Trumps drive for ocean bed mining threatens law of the sea [Video]

US President Donald Trump’s move to sidestep global regulations and begin pushing for seabed mining in international waters could pose a wider threat of competing countries claiming sovereignty over the ocean, experts say.

Trump last month signed an executive order to accelerate the permit-granting process for deep-sea mining in domestic and international waters, citing an obscure 1980 US law.

And the Canadian deep-sea mining frontrunner The Metals Company has already filed an application in the United States to conduct commercial mining on the high seas — bypassing the International Seabed Authority (ISA). This is the body entrusted by a United Nations convention with managing the ocean floor outside of national jurisdictions.

Ocean law is largely guided by that accord — the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), first signed in 1982 to prevent “a competitive scramble for sovereign rights over the land underlying the world’s seas …