Set to take up office in January 2025

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho has been declared the new Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), having emerged as the winner of last Friday’s (August 2) race for the top administrative position.

The bruising election, which took place on the last day of the ISA’s 29th assembly meeting in Kingston, saw Carvalho polling 79 votes, while her predecessor, 64-year-old Michael Lodge, who served as the ISA’s Secretary-General for two terms, received only 34 votes. The U.N.-mandated ISA, which oversees deep-sea mining activities in international waters, is based in Kingston.

Lodge’s, whose stewardship has been shrouded in controversy, has previously been accused of siding with mining companies, which went against the duty of the ISA secretariat to remain neutral, thereby influencing the direction of the prospective deep-sea mining industry.

With her victory, many are hoping Carvalho’s will change the course of the deep-sea mining industry. She has promised to work to make the ISA more transparent and rebuild trust within the organization.

The first woman and oceanographer to be ISA Secretary General

Carvalho, 50, who currently works as an international civil servant for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will begin her term at the ISA in January 2025. She will be the first woman, first oceanographer, and the first representative from Latin America to serve in this position.

Commercial-scale deep-sea mining has not yet begun anywhere in the world, but mining companies have been pushing for an imminent start of this activity, with Lodge accused of doing more than he should to help this process along.

During his time as Secretary-General between 2016 and 2024, Lodge pushed for the finalization of a mining code, a set of rules that would allow deep-sea mining exploitation to begin. However, this code was not ultimately finished over his tenure.

He has also been accused of advocating for mining companies, which goes against the ISA secretariat’s duty of remaining neutral and keeping its processes and procedures unnecessarily opaque. More recently, he was embroiled in allegations of misusing agency funds.

Repairing trust in the ISA

However, he has refuted all of these allegations. In a previous interview with Mongabay, an American conservation news web portal, Carvalho said that if elected, she would work to make the ISA more transparent and rebuild trust within the organization.

“For me, the mission of the ISA and the leadership of the ISA is to be a trustee — an honest broker that brings decision-makers together, offering space that belongs to the whole of humankind,” she declared, adding, “it should offer transparency of its own procedures, on the decision-making processes, on the management of the budgets — all of this.”

Advocates of deep-sea mining say seabed minerals are needed to fulfill metal shortages and provide materials for renewable energy technologies like electric car batteries. Yet critics say deep-sea minerals are unnecessary for such technologies and that deep-sea mining could irreparably damage the seabed and overall marine environment.

During the recent ISA meetings, Austria, Guatemala, Honduras, Malta, and Tuvalu joined a group of nations calling for a moratorium or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining. There are now 32 countries calling for such measures.