Donald Trump has signed a controversial executive aimed at intensifying deep mining within the United States and international waters.
She faced the move to allow exploration outside its national waters with a condemnation from China, which it said was “violating” international law.
Thursday is the latest version of the US President to try to increase America’s access to the minerals used by the space sectors, green technology and health care.
The depths of the seas contain billions of tons of potatoes in the form of potatoes, called multiple nodules, which are rich in critical minerals such as cobalt and rare land.
The last American executive It was released to “the establishment of the United States as a global leader in exploring responsible minerals.”
This step appears to exceed a long round of United Nations negotiations on international water mining.
Many countries, including China, have been delayed that states agree on how to share resources.
“The US license … violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman.
China dominates the global production of rare land and critical minerals such as cobalt and lehium.
Trump was Frozen from this relative weakness of the United States’ positionAnalysts say.
“We want the United States to advance to China in this area of the ocean, at the bottom of the ocean,” a US official said on Thursday.
To achieve this, it says that the United States will accelerate the process of issuing exploration licenses and recovery permits in its waters and in “areas that exceed the national judicial mandate.”
The administration can mining the depths of the seas can enhance the country’s gross domestic product by 300 billion dollars (225 billion pounds) over a period of 10 years and create 100,000 jobs
The European Union, the United Kingdom and others support this practice until more scientific research is conducted.
Environmental scientists and scientists are concerned that marine species that live in the depths of the seas can be affected by this process.
“Mining in the depths of the seas is a very dangerous endeavor to our surroundings,” said Jeff Wattars of Ocean Conservance, a US -based environmental group.
He added in a statement issued on Friday, “The damage caused by mining in the depths of the seas is not limited to the ocean floor: it will affect the entire column of water, from top to bottom, and everyone and everything depends on it.”
It is not clear how quickly the mining began in the depths of the seas, but one mining company, the mineral company (TMC), is already discussing with the United States government to obtain permits.
Gerard Baron, CEO of TMC, said he hoped to start mining by the end of the year.
Along with others in the mining industry, it opposes the provided environmental claims and argued that the distant area – from 3000 meters to 6000 meters below sea level – has very low concentrations of life.
“Here there are no plants. If we measure the amount of animals [animal life]In the form of biomass, there are about 10 grams per square meter. This is compared to more than 30 kg of biomass, as the world pays more nickel extraction, which is our tropical forests.
A modern paper published by the Museum of Natural History and the National Center for Oceanic Sciences looked at the long -term antiquities of mining in the depths of the seas from a test conducted in the 1970s.
And I concluded Some sedimentary creatures managed to restart the site and recover from the test, but it seems that large animals are no longer.
The scientists concluded that this could have been because there were no other doctrines to live in. It takes multi -metal nodules as minerals are found millions of years to form and therefore cannot be easily replaced.