As world leaders gather at the United Nations climate summit in Egypt this week, another international meeting is underway in Jamaica to decide the fate of the planet’s oceans.
The U.N.-affiliated International Seabed Authority is convening in the country's capital, Kingston, to fast track regulations that could allow the mining of fragile and biodiverse deep sea ecosystems for valuable metals as soon as 2024.
But as the ISA Council, the organization’s policymaking body, concluded its first week of meetings Friday, a growing number of countries were calling for a halt to the rush to enact mining regulations by July 2023, a deadline established last year.