Unbelievable but not surprising. The US President has signed an Executive Order to fast track deep-sea mining in its own waters and in areas beyond national jurisdiction (The High Seas). 

This is a blatant disregard for rules based order, decades of science, negotiations and advocacy to protect the world’s last wild frontier.

We knew this was coming. The CEO of the company most aggressively pushing to open the ocean to mining has been explicit about being ready and willing to undermine the International Seabed Authority by banding together with the new US administration to begin deep-sea mining.

To be clear, The High Seas belong to all of us. They make up half our planet and they belong to you, to me, to our neighbours and to all living beings. They do not belong to any one nation, and they certainly do not belong to the United States of America or any one rogue profit-grabbing company.

Now, one man and his crony broligarchs want to pillage our shared heritage for their own profit. This cannot be how we write history. We have already lost over two thirds of global wildlife, the climate crisis is here and set to worsen. To unleash a new destructive industry on our only planet is ecocide. If the US has its way, deep-sea mining will trigger a new era of colonialism and seabed grabbing.

What gets destroyed in the deep sea will not return on human time scales, and will have far reaching impacts for the ocean and all of us. Make no mistake the health of our ocean is critical to our own. Now more than ever the world must unite against this madness.

Let our unification be the silver lining. 32 governments, over 60 corporations, dozens of financial institutions, hundreds of civil society groups, many indigenous communities, the fishing industry, one thousand scientists, and millions of concerned citizens have already spoken out in support of a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Together we can stop this!

Join the movement! How?

• Keep sharing this petition,
• If you are a business owner, or run an organisation, institution, cultural centre, community, school, municipality or association, endorse the deep-sea mining declaration today. We will deliver this at the UN Ocean Conference in June.
• Support our work. Without your support we cannot keep fighting for our shared ocean.

Yours truly for the Ocean - Farah Obaidullah, Ocean Advocate, Founder of The Ocean and Us, Women4Oceans and editor of the book The Ocean and Us 💙 🌏 🕊️