The Fight for the High Seas: Inside the Treaty and the Deep-Sea Mining Showdown

For most of human history the open ocean was treated as too vast to protect and too remote to harm. That assumption is finally breaking. Beyond 200 nautical miles from any coast lie the high seas — nearly two-thirds of the ocean and almost half the surface of the planet — governed by almost nothing. The animals there are the least-protected large ecosystem on Earth. In 2026, two processes are deciding their future at once, and they point in opposite directions.

What is the High Seas Treaty?

Formally the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction — BBNJ — it is the first international law that can create marine protected areas in the high seas, require environmental impact assessments for activities there, and share the benefits of marine genetic resources. Agreed in 2023 after nearly two decades of negotiation, it is the ocean’s equivalent of the Paris Agreement: a framework whose power depends entirely on how many countries ratify it and how seriously they enforce it.

It matters for the climate directly. The global goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030 — the "30x30" target — is mathematically impossible without the high seas, because that is where most of the unprotected ocean is. And a healthy open ocean is climate infrastructure: it has absorbed roughly a quarter of all human carbon emissions and more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases.

We protected the land nation by nation. The ocean has no nations — which is exactly why it has no protection.

Why does deep-sea mining threaten it now?

At the same moment, the International Seabed Authority — the UN body that governs the seabed in international waters — is meeting in Kingston, Jamaica through late July 2026 to finalise the rules that could open the deep ocean to commercial mining. The prize is polymetallic nodules: potato-sized lumps rich in the cobalt, nickel and manganese used in batteries. The irony is sharp — mining the seabed to build the clean-energy transition could wreck one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks in the process.

Scientists warn the deep sea is the least-understood environment on Earth, home to species found nowhere else and to sediments that store carbon over geological timescales. A growing coalition of countries now backs a moratorium or precautionary pause until the science catches up. Others, and the contractors who have invested in the technology, want to begin. The Kingston meeting is where that fight comes to a head.

What should readers watch?

Three things. First, ratifications: the treaty needs 60 countries to enter into force, and the running total is the single clearest measure of momentum. Second, the ISA outcome in Kingston — whether it adopts a mining code, delays, or endorses a pause. Third, the growing effort to make the two processes talk to each other, so that biodiversity protection and seabed governance stop being negotiated in separate rooms.

The high seas have no constituency — no voters, no citizens, no lobby. That is precisely why the coming months matter. The ocean cannot argue for itself in Kingston. The countries in the room will decide whether anyone does.