Canada has announced a moratorium on deep-sea mining in both territorial and international waters.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson; Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault confirmed Canada’s position on the last day of a global ocean conservation summit yesterday in Vancouver.

Canada has now joined ranks with nearly a dozen nations calling for a moratorium or pause on deep-sea mining in both domestic and international waters to protect ocean ecosystems.

These include Germany, Spain, Chile, New Zealand and a number of small island nations, such as Fiji and Palau, which are expected to suffer most from any environmental harms if proposed mining in the Pacific gets underway. However, Canada stopped short of calling for an outright ban on deep-sea mining in its own waters or the high seas as France has done.

IMPAC5 leadership forum in focus

The Canadian ministers advised the IMPAC5 global ocean conservation leadership forum that deep-sea mining should only advance if conservation measures are in place to protect the ocean ecosystem. This, in tandem with a rigorous regulatory structure and science-based management and inspections.

At #IMPAC5, Minister @s_guilbeault joined me to announce that Canada is on track to reach our marine conservation targets to conserve 25% of our oceans by 2025!

Here’s Canada’s path to 25 per cent ocean protection: https://t.co/vODQyViB4J pic.twitter.com/07DJznZM0t

— Joyce Murray 梅麗喬 (@JoyceMurray) February 9, 2023

Minister Guilbeault added it is not a foregone conclusion that Canada and the international community will agree to deep-sea mining even if and when regulatory conditions are developed. The issue of deep-sea mining was contentious at IMPAC5 with international scientists, coastal communities and environmental groups calling on Canada to support a ban.

Many ocean experts and discussions at the ocean conference emphasised the need for a more scientific understanding of the deep sea, which hosts a wealth of marine life and habitat that could be harmed or destroyed by the impacts of mining. The ocean is the largest ecosystem on Earth, covering 70 per cent of the planet, but only five per cent of that area has been explored and mapped by humans.

The ocean is also the planet’s greatest carbon sink and ally in the fight against climate change, IMPAC5 participants stressed. They argue that mining would only further stress the marine environment already struggling with a suite of human-caused problems, such as warming waters, increased acidification and pollution.

Canada’s decision celebrated but…

Conservation groups at IMPAC5 celebrated Canada’s decision to curb an imminent and emerging threat to the ocean’s future, particularly in the Pacific where proposed mining projects could begin this summer. Minister Wilkinson told Canada’s National Observer that there isn’t sufficient science and no existing domestic or international legal framework that would allow for mining to take place in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Susanna Fuller, vice president of operations and projects for Oceans North contended, “with its strong commitment to the precautionary approach and concern for the health of the marine environment, Canada’s statement aligns with what scientists have been saying for years: we shouldn’t rush into mining some of the planet’s last intact and least understood ecosystems.”

She added that the deep sea is home to an astonishing abundance of marine life and plays a vital role in regulating the cycle of nutrients and carbon in the ocean.

International ocean conservation groups are urging Canada to be even more ambitious than simply calling for a moratorium.

Deep-sea exploitation critics are nervous about a rapid push by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is responsible for regulating the industry in the high sea, to develop a mining regulatory framework by July.

If a mining code is agreed upon and adopted at the international forum, it could greenlight a global race to secure metals at the expense of the seabed, explained Sofia Tsenikli, mining campaign lead with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. At the upcoming ISA meetings, Canada needs to vote against developing regulations or any other plans that would see commercial-scale deep-sea mining begin.