FROM THE EDITORāS DESK
WorldWise readersā
In a new film due for general release in about a week, Ocean with David Attenborough, the celebrated British broadcaster and nature historian takes viewers on a journey through an underwater world that we, as terrestrial animals, hardly know. Timed with Attenboroughās 99th birthday, the film is set to expose the blue planetās wonder, realities and challenges revealed during his lifetime, which the filmmakers call the great age of ocean discovery.
But now, we may be about to enter a new era of exploitation.
Anita
INSIGHT | views & analysis
Itās a rush for the last untouched frontier.
The flurry of press releases in my inbox signal the busy calendar for ocean protection events, dominated by the UN Ocean Conference coming up on June 9-13 in Nice, southern France.
While thatās happening, and in keeping with the upending developments of the past few weeks, the US administration has thrown a sizeable curveball in that direction.
In the last briefing, we highlighted a piece from Todd Woody for Bloomberg, who reported that while the International Seabed Authority (ISA) negotiates regulations on deep-sea mining, it may be forced to consider and potentially approve mining applications before environmental safeguards are in place.
A few developments since then:
What happenedāThat story was prompted by a Canadian company, Metals Company USA LLC, initiating a process to apply for exploration licences and commercial recovery permits, under US legislation, to harvest critical metals from the ocean floor in international waters. That took the form of requesting a pre-application consultation with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and executives meeting with White House officials. The international waters being targeted lie in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Mexico.
Then, an executive boostāAbout a month later, in late April, US President Trump signed an executive order to speed up the process of issuing exploration and recovery permits along the US coast and in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The order paves the way for the deep-sea mining industry to harvest critical minerals, bypassing international regulations and aiming to challenge Chinaās dominance in the sector.
Disruption to āgold rushāāThe moves are seen as undermining international law and ongoing efforts to regulate activities on the seabed, essentially opening the door to exploitation of untouched ocean floor areas before international rules are agreed. The United States is not a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which governs the ISA. These are developments that could āpave the way for a gold rush in international watersā, Christina Lu writes in Foreign Policy.
The contextāThe ISA has been negotiating deep-sea mining rules for over a decade, with no agreement in sight according to some reports. Those negotiations are due to continue at a forthcoming meeting in July, but itās not clear how close countries are to reaching a deal.
Whatās at stakeāMore than 200 metres below the surface of the sea, the ocean seabed is rich in rocks that contain minerals like nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese. These ācritical mineralsā are in growing demand because they are essential for powering modern technologies including smartphones, solar panels and electric vehicles. But the process of extracting them could be devastating for deep-sea ecosystems and marine species, about which science still knows very little. Some believe the risks for deep-sea life mean mining the seabed shouldnāt be allowed at all. Heeding the concerns, many countries have held back from giving mining permits the go-ahead.
Some reactionsāGovernments and environmentalists were caught off guard by the US administrationās move. China says it violates international law. Condemnations were quick to come in from environmental groups, including The Ocean Conservancy, The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and several experts.
Dialogue Earth has an informative interview with Duncan Currie, a veteran environmental lawyer and long-time observer of negotiations at the ISA, about the announcement and what it means. On the consequences of the US bypasssing the UNās process, he says:
A part of the problem is that it creates chaos. It creates uncertainty. I wouldnāt want to go down the lane of thinking about what will happenābecause it could be quite severe.
Iāll be keeping an eye on the response beyond statements of condemnation. Although the latest moves were shocking to environmentalists and governments, they really are in line with the US administrationās approach to other international affairs, from climate science to territorial conflict. The unapologetic disruption of a familiar diplomatic process puts everyone in unchartered territory, not just in a metaphorical sense: the bottom of the ocean is the worldās last untouched frontier.
LEARN MORE
In an explainer, the World Resources Institute has drawn on its in-house experts to unpack what we know, and what we donāt, about deep-sea mining and its impacts. Looking beyond exploitation of the ocean floor, earlier this year the Institute also signposted the milestone moments that make 2025 a crucial year for progress on ocean protection. And at the Our Ocean Conference which just concluded in Busan, South Korea, it released a report analysing progress made on over 2,600 voluntary commitments from governments, businesses and civil society to advance marine conservation.
IN RELATED NEWS
84% of the world's coral reefs are suffering from the worst bleaching event on record, according to AP News. The incident, caused by warming oceans, began in 2023 and continues with no clear end in sight. Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories āhave been exposed to enough heat to turn corals whiteā, according to The Guardian.
Global offshore oil platforms are among the top ocean polluters according to a research report, Bobby Bascomb writes for Mongabay. Most new oil and gas projects in 2024 were located offshore, where spills can be hard to detect. The biggest sources of pollution include oil leaks, transportation emissions and methane flaring.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
GLOBAL BRIEFING | around the world
In the media spotlight
š¤ WHO member states agreed on the text of a global pandemic treaty in mid-April. After three years of negotiations, the landmark agreement sets out how to prevent and tackle future health crises like the Covid-19 pandemic with collaboration and equitable actions. The treaty is said to give the UN agency a clearer overview of medical supply chains and a right to medical supplies from manufacturers. One of the major sticking points was an article on how drug and vaccine companies share technology and information to developing nations. Still to be decided is a proposed mechanism that enables data on pathogens to be shared quickly with pharmaceutical companies. Get the details from France24, Maria Cheng for the AP, Olivia Le Poidevin for Reuters, Gabriela Galvin for Euronews, Jenny Lei Ravelo for Devex.
š”ļø India and Pakistan are facing dangerous levels of extreme heat. This yearās regional heatwave season has arrived earlier, may last longer, and is expected to test survivability limits as well as the resilience of energy supplies, according to CNN and The Times of India. Forecasts put the expected temperatures close to the all-time global record for April, Ben Noll reports for The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar reports for Science that the country is actually warming more slowly than the global averageāthe why remains a mystery.
š The implications of energy-hungry AI and data centres are getting more airtime. Umair Irfan has a nice report for Vox, which cites estimates that data centre energy demand will at least double and as much as quintuple by 2030. According to BloombergNEF, data centres are on course to make up 8.6% of electricity demand by 2035, more than double from the current 3.5%. The rise is expected to dent the drop of emissions from energy generation this decade. But Bloomberg media is also careful to present the other side of the argument, reporting on how the technology can also help fight climate change. Digital economies expert Alex de Vries says AI is āfundamentally incompatible with environmental sustainabilityā, Megan Crouse reports for Tech Republic.
ā ļø US foreign aid is slowly taking a new form after the shake-up of the past weeks. In late March, the Trump administration revealed plans to close down USAID and merge it into the State Department, with a few remaining programmes managed by different offices, Adva Saldinger and Elissa Miolene report for Devex. Reports continued to touch on the falloutāJennifer Rigby wrote for Reuters on disruption of childhood vaccinations; Irwin Loy writes for The New Humanitarian that aid groups are bowing to pressure and erasing climate change references from their websites; and Dylan Matthews writes for Vox with an explainer of the fallout and why the fight for aid matters.
On how the world can adapt to the new realityāIda Jooste reports for Science that other countries and international institutions canāt really replace the billions in funding lost to the cuts; Charles Kenny writes for The Center For Global Development with an argument for āradical simplificationā to get the most out of shrinking budgets; Ashfaq Zaman argues in Global Policy Journal that Bangladesh and other developing countries need to develop through trade not aid, and learn to value their natural resources; Michelle D. Gavin writes in Think Global Health with observations of African leadersā āquiet responseā.
News highlights
š On development
Indonesia is building a new network of dams in Borneo to power a āgreenā industrial estateārelocating Indigenous communities and cutting into intact rainforest in the process, Abdallah Naem reports for Mongabay. Itās also planning to clear the worldās largest single area of forest to produce sugarcane-derived bioethanol, rice, sugar and other food crops, report Victoria Milko for AP and Cristen Hemingway Jaynes for EcoWatch.
Vietnam is on a road-building spree, a venture that needs massive amounts of sand. That sand is being sucked up by hundreds of boats mining the bottom of the Mekong river and then transporting it across the borderābut at the cost of collapsing river banks and local homes, report Andy Lin and Spe Chen for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Pressure to cut on deforestation associated with beef exports from Brazil is leaving the countryās cattle ranchers struggling to cope with the demands of environmental regulations, Jonathan Watts reports for The Guardian.
The future of food in Africa is being shaped by political wranging on a number of fronts, from lab-grown meat to agroecology, scholars Joeva Rock, Ann Kingiri, and Matthew A. Schnurr write in Africa is a Country.
The Economist reminds us of Africaās demographic advantage, arguing that the migration of African youth will change the world as populations age in other parts of the world.
Tirthankar Roy writes in Aeon magazine about how Kerala went from one of Indiaās poorest states to one of its most prosperous.
š On climate change & energy
As we get closer to the COP30 climate summit, Hannah Alcoseba Fernandez reports for Eco-Business on civil society concerns that the āloss and damageā fund set up in 2022 to help vulnerable nations cope with climate risk is being scaled down.
In our last briefing, we covered Brazilās plan to launch a $125 billion fund to protect tropical forests when it hosts COP30 later this year. Since then, Natasha White reported for Bloomberg that a Brazilian delegation visited London to discuss the fundās design with its sponsors and to meet with potential financial backers. Dialogue Earth has an explainer on the fund, known as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), and how it could work.
Renewable energy is growing worldwide in capacity, generation and economic viability, regardless of the new US administrationās moves to keep supporting fossil fuels, according to reports by Steve Hanley for Clean Technica and by Vox. Pakistan is a case in point: the country has quietly become the worldās largest importer of solar panels, Stuti Mishra reports for the Independent.
Shipping is the first industry to have internationally binding targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, after an agreement reached in mid-April after 10 years of negotiationsābut almost 90% of excess emissions will be exempt from fines, one of the weaknesses that has drawn criticism, according to reports by Tortoise and Carbon Brief.
Global warming is leading to more frequent āthirstwavesāābouts of hot, dry weather that dry up soils and cause problems for farmers, according to research reported by Yale E360. The amount of water stored on land has declined so much that the changes are probably irreversible, Kasha Patel reports for The Washington Post.
Women farmers in Sri Lanka are migrating to the Middle East for work as flooding and drought destroy crops and income, Dimuthu Attanayake writes in Foreign Policy.
Global supplies of blood are being threatened by climate change, as extreme weather events disrupt efforts to collect, test, transport and store the vital health resources, Karoline Kan reports for Bloomberg based on a study in The Lancet Planetary Health.
Views of note
š” The concept of climate resilience is actually āa dangerous illusionā, Peter Sutoris argues in an opinion for Undark magazine that challenges the idea of relying on adaptation as a response.
āIf richer countries adhered to the same logic theyāve advocated globally, theyād now openly accept retreat from their own lands. Yet this conversation remains taboo among wealthy elites. Instead, adaptation has become a tool to manage and postpone politically uncomfortable realities rather than confront the deeper roots of environmental breakdown.ā
š” The carbon-centric narrative thatās at the centre of climate action is distracting from the root causes of the problem, Paul Hawken argues in an interview for Mongabay.
āWe have to create a climate movement that is actually the human movement. And the human movement is humans that are not separate and distinct from nature.ā
š For a position along these lines, check out the work of Rob Lewis, who publishes The Climate According to Life here on Substack and recently wrote about how flooding in Brazilās Porto Allegre and Spainās Valencia āhelps us see how ubiquitous the link is between land use and climatic extremes and raises the question of why it is not given more attentionā.
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PLUS | in other editions
UPDATE | from the network
Mercy Corps Ventures has a Call for Proposals on Innovative Tech for Water Security, through which itās committed to disbursing a total of up to $1million to test first-of-a-kind solutions that enhance climate resilience for vulnerable communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This third call from the organisation focuses on water security, looking for tech-based innovative solutions that improve water efficiency, access, conservation, and safety. Selected partners will receive up to $50,000 each equity-free, along with mentorship, impact measurement support, access to partnership opportunities, knowledge exchange, and brand exposure. Closing 2 Mayāget the details here: Call for Proposals: Innovative Tech for Water Security
The Earthna Prize initiative has announced four prize winners during the second edition of its Summit which took place from April 22-23 in Doha, Qatar. The winners were selected from 12 finalists shortlisted out of 400 applications from more than 100 countries. They are: Farmer Tantoh Foundation, a water conservation initiative in Cameroon; Seeds of Change Initiative by Blooming World International, a Kenyan initiative that offers training on agricultural practices; Thriving Fisheries, Thriving Oceans by Blue Ventures, a global initiative supporting coastal communities to rebuild traditional fisheries; and FundaciĆ³n āSumaj Kawsay by Wuasikamas ĆconeĆŖrĆ£, an initiative that draws on Indigenous knowledge in Colombian communities to reduce negative climate impacts on biodiversity.
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Created and edited by Anita Makriājournalist/writer, producer and editorial adviser covering global development and science in society. I also help selected organisations with compatible values to strengthen their media work. LinkedInĀ | Instagram | Email