At least 40 killed in weekend US tornadoes


By AFP
March 17, 2025


A handout image released by the Missouri State Highway Patrol on March 15 shows a damaged marina on Clearwater Lake near Piedmont, Missouri

 - Copyright Missouri State Highway Patrol/AFP Handout

At least 40 people were killed and dozens more injured by tornadoes and violent storms that ravaged the central and southern United States at the weekend, local authorities said.

Local news channels across the affected region showed video of roofs torn off homes, trees felled, and trucks overturned by high winds.

Eight people died in Kansas in a crash involving more than 50 vehicles, caused by low visibility during a “severe dust storm”, local police said.

In Oklahoma, four people were killed as wildfires and strong winds swept across the state, the local emergency management department said.

“We are actively monitoring the severe tornadoes and storms that have impacted many States across the South and Midwest,” President Donald Trump posted Sunday on Truth Social.

He said National Guard troops were deployed in Arkansas, where officials said three people had died and 32 had been injured in the storm.

“The damage is overwhelming,” Missouri governor Mike Kehoe said in a statement after visiting some of the hardest-hit areas in that state.

“Homes and businesses have been destroyed, entire communities are without power, and the road to recovery will not be easy.”

Earlier, the Missouri State Highway Patrol confirmed 12 storm-related fatalities and shared images of boats piled on top of one another at a marina destroyed by the weather.

In Texas, local authorities said four people had died in vehicle accidents linked to dust storms and fires that reduced visibility on the roads.

The United States saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record last year with nearly 1,800, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), trailing only 2004.

Peruvian fisherman saved after three months stranded at sea


By AFP
March 15, 2025


Maximo Napa was shocked but in good physical condition after being rescued, an official with Peru's navy said - Copyright PERUVIAN NAVY/AFP Handout

A Peruvian fisherman was found alive after drifting at sea for 94 days, a navy official said Saturday, as he was discharged from hospital following his ordeal.

Maximo Napa, 61, was rescued in his small fishing boat on Tuesday after being spotted by an Ecuadoran vessel off the coast of Chimbote in northern Peru.

He told local media in a tearful interview that he survived at sea by eating cockroaches, birds and a turtle.

“I didn’t want to die, for my mother. I have a two-month-old granddaughter — I clung to that. Every day I thought about my mother,” Napa said.

On Saturday, he was discharged from hospital in the coastal city of Paita.

“Mr Napa arrived in good physical condition. He could walk, wash himself. Shocked, but in good physical condition,” said Peruvian Navy port captain Jorge Gonzalez.

The fisherman had set sail on December 7 from the port of San Juan de Marcona but bad weather conditions and the current caused him to lose course.

His small boat, which had no radio beacon, ended up on the high seas.

“It is a miracle that my father has been found,” his daughter Ines Napa told the RPP radio station.

“We, as a family, never gave up hope of finding him.”

ECOCIDE

Oil spill in Ecuador river brings emergency declaration

By AFP
March 15, 2025


This handout picture from the Ecuadoran municipality of Esmeraldas shows the effects of the oil spill in the Esmeraldas River - Copyright POOL/AFP JULIAN SIMMONDS

An oil spill in northwestern Ecuador has turned a river black, prompting authorities to declare an environmental emergency amid “unprecedented” damage and to order residents to ration drinking water, officials said.

The spill, believed caused when a landslide ruptured a major oil pipeline, has turned waters black in a section of the Esmeraldas River, in the province of the same name.

The Emergency Operations Committee in the provincial capital, also called Esmeraldas, declared the environmental emergency.

Vilko Villacis, mayor of the city of more than 200,000 inhabitants, said the leak had caused “unprecedented” damages. His office halted the diversion of river water to an aqueduct supplying the city, and urged citizens to ration water.

On Friday, state-owned Petroecuador said it was working to address the emergency at the pipeline, part of the Trans-Ecuadoran Pipeline System (SOTE) which transports crude oil from the Amazon.

The company has not estimated the volume of oil spilled.

Ecuador last year produced 475,000 barrels of crude a day, exporting 72 percent of the total.

The SOTE is the most used pipeline system in the country, with the capacity to transport 360,000 barrels per day on the 500-kilometer (310-mile) journey from the Amazon to the Pacific coast.

Carbon capture industry tweaks message for the Trump era


By AFP
March 15, 2025


Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub has championed the use of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery - Copyright AFP/File SAUL LOEB

John BIERS

Backers of carbon capture and storage are emphasizing compatibility with President Trump’s energy development goals as they seek to protect hard-won US policies from the administration’s climate chopping block.

At the CERA Week energy conference this week, supporters of CCS, a climate mitigation strategy long favored by oil companies, described the industry as poised for potentially significant growth.

But that outcome rests on the survival of a key CCS tax credit updated most recently in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, a signature Joe Biden climate law frequently mocked by Trump.

The lobbying strategy is to frame CCS as “an economic competitiveness and American leadership issue,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition.

That messaging pivot is also being practiced to make the IRA’s hydrogen provisions more “palatable” given Trump’s disdain for the renewable energy and net-zero emissions initiative known as the Green New Deal, said Frank Wolak, president of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association.

The IRA’s provisions supported hydrogen renewable energy and fossil fuels, the latter of which “wasn’t completely of interest to those who were promoting a Green New Deal,” Wolak said.

CCS supporters view the federal incentive, called the 45Q US tax credit, as essential to the economic case in the United States, which has no carbon pricing structure.

Stolark’s coalition — composed of oil companies, environmentalists, labor unions and other stakeholders — has pointed to more than 275 CCS projects announced in the US.

“Without the tax credit, pretty much all of those projects go away,” Stolark said.



– Slow progress –



CCS involves heavy capital investment to separate carbon dioxide during industrial processes and store the gases deep underground, an endeavour that also involves outreach to communities, where environmental groups have sometimes fought projects over worries that leaks could contaminate drinking water.

CCS has been discussed as a climate mitigation strategy for more than two decades, but progress has come slowly as far as the industrial-scaled storage facilities that supporters have depicted as a climate change solution.

“The policy development to facilitate carbon storage has taken longer than anticipated,” said Emmanouil Kakaras, executive vice president at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who also cited varying approaches to carbon pricing across markets as a factor.

But Kakaras, who has worked on CCS for almost 30 years, said European decarbonization mandates on heavy industry and the willingness of some consumers to pay premium for “green” steel and concrete was creating opportunity.

“There is a justification to decarbonize the hard-to-abate sectors,” he said. “So that is why it’s now picking up.”

Supporters argue CCS could evolve into big business in America because of geographic space for potential storage and the availability of existing pipelines already used for carbon dioxide, which has long played a role in enhanced oil recovery.

The connection between CCS and oil production is one reason national environmental groups that accept CCS as an aspect of climate mitigation don’t usually champion it with as much gusto as renewable energy and other solutions.

At CERA Week, Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, described carbon dioxide gas as a vital tool to boosting output from oil reservoirs. She said it extracts oil when pumped in much better than water, “which just goes past” the crude without loosening it.

This use of carbon dioxide has permitted Occidental to recover 75 percent of the oil in conventional wells, compared with 50 percent before.

Hollub urged policy makers not only to maintain the existing 45Q tax credit, but to tweak it so the credit for carbon dioxide used in enhanced oil recovery is at parity. Right now the credit is higher if the carbon dioxide is stored than if it is used in enhanced oil recovery.

More lawmakers are on board “because they recognize that we really need the carbon dioxide to create incremental oil for the United States,” she said.

Myanmar village air strike kills at least 12, says local official


By AFP
March 15, 2025


An injured civilian being carried following aerial bombardment of Singu in central Myanmar's Mandalay region - Copyright AFP STR

A Myanmar junta airstrike on a village held by anti-coup fighters killed at least 12 people according to a local administrative official, who said the bombardment targeted civilian areas.

Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup which has plunged the country into a fractious civil war and analysts say the embattled junta is increasingly using air strikes to target civilians.

The Friday afternoon strike hit the village of Letpanhla around 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the country’s second biggest city of Mandalay.

The village in Singu township is held by the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) — anti-coup guerillas who took up arms after the military toppled the country’s civilian government four years ago.

“A lot of people were killed because they dropped bombs on crowded areas,” said the local administrative official, who asked to remain anonymous. “It happened at the time people were going to the market”.

“We’re currently making a list and have registered 12 people killed,” he said on Saturday.

A junta spokesman could not be reached for comment and AFP could not independently verify the death toll. The local PDF unit reported there had been 27 fatalities.



– Wails of grief –



Witness Myint Soe, 62, said he tried to hide as an aircraft came in for a bombing run.

“I heard huge bomb blast sounds at the same time I was hiding,” he said. “When I came out and looked at the market area I saw it was on fire.”

In the aftermath, buildings which appeared to be homes and a restaurant were ablaze, as people in civilian clothing and camouflage uniforms doused the flames with water.

The limp body of a child with a bloody head wound was loaded into the back of an ambulance by a man whose uniform was marked with the PDF insignia.

Wails of grief could be heard as some of the crowd glanced up towards the sky.

Myanmar is now controlled by a patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups and anti-coup partisans.

The number of military air strikes on civilians has risen year on year during the civil war, according to non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), with nearly 800 in 2024.

That figure was more than triple the previous year and ACLED predicted the junta will continue to rely on air strikes because it is “under increasing military pressure on the ground”.

“The military will persevere in its indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian populated areas in an effort to undermine the opposition’s support base and destroy their morale,” it said in December.

An offensive by an alliance of armed ethnic groups in late 2023 inflicted stinging territorial losses on the junta.

But analysts say the Myanmar air force, which operates with Russian technical support, has been key to fending off its adversaries based mainly in the borderlands.

More than 3.5 million citizens are currently displaced and half the population lives in poverty.

UN considering humanitarian channel from Bangladesh to Myanmar


By AFP
March 15, 2025


United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press briefing in Dhaka on March 15 - Copyright AFP MUNIR UZ ZAMAN

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday the organisation is exploring the possibility of a humanitarian aid channel from Bangladesh to Myanmar.

Guterres is on a four-day visit to Bangladesh that saw him meet on Friday with Rohingya refugees, threatened by looming humanitarian aid cuts.

Around a million members of the persecuted and mostly Muslim minority live in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, most of whom arrived after fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

“We need to intensify humanitarian aid inside Myanmar to create a condition for that return (of the Rohingyas) to be successful,” Guterres said during a press briefing.

Guterres suggested that under the right circumstances, having a “humanitarian channel” from Bangladesh would facilitate the return of the Rohingya community, but said it would require “authorisation and cooperation”.

Asked if dialogue with the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic minority rebel group in Myanmar, was essential for the repatriation of Rohingyas, Guterres said: “The Arakan Army is a reality in which we live.”

He acknowledged that in the past relations with the AA have been difficult but said, “Necessary dialogue must take place”.

Guterres added that engaging with the AA was important as sanctions against the group would require the UN Security Council’s approval, which could prove difficult to obtain.

“It’s essential to increase pressure from all the neighbours in order to guarantee that fighting ends and the way towards democracy finally established,” Guterres said.

The UN chief’s remarks came after human rights group Fortify Rights issued a statement urging the Bangladesh government to facilitate humanitarian aid and cross border trade to reach war-affected civilians in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

The AA is engaged in a fierce fight with the military for control of Rakhine, where it has seized swaths of territory in the past year, all but cutting off the state capital Sittwe.

The UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday that it will be forced to cut off one million people in war-torn Myanmar from its vital food aid because of “critical funding shortfalls”.

The upcoming cuts would hit 100,000 internally displaced people in Rakhine — including members of the persecuted Rohingya minority — who will “have no access to food” without its assistance, it said.

Last year, the UN warned that Rakhine faces an “imminent threat of acute famine”.

Greece experiences weather ‘rollercoaster’


By AFP
March 16, 2025


Unusually high winter temperatures across Greece are about to plunge to freezing, dealing a blow to agriculture - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP 

Brad Vest

Greece is riding a weather “rollercoaster”, with weekend temperatures spiking to a record high for March just ahead of a forecast bout of snow and frost, meteorologists said on Sunday.

The mercury soared to 31.4 degrees Celsius (88.5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday in the central town of Livadia — the highest-ever recorded for March, according to National Observatory of Athens’ Meteo.gr.

Across the country, other weather stations registered temperatures more typical of balmy May than the closing days of winter.

“The very high maximum temperatures recorded during the last four days (from Wednesday to Saturday) in the country, were record highs for the month of March in many areas,” Meteo.gr said.

Following a surge of wildfires, a nationwide ban on burning material on rural properties is in effect until March 18.

“To have such temperatures so early in March, this has never happened before!” meterologist Panagiotis Giannopoulos told ERT television.

The unusual spike was attributed to a blanket of Saharan dust in the air.

This winter is listed as the 13th warmest in Greece. The previous one, in 2023-2024, remains the warmest on record.

Inhabitants in Greece will have to brace for plunging temperatures from Tuesday, though, weather-watchers said.

“A cold air mass on Tuesday will give showers and snow all over the country,” Giannopoulos said.

“In Athens, where today we have 27 degrees the maximum temperature will be 11 degrees. This is a rollercoaster,” he added.

The abrupt change is particularly problematic for the agricultural sector.

In Greece’s region of northern Macedonia — which experienced 27 degrees on the weekend — the expected frost is set to cause severe damage to fruit trees that are in full bloom.

Greece has become a climate-change hotspot. It had its hottest summer and warmest winter on record in 2024, according to data from the Meteo.gr network.

The year brought unprecedented temperatures, extreme rainfall and a notable frequency of impactful weather events.

Thirty-one significant weather incidents disrupted daily life in 2023, well above the 2000-2024 average, while nine weather-related deaths were registered.

Cuba gradually turning lights back on after island-wide blackout


By AFP
March 16, 2025


Cubans charge their cell phones during a nationwide blackout caused by a power grid failure in Havana - Copyright DVIDS/AFP -

Power was slowly being restored across most of Cuba on Sunday, after nearly 40 hours without electricity, in the island’s fourth major blackout in six months.

Lazaro Guerra, director of the island’s Energia Electrica utility, said the Cuban power grid was now again “interconnected” from the western port of Mariel, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Havana, to Guantanamo province in the far east.

Power had yet to be restored, however, in part of western Cuba.

The authorities said the system was generating 935 megawatts of power nationwide on Sunday, well below the normal daily demand of 3,000 MW.

In Havana, a city of 2.1 million, just 19 percent of homes had regained power.

Some Cubans were awakened early Sunday by the sounds attending a restoration of power.

“At 5 am, there was a tremendous rush, charging phones, lamps, pumping water into tanks — a tremendous uproar waking up the neighbors,” Alex Picart, a 60-year-old resident of Guanabacoa, just east of Havana, told AFP.

Cubans have grown resigned to frequent outages — including blackouts ranging anywhere from four hours to 20 hours or more.

But the constant disruptions are exhausting, they say, as outages cut off water and gas supplies as well as phone communications, and can virtually paralyze public transit.

“No elevator, no water, it’s awful. I feel cornered, very annoyed,” said Ruben Borroto, 69, who has to walk up seven floors to his Havana apartment.

The latest blackout began Friday with a failure at a substation in a Havana suburb, then spread across the island.

Cuba had seen three other major outages in the past half-year.

The island is suffering through its fourth year of economic crisis, and its eight thermal power plants, nearly all dating to the 1980s or 1990s, regularly fail.

Floating power barges and a series of generators shore up the national power system, but the US embargo makes it difficult to import fuel.

The government is rushing to install at least 55 solar parks this year — enough, it says, to supply 12 percent of national demand.

ECOCIDE

Giant mine machine swallowing up Senegal’s fertile coast


By  AFP

March 16, 2025


Hungry for zircon: The world's biggest mining dredger rig is so big it moves by being floated on its own lake

 - Copyright AFP PATRICK MEINHARDT

Lucie PEYTERMANN

Like something from the science fiction film “Dune”, the “world’s biggest mining dredger” has been swallowing acre after acre of the fertile coastal strip where most of Senegal’s vegetables are grown.

The jagged 23-kilometre-long (14-mile) scar the gigantic rig has left mining for zircon — which is used in ceramics and the building industry — is so big it is visible from space.

Amid a deafening din, the massive machine sucks up thousands of tonnes of mineral sands an hour, moving forward on an artificial lake created with water pumped from deep underground.

It is now tearing through the dunes of Lompoul — one of the smallest and most beautiful deserts in the world — a tourist hotspot by the endless beaches of Senegal’s Atlantic coast.

Thousands of farmers and their families have been displaced over the past decade to make way for the colossal floating factory run by the French mining group Eramet.

It denies any wrongdoing, insists its operations are exemplary and even plans to step up the pace of mining.

But locals accuse it of destroying this rich but delicate ecosystem on the western edge of Africa’s semi-arid Sahel region.

The project has brought “despair and disillusion”, said Gora Gaye, the mayor of Diokoul Diawrigne district which takes in Lompoul.

For years critics of the mine said villagers’ protests at losing the land were ignored, with complaints about “derisory” compensation smothered by the authorities.

– New president speaks out –

That has now changed, with tourist operators uniting with farmers and local leaders to demand a pause in the mining.

Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has also spoken out on extractive mining practices, saying some “local populations do not benefit”. He doubled down last week, demanding more transparency and oversight of “social and environmental impacts”.

His government was elected last year promising a radical break with the past and to reclaim Senegal’s sovereignty, particularly from the influence of former colonial power France.

Eramet — which is 27 percent owned by France — began mining in 2014 under the previous government after being awarded the concession 10 years earlier. The Senegalese state holds 10 percent of its local subsidiary, EGC, which mines the zircon and titanium-related minerals such as rutile and ilmenite.

AFP was granted rare access to its operations and to the dredger and the plants where the mineral sands are separated before being exported via the company’s private rail link through the port of the capital Dakar, 150 miles to the south.

EGC insisted it was a “responsible company”, that respects its agreement with the Senegal government and that has compensated locals “five times more” for the loss of their land than national guidelines, paying out 12,190 to 15,240 euros ($16,575) per hectare.

– Fertile oases ‘destroyed’ –

But what are they left with afterwards, asked hotelier Sheikh Yves Jacquemain, who runs a desert eco-lodge of traditional tents in Lompoul, where until recently the only sounds were from seabirds and passing camels.

“The mine is moving forward: the fate of people once the mine has passed is no longer their problem,” he told AFP, the roar of the gigantic dredger 150 metres (165 yards) away almost drowning him out as it ate through the landscape.

Of Lompoul’s seven tourist camps, six have accepted EGC’s money and have moved. Jacquemain is holding out for “just” compensation for him and his 40 employees.

Local communities also accuse the mine of destroying and “degrading the soil and the dunes” and threatening their water and food security.

Farmers say the compensation for the land is based on guidelines dating from the 1970s and does not make up for the irredeemable loss of revenue from their once-fertile fields.

The hollows between the dunes were oases, a rare ecosystem “which produced until recently 80 percent of the fresh vegetables eaten in Senegal”, according to mayor Gaye.

– ‘We want our land back’ –

Gaye said locals were initially optimistic about the mining.

But all they have gotten were “broken promises, intimidation, the destruction of our ecosystem and the catastrophic moving of villages. Economic development has gone backwards,” he added.

EGC argues that it has rehoused farmers and their families in four large new villages with modern infrastructure.

“A total of 586 houses and community infrastructures (a health centre, school and mosques…) have been built” serving 3,142 people.

But gathered in the square of one of the new settlements at Foth, Omar Keita and around two dozen other heads of families were quick to show their anger.

“We want our land back and our village rebuilt so we can go back to how we were living before,” Keita, 32, told AFP. “I appeal to the president and even to France,” he declared.

He said he was not given a new home and showed AFP where his wife and three children have lived for the past six years — a single room “loaned by my big brother”, a mattress lying on the floor.

But EGC’s managing director Frederic Zanklan insisted that “every family was rehoused in relation to how they were when the count was made”, adding that it was “nothing to do” with them if families had since grown.

But Keita said that before he was displaced “I had my fields and my house… We earned our living decently but they reduced that to naught and I have to start again from zero…”

“Here I have to work in other people’s fields,” he said.

Ibrahima Ba, 60, was equally livid. “We have gone backwards in every way,” he told AFP.

While still a farmer, today’s harvests are nothing like what they were “in my village, the soil was very fertile, we had fresh water and we had no problems”.

He called on President Faye and his prime minister to help them “because a foreign country is destroying the life of Senegalese citizens”.

But EGC’s Zanklan said the mining group had respected the law to the letter and argued that “the project is benefiting the country… generating 149 million euros for Senegal in 2023”.

He said they had paid “25 million euros in taxes and dividends” on their 215-million-euros turnover.

“Nearly 2,000 people work in the mine and the separation factories, 97 percent of them Senegalese,” with nearly half of them locals, Zanklan added.

He said the company made the fourth-biggest contribution among mining groups to Senegal’s state budget, according to data from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

EGC is the “first mining company to return reclaimed land to Senegal” and replant it with trees, its managing director added.

But locals complain that the land is not “returned” to them but to the Senegalese state, which has traditionally allowed farmers to till state land.

“They promised to give the land back to us so we could continue to use it, but they have not kept the promise,” farmer Ba said.

– Calls for moratorium –

Close to where AFP saw the restored land, farmer Serigne Mar Sow pointed to the murky puddles in a barren field which he said showed the “immeasurable damage” done by the mining.

The water pumped up from 450 metres underground for the lake for the dredger rig remains close to the surface. EGC insists that this benefits vegetable growers.

But Sow sees it differently. “The vegetables and bananas we used to grow here are dead because of the water that floods our fields from the dredger 2.5 kilometres from here.”

“The land is no longer fertile,” he said.

Surrounded by dead manioc and banana plants, he claimed that the water was polluted with “chemicals”.

“There are 15 to 20 fields around here which have been abandoned because of that water coming up — a drastic fall in the land we can get a harvest from.”

But EGC insists that “no chemicals are used”, and that the extraction is “purely mechanical”.

Gaye, the mayor of Diokoul Diawrigne, has demanded that Senegal “stop the mining for the moment so serious studies can be carried out on the damage being done — and so we can make a proper comparison of what all this is bringing to the state and to communities”.

“We cannot close our eyes” to what people are going through, he argued, “whatever Senegal gets from this business”.

Zanklan countered that there is “no need for a moratorium… If there are worries, the authorities can come and inspect when they like”.

In fact, EGC hopes to increase the dredger’s capacity by more than a fifth to 8,500 tonnes an hour from 2026, he said.

Pausing mining “would mean putting 2,000 people out of work and end the economic benefits for the state of Senegal — it would be irresponsible when the country really needs to develop”, he argued.

In the meantime, the dredger continues to swallow up the dunes of Lompoul, Africa’s smallest and one of its most scenic deserts.

Talks on divisive deep-sea mining resume in Jamaica


By AFP
March 17, 2025


Activists rallied against deep sea mining outside the European Parliament in March 2023 - Copyright AFP/File Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS

Several countries united with campaign groups Monday to call for caution in regulating the divisive practice of deep-sea mining at a meeting on the issue in Jamaica.

Members of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) are meeting in Kingston to thrash out the first mining code on deep-sea extraction that has faced accusations of imperiling marine ecosystems.

The clock is ticking because a metals company has said it will imminently submit an extraction license application, raising the prospect that their operations could go unregulated.

“We are still far away from any consensus on a final mining code,” said French envoy Olivier Guyonvarch, with the latest draft text still riddled with caveats highlighting lingering disagreement.

Costa Rica’s representative called for a “precautionary pause” as work continues on gathering data and establishing the legal framework.

The prospect of a pause has gained traction but is far from winning the backing of the ISA’s 169 member states.

“Environmental protection, however, does not mean abandoning exploitation,” countered China’s representative, saying that regulations could be further tailored as mining is carried out.



– ‘Planetary crisis’ –



The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea gives the ISA responsibility for regulating extraction of highly coveted seabed minerals that lie outside of national marine borders.

However, it also directs the organization to protect the little-understood marine environments.

The ISA Council, which currently only awards exploration licenses, has been negotiating for more than ten years over a mining code governing nickel, cobalt and copper extraction — key materials in the energy transition.

The painstaking talks have gained momentum since the activation of a clause allowing any company with national backing to apply for a license — even in the absence of a code — but several issues remain outstanding.

Though the riches of the international seabed are classified as “common heritage of mankind,” African countries fear they will miss out on benefits or even see their economies suffer.

Underwater extraction must “not come at the expense of Africa’s existing mining economies and their sustainable development aspirations,” the continent’s representative said.

Industry on the other hand has been highly critical of delays to the agreement of a code.

In a January letter to the ISA, several companies claiming to have collectively invested more than $2 billion in the development of extraction technology said they faced “escalating legal and financial risks.”

Among them was Nori — Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. — a subsidiary of Canadian firm The Metals Company. In June, it will submit the first application for extraction of “polymetallic nodules” — mineral deposits made up of multiple metals on the deep ocean floor.

Pacific island nation Nauru has given its official backing to Nori’s application, and is pressing the ISA to agree on a mechanism for reviewing and approving applications in the absence of a mining code.

Their request has been opposed by countries such as Chile who maintain the council had agreed rules would only be drafted after such an application is submitted.

“ISA Member States need to stand firm against the unacceptable pressure by an industry that risks wreaking irreparable damage on our ocean and exacerbating the planetary crisis,” Sofia Tsenikli, Deep-Sea Mining Moratorium Campaign Director at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC).

NGOs like the DSCC are placing hope in new ISA chief Leticia Carvalho, a Brazilian oceanographer who replaced Britain’s Michael Lodge after two terms at the helm, during which he was accused of favoring industry.

While the council has set itself the goal of finalizing the mining code this year, Carvalho called Monday for negotiators to make “significant progress” by July while raising the prospect of an amended timetable.

Why are proposed deep-sea mining rules so contentious?


By AFP
March 16, 2025


Infographic showing exploration areas licensed by the International Seabed Authority - Copyright AFP Pablo VERA

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS

After more than a decade of negotiations, a new round of talks to finalize a code to regulate deep-sea mining in international waters begins Monday in Jamaica, with hopes high for adoption this year.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), an independent body established in 1994 under a UN convention, has been working since 2014 on the new rules for developing mineral resources on the ocean floor.

The huge task has gathered pace, under pressure from corporate concerns eager to cash in on the untapped minerals.

Canada’s The Metals Company plans to file the first commercial mining license request in June, through its subsidiary Nori (Nauru Ocean Resources Inc.), which hopes to extract polymetallic nodules from the Pacific.

Here is a look at the proposed rules, and why they have sparked intense debate:



– What does this mining code entail? –



Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the ISA must both oversee any exploration or mining of coveted resources (such as cobalt, nickel, or manganese) in international waters, and protect the marine environment.

For activists worried about the protection of hard-to-reach ocean ecosystems, this twin mandate is nonsensical. Some groups, and more and more countries, are asking for a moratorium on seabed mining.

With no consensus, the ISA-led negotiations have continued.

The ISA Council, made up of 36 of the authority’s 169 member states, will spend the next two weeks trying to bridge the gaps on finalizing the code.

They are working from a 250-page “consolidated text” already riddled with parenthetical changes, and comments on disagreements.

But then there are dozens of amendments filed by countries, companies and non-governmental organizations.

Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition told AFP there were “over 2,000 textual elements that are still being discussed — and that those debates were “not close to being resolved.”



– How would seabed mining work? –



Any entity wishing to obtain a contract to mine the ocean floor must be sponsored by a specific country.

Those applications for mining licenses would first go through the ISA’s legal and technical commission, which NGOs say is too pro-industry and opaque.

The commission would evaluate the financial, technical and environmental aspects of the proposed plans, and then make a recommendation to the ISA Council, the final decision-maker.

But some worry that rules already set by UNCLOS would make it too difficult to reject any favorable recommendations.

The draft code calls for initial contracts lasting 30 years, followed up with extensions of five years at a time.



– What about environmental protection? –



Potential mining companies must conduct a survey of the possible environmental risks of their activities, but details on these surveys are still up in the air, with negotiators not yet even agreed on how to define the terms.

More and more countries, along with NGOs, highlight that even the idea of surveying potential impact is effectively impossible, given the lack of scientific data about the zones.

And some Pacific states insist that the code explicitly state the need to protect “underwater cultural heritage,” but that is under debate.



– What about compliance? –



The draft text calls for inspections and evaluations for deep-sea mining companies, but how such a system would work is under debate. Some even think such mechanisms are ultimately not all that feasible.



– Will there be profit-sharing? –



Under UNCLOS, resources on the ocean floor are seen as the “common heritage of mankind.”

The mining code under consideration stipulates that each company must pay royalties to the ISA based on the value of the metals. But what percentage should they pay?

A working group has proposed royalties of anywhere from three to 12 percent, while African states believe 40 percent is more just.

‘Dark oxygen’: a deep-sea discovery that has split scientists


By AFP
March 16, 2025


Polymetallic nodules and an abyssal urchin - Copyright National Oceanography Centre / Smartex project (NERC)/AFP/File Handout

Could lumpy metallic rocks in the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean be making oxygen in the absence of sunlight?

Some scientists think so, but others have challenged the claim that so-called “dark oxygen” is being produced in the lightless abyss of the seabed.

The discovery — detailed last July in the journal Nature Geoscience — called into question long-held assumptions about the origins of life on Earth, and sparked intense scientific debate.

The findings were also consequential for mining companies eager to extract the precious metals contained within these polymetallic nodules.

Researchers said that potato-sized nodules could be producing enough electrical current to split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen, a process known as electrolysis.

This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made possible when organisms started producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago.

“Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life,” the Scottish Association for Marine Science said in a press release to accompany the publication of the research.

– Delicate ecosystem –

Environmentalists said the presence of dark oxygen showed just how little is known about life at these extreme depths, and supported their case that deep-sea mining posed unacceptable ecological risks.

“Greenpeace has long campaigned to stop deep sea mining from beginning in the Pacific due to the damage it could do to delicate, deep sea ecosystems,” the environmental organisation said.

“This incredible discovery underlines the urgency of that call”.

The discovery was made in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast underwater region of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii of growing interest to mining companies.

Scattered on the seafloor four kilometres (2.5 miles) beneath the surface, polymetallic nodules contain manganese, nickel and cobalt, metals used in electric car batteries and other low-carbon technologies.

The research that gave rise to the dark oxygen discovery was partly funded by a Canadian deep-sea mining business, The Metals Company, that wanted to assess the ecological impact of such exploration.

It has sharply criticised the study by marine ecologist Andrew Sweetman and his team as plagued by “methodological flaws”.

Michael Clarke, environmental manager at The Metals Company, told AFP that the findings “are more logically attributable to poor scientific technique and shoddy science than a never before observed phenomenon.”

– Scientific doubts –

Sweetman’s findings proved explosive, with many in the scientific community expressing reservations or rejecting the conclusions.

Since July, five academic research papers refuting Sweetman’s findings have been submitted for review and publication.

“He did not present clear proof for his observations and hypothesis,” said Matthias Haeckel, a biogeochemist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.

“Many questions remain after the publication. So, now the scientific community needs to conduct similar experiments etc, and either prove or disprove it.”

Olivier Rouxel, a geochemistry researcher at Ifremer, the French national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP there was “absolutely no consensus on these results”.

“Deep-sea sampling is always a challenge,” he said, adding it was possible that the oxygen detected was “trapped air bubbles” in the measuring instruments.

He was also sceptical about deep-sea nodules, some tens of millions of years old, still producing enough electrical current when “batteries run out quickly”.

“How is it possible to maintain the capacity to generate electrical current in a nodule that is itself extremely slow to form?” he asked.

When contacted by AFP, Sweetman indicated that he was preparing a formal response.

“These types of back and forth are very common with scientific articles and it moves the subject matter forward,” he said.

ECOCIDE

Plastic pellets spotted in water after North Sea ship crash


By AFP
March 17, 2025


A tugboat accompanies the stricken Solong cargo ship following a devastating crash in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast - Copyright DVIDS/AFP -

A retrieval operation is underway after plastic pellets, likely spilled in a crash between a cargo ship and a tanker off the coast of England, formed a “sheen” in the sea, the British coastguard said Monday.

The UK’s lifeboat service reported on Sunday seeing “a sheen that we now know to be plastic nurdles” close to the Wash, a large bay on the east coast of England, around 43 miles (70 kilometres) south of the site of last week’s crash, according to the coastguard.

Nurdles are 1-5 millimetre (0.04-0.2 inch) pellets of plastic resin used in plastics production. They are not toxic but can damage wildlife if ingested.

“Some nurdles have now also been identified on the shore,” said chief coastguard Paddy O’Callaghan.

“Retrieval has started today. This is a developing situation and the Transport Secretary continues to be updated regularly,” he added.

The nurdles likely entered the water at the point of collision, the coastguard added.

The crash triggered huge fires aboard the two ships, which took several days and a massive firefighting effort to extinguish.

Thousands of barrels of jet fuel were “lost” to fire and impact, one of the operators said Sunday, but called the extent of damage limited.

It remains unclear why the Portuguese-flagged Solong ran into the US-flagged Stena Immaculate about 20 kilometres (13 miles) from the English port of Hull on March 10.

One crew member from the Solong, identified by state prosecutors as 38-year-old Filipino Mark Angelo Pernia, is presumed dead.

At the time of the crash, the US military-chartered Stena Immaculate was carrying around 220,000 barrels of aviation fuel, at least one of which ruptured, prompting concern from environmentalists.

But surveillance after the crash showed that there did “not appear to be any pollution” leaking from either of the vessels, according to officials.

In a statement, the tanker’s US-based operator Crowley said: “Based on an assessment by the salvage team, it has been confirmed that 17,515 barrels of Jet-A1 fuel have been lost due to the impact and fire. The remaining cargo and bunkers are secure.”

Salvage teams determined that the extent of the damage was limited to a fuel tank and water tank, the statement added.

The operator praised “heroic action” by the crew to take fire precautions before abandoning ship.

The Solong’s Russian captain was charged over the weekend with gross negligence manslaughter.

While the financial costs incurred from the incident are not clear, the Morningstar DBRS credit ratings agency estimates that total insured losses could range from $100 million to $300 million.