FROM July 29 to August 2, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN-backed regulatory body primarily comprising executives from the global mining industry, will hold its annual meeting in Kingston, Jamaica. The objective of the meeting, which the group failed to achieve at last year's conference, will be the formulation of guidelines for the expanded exploration and exploitation of mineral resources found on the deep seabed in international waters. The Philippines, which has been embarrassingly hypocritical on the issue, needs to clearly add its voice to the growing chorus of national governments, global corporations and major financial institutions calling for a stop to seabed mining, either in the form of an outright ban or some form of moratorium until more research can be done to determine how it might be done without destroying the ocean environment.

Given its deep industry connections, the ISA has made it clear that seabed mining is something it very much wants to happen, using the excuse that the vast amount of mineral resources on the ocean floor are necessary for green technology. Indeed, the amount of minerals such as manganese, cobalt and nickel that are believed to lie at the bottom of the sea is astounding. The world's richest patch, the Clipperton-Clarion Fracture Zone, an area in the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico about the size of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh combined, is thought to hold between $8 trillion and $16 trillion in minerals wealth. Along with other types of mineral-rich areas, the deep oceans are thought to hold several times the total amount of minerals found on land.