Hope Gallagher, ELR Staffer Class of 2027

On September 19, 2025, Morocco became the sixtieth country to ratify the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (the treaty), meaning it is officially ratified. It took effect this month after obtaining the required 60 signatories, following two decades of work by environmentalists and states alike. The treaty nearly gained the majority of its signatories in March 2023, but could not take legal effect until these signatures were ratified in countries’ respective legislatures. The colloquial title of “High Seas Treaty” brings to mind images of swashbuckling pirates and absolute lawlessness, which is unfortunately not far from the reality of the way corporations and their agents often comport themselves outside of territorial waters.

This treaty is not aimed at rectifying the appalling human rights abuses and illegal manning practices that take place on commercial fishing vessels, but rather their deleterious trawling practices, as well as the deep-sea mining, shipping, bio-prospecting (commercial exploration of the seafloor to discover new genetic materials with possible pharmaceutical, agricultural, or industrial properties), and drilling that are currently scarcely regulated. These practices are unnecessarily, overly injurious to the health of the ecosystem. Trawling for example, is a manner of fishing that can seriously harm the seabed and the coral that lives there, as well as capture far more creatures than intended, specifically juvenile or endangered species that fishers do not have permission to take. The treaty is essential to holding offending parties accountable in international courts, protecting maritime life and biomes, and achieving the United Nation’s goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030. The treaty has created new mechanisms to create new marine protected areas (MPAs), of which there are currently six, which protect over 700,000 square miles of high seas. Additionally, the treaty requires countries to better enforce the protective measures agreed upon against their corporations and agents.

The United States signed the High Seas Treaty under President Biden’s tenure, but has not ratified the treaty, nor made any substantial efforts to do so. In April of 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order, “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources” (EO 14285). that would allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to give permits to corporations allowing them to deep-sea mine in the mineral-rich international waters off the coast of Hawaii, known as the Clarion-Cliperton Zone. This Executive Order was thought by many in the international community to violate the preexisting United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and could now be subject to specific restrictions moving forward beyond the acknowledgment that the seabed is a part of a global commons and not under one specific country’s domain. The US is a signatory to UNCLOS, however, it has not been ratified in Congress, so despite good-faith agreement the US is not legally bound to the agreement.

Despite the environmental concerns that led to the ratification of this treaty, there is concern that overly broad restrictions on deep-sea mining could increase fossil fuel usage. Minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and magnesium–which are key to ‘clean’ energy sources like the batteries that power electric vehicles–are abundant in the Clarion-Cliperton Zone. Some with more optimistic or opportunistic attitudes towards deep-sea mining argue that the technology will improve such that autonomous vehicles will be able to extract these critical minerals without harming the environment. However, at this time, it seems that companies–like the one President Trump seems likely to give a permit to–will effectively be vacuuming the sea floor. This action has already triggered actions in Dutch legislatures, with calls for the half-Dutch company to be taken to court in the Netherlands for its violation of UNCLOS. This matter will likely continue to attract international attention, as the High Seas Treaty now comes into effect and the mining begins. This could create a thorny international legal battle and create a detrimental precedent of ignoring the High Seas Treaty right at its inception. However, it could also make it harder to produce electric vehicles, which would increase fossil fuel usage.