By Dylan Welch, Chief Correspondent, SDG News
At the 2025 Nature Summit in Panama City, held at the iconic BioMuseo, a important conversation emerged about one of the planet’s last frontiers – the ocean floor. As nations and corporations eye deep sea mining as the next big gold rush, environmental leaders issued a serious warning: Are we about to repeat the same mistakes that brought us the climate crisis, just in deeper waters?
The Unknown Abyss
“We know more about the moon’s surface than the ocean floor, and yet companies have decided to mine this without regulations,” said Luisa Arauz, Lead Deep Sea Mining Negotiator and Senior Advisor to Panama’s Ministry of Environment.
Arauz’s words struck a chord with the international audience gathered for the Nature Summit. Despite the excitement from investors and the energy and tech sector, she pointed to a truth: we are moving forward with extracting minerals from international waters before understanding what’s at stake.
Illegal Under International Law
Arauz clarified that deep sea mining in certain areas isn’t just premature, it’s illegal.
“In legal terms, specific countries wishing to extract minerals from international waters is illegal and binding for all countries.”
This means that, regardless of individual national agendas, international agreements hold strong. Her message: the ocean floor is a shared commons, not a battleground for private extraction. Not only that, but it is important to implement these laws, to ensure that countries aren’t extracting minerals without oversight, and potentially leading to negative impacts on the environment.
The Voice of Science and Sovereignty
Joining Arauz under the lights of the stage was Liana Aguilera Ramirez, Technical Director of the INNOVACUBA Project. Aguilera spoke asked the audience to think about the environmental decisions in under-resourced and ecologically rich nations:
“When you have a lot of land to protect, your first thought should not be exploitation.”
Instead of viewing untouched environments as untapped capital, Aguilera urged attendees to reframe preservation as a form of leadership, especially for countries like Panama and Cuba, whose ecosystems are critical to global biodiversity.
Consumption vs. Consequence
At the heart of the issue is our unsustainable economic model as a planet. As Arauz emphasized:
“The major issues we are facing are due to the overconsumption which then exploits nature, which is where everything comes from and everything goes.”
This isn’t just about the ocean. It’s about a broader pattern — one where overconsumption drives the commodification of ecosystems, and leaves developing nations bearing the environmental cost.
A Call to Redefine Our Relationship with Nature
Perhaps the most profound message from the panel came not as a technical insight, but a philosophical one:
“We need to redefine how we relate ourselves to nature.” – Luisa Arauz
This was not just a call for stricter regulations or more research and data. It was a societal and ethical challenge: we need to evolve past the outdated belief that nature exists to be exploited, and toward one where nature is part of a shared future we are responsible for. At the rate we are going, it is unsustainable, and adding unregulated deep sea mining is only going to make it worse.
As deep sea mining lures investors and technologists with promises of a cleaner future, experts like Luisa Arauz and Liana Aguilera remind us that no innovation is truly sustainable if it begins with destruction.
Related Article: International Seabed Authority Elects Leticia Carvalho as New Secretary General Amid Deep-Sea Mining Concerns
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