Greenpeace environmental campaigners this weekend face the prospect of being kicked out of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) meeting currently being held in Jamaica. According to Michael Lodge, ISA secretary general, their protests around an exploration vessel posed “a serious threat … to the marine environment”.
The row is over deep-sea mining. The offended party is the Vancouver-based The Metals Company (TMC), as it lobbies the authority to be allowed to start mining for potato-sized polymetallic nodules that litter the Pacific seabed in their millions in what is called the Clarion-Clipperton zone, lying between Hawaii and Mexico.
TMC complained that Greenpeace activists disrupted one of its research expeditions when they boarded its vessel. Greenpeace campaigner Louisa Casson is indignant: “If Michael Lodge had put as much effort into properly scrutinising deep-sea mining companies and ensuring transparent…
