Source: The Guardian
Author: Chinedum Uwaegbulam
Frontline environmental group, HOMEF foundation has warned that international waters – known as the “common heritage of kind” – are under a new, imminent, and most deadly threat from the deep sea mining industry.
The warming is coming in the wake of a global meeting by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN agency which has not received much public scrutiny until now, meets in Kingston, Jamaica this week to discuss how to open up the deep sea bed to mining.
In a joint letter to raise alarm over this ultimate threat to oceans with scientists, academics, and non-governmental organizations, Director, HOMEF foundation and Alternative Nobel Prize recipient stated, Nnimmo Bassey, said: “Oceans play a critical role in maintaining life on the planet. However, the ISA continues to ignore the profound lack of scientific understanding of the immediate and long-term ecological costs of digging up the sea floor.
“It is evident that large private and state-owned conglomerates have succeeded in shifting the ISA’s regulatory discussions toward outcomes favourable to corporate-directed industrial development.
“Our joint letter is a call from civil society globally to protect our common heritage,” he said.
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