French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have used their attendance at the UN Ocean Conference, taking place 9 to 13 June in Nice, France, to warn of the dangers of deep sea mining, which the U.S. recently announced plans to commercialize.
“I think it’s madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it, and release irrecoverable carbon sinks when we know nothing about it,” Macron said, adding that a global moratorium on such mining was “an international necessity.”
Though U.S. President Donald Trump was not among the more than 60 heads of state who attended the UN Ocean Conference, Macron directed a portion of his opening remarks at the event toward U.S. policy on deep seabed mining.
