that Indigenous peoples have known and that humans should have known: that we’re part of nature, and that we need clean air. We need healthy ecosystems and healthy oceans to live. We cannot continue extracting everything. We have to think about how to repair and restore all ecosystems, including coastal ecosystems and oceans, instead of increasing the damages that humanity already has done.
