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As we reflect on 2021 and the progress made by ISA in fulfilling the mandate given to it by UNCLOS and the 1994 Agreement thanks to the support of our members and observers, the Secretariat wishes to all the very best for the holiday season and the new year.
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Please receive wishes from the staff of the Secretariat and ADSR Experts in over 20 different languages (Arabic, Armenian, Bosnian, Chinese, Cibemba, Croatian, Dutch, English, Fijian, French, German, Hindi, Igbo, I-Kiribati, Italian, Jamaican Patois, Japanese, Korean, Odia, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Yoruba), reflecting the diversity, multiculturalism, dedication and energy of our entire Organization, designed to benefit all humanity.
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The second part of the 26th session of the ISA Council took place from 6 to 10 December 2021 and focused on making decisions on the remaining items on the agenda and the schedule of meetings in 2022. The meetings of the Assembly took taking place from 13 to 15 December 2021 and were chaired by Ambassador Denys Wibaux from France as a President of the Assembly during the 26th session. Photos of the meetings are available here.
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New permanent representatives to ISA presented credentials
During 2021, thirteen permanent representatives to ISA presented their credentials to the Secretary-General of ISA, H.E. Mr. Michale Lodge. These include:
H.E. Ms. Elza Moreira Marcelino de Castro, Brazil
H.E. Ms. Constanza Figueroa, Chile
H.E. Mr. Edward Aníbal Pérez Reyes, Dominican Republic
H.E. Ms. Marianne Van Steen, European Union
H.E. Mr. Olivier Guyonvarch, France
H.E. Mr. Michel Xavier Biang, Gabon
H.E. Ms. Mariangela Zappia, Italy
H.E. Ms. Alison Stone Roofe, Jamaica
H.E. Ms. Vanessa Frazier, Malta
H.E. Mr. Neville Gertze, Namibia
H.E. Ms. Maureen Piribonemi Tamuno, Nigeria
H.E. Mr. Lasford Emilio Douglas, Panama
H.E. Mr. Sergey Petrovich, Russian Federation
H.E. Mr. Diego Bermejo Romero de Terreros, Spain
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On 25 June 2021, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a party to the Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982. That means that there are still 17 members of the International Seabed Authority that had become parties to the Convention before the adoption of the Agreement and that had yet to become parties thereto.
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The LTC prepared the drafts of 10 standards and guidelines under phase 1 (standards and guidelines deemed necessary to be in place by the time of adoption of the draft regulations on exploitation) to support the implementation of the future exploitation regulations. A stakeholder consultation took place from 8 April to 3 July 2021 and contributions were considered by the LTC. The ISA Council will consider the report of the Chair of the LTC on phase one standards and guidelines at its meeting in March 2022.
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On 16 March 2021, Blue Minerals Jamaica Ltd. (BMJ) and ISA signed a 15-year contract for the exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. The contract, which came into force on 4 April, marks the starting point of BMJ initial 5-year workplan, which will focus on exploration of its license area as well as setting the baseline for its environmental planning.
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The virtual meeting took place on 19 and 22 April 2021 and involved 72 representatives of ISA exploration contractors. Participants discussed issues of common interest and key areas of work relevant to contractors.
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From 2 to 4 November 2021, ISA conducted a virtual expert scoping meeting on advancing technology to support the sustainable mining of mineral resources in the Area in collaboration with the UK National Oceanography Centre (NOC). The meeting involved 120 participants from 41 countries and aimed at taking stock of current and future technologies and key actors in exploration and exploitation of deep-seabed mineral resources and in relation to monitoring of potential environmental impacts of future mining activities.
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Women empowerment and leadership
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On 8 March 2021 on the occasion of International Women’s Day, ISA and UN-OHRLLS hosted a high-level webinar focused on the enhancement of the role and participation of women in deep-sea research. The two organizations presented their joint initiative - the “Women in Deep-Sea Research” project, which will be implemented over the next two years and will aim at identifying and establishing tailored innovative capacity development programmes and strategic partnerships for transformative actions.
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The first initiative under the WIDSR project consists of a gender-mapping analysis and identification of critical barriers to the participation of women from LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS in deep-sea related research disciplines and activities and access to leadership positions. To that end, a call for consultancy was circulated on 14 June 2021 for the recruitment of one or two international consultant(s) (Work stream 1: Data collection and Work stream 2: Cross-cutting analysis). Further details are made available in the Terms of Reference. Work is underdevelopment and preliminary findings will be made available before the beginning of 2022.
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MABIK and ISA conducted a Global Women’s Leadership Training Program in Marine Bio-Resources Information system for Fijian women. The purpose of the workshop, which was supported by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea and the Korean International Cooperation Agency, aimed to equip Fijian women with the necessary skills to allow Fiji to advance sustainable development of marine resources.
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 As an International Gender Champion (IGC), ISA Secretary-General H.E. Mr. Michael W. Lodge renewed his commitment towards the IGC Panel Parity Pledge by: (i) ensuring that ISA Secretariat maintains a gender parity including at the most senior levels (P5 and above) and, (ii) in reaffirming the importance of advancing women’s empowerment and leadership in deep-sea research with a focus on designing and implementing tailored activities and programmes.
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 In his opening remarks at the high-level webinar, H.E. Mr. Luis del Solar Dorrego, Permanent Representative of Argentina to ISA and Champion of the ISA Action Plan in support of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, highlighted the importance of gender equality and Argentina’s commitment to women empowerment in science. “Argentina has strong commitment to gender equality and to diversity. With regard to actions at the national level in relation to stimulating the participation of women in ocean science, it is worth mentioning that the issue of gender equality is a matter of state policy in Argentina. A national programme for gender equality in science, technology and innovation (STI) was established in June 2020. The general purpose of this program is to guarantee and effectively promote equal participation of women and LGBT population at all levels in STI fields,” Ambassador del Solar said.
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As part of the WIDSR project, several exploration contractors holding contracts with ISA for the exploration of deep-seabed minerals in the Area have pledged to support women’s empowerment and leadership in deep-sea research and in some cases, allocate half of their training opportunities available under the ISA Contractors’ Training Programme, to women. This is notably the case for the calls for nominations created under the training programmes of BGR, Ifremer, Marawa and NORI.
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Marine Scientific Research
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Dr. McQuaid is a marine scientist working at the interface between environmental management and marine conservation. She was recommended for the Award by the advisory committee appointed by the ISA Secretary-General. Her work was awarded for designing networks of marine protected areas around South Africa and using habitat classification to assess the representativity of the network of areas of particular environmental interest in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
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ISA has joined the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) network of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO as an Associate Data Unit enabling the ISA Secretariat to serve as a node for IODE's Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS). This collaboration between the ISA Secretariat and OBIS will further enhance, through the OBIS platform, global access to the biodiversity data contained in the ISA database DeepData, including taxonomic information, species abundance and distribution. The biodiversity data to be shared has been collected by ISA contractors over the past several decades while exploring the Area for mineral resources.
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On 21 June 2021 on the occasion of World Hydrography Day, ISA reiterated its commitment to contributing to advance the general knowledge and understanding of the world’s ocean and, in particular, the deep sea and the deep seabed. ISA has been working with its 22 exploration contractors and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) to develop the necessary protocols to provide high-resolution bathymetric data collected by contractors as a contribution towards the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 project, which aims to produce a definitive map of the world’s seabed by 2030.
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From 12 to 14 October 2021, ISA hosted a virtual workshop with the support of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of Korea and the National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea, involving over 120 participants from 41 countries. Among other issues, participants discussed image acquisition, image archiving and sharing, metadata and annotations as well as knowledge exchange and capacity building.
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The first webinar in the new series took place on 16 September 2021, with a focus on Deep-sea Mineral Resources and Technologies. The main objective of this webinar was to present complementarity between exploration of deep-seabed mineral resources and marine scientific research undertaken in the Area, conceived as the foundation of sustainable development of deep-seabed mineral resources. In particular, it will focus on sharing the work of ISA on promoting marine scientific research (MSR).
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Between 2020 and 2021, more than 600 individuals have benefited from at least one of the capacity-building/development activities implemented by ISA, including participation in workshops organized by ISA.
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ISA Secretariat developed a dedicated capacity development dashboard, which provides access to detailed information on participation to the different initiatives, with a number of filters and ways to view the data, e.g., per year, per country or region, per gender, per type of programme, etc.
Visit the dashboard
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Three experts have joined the Secretariat of ISA for a period of two months as part of the National Experts Deployment Programme of the Africa Deep Seabed Resources (ADSR) project. Dr. Samuel Popoola, from Nigeria and Mr. Gerald Mwila, from Zambia are undertaking their deployment with the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources whilst Mr. Godwin Dimike, from Nigeria is undertaking his research within the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. A total of ten African experts, including five women, have been selected for deployment in the ISA Secretariat in 2020-2022. Two experts - Ms. Judith Owusu (Ghana) and Ms. Tini Guitoba (Togo) – already completed their secondment in 2020.
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NAFOP-CD are in charge of liaising with the Secretariat of ISA on matters relating to capacity development. They are identified by Members of ISA to assist the Secretariat with the implementation of its new programmatic approach to capacity development, which was endorsed by the Assembly in December 2020. The network currently counts 41 NAFOPs.
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ISA and Indonesia hosted two national capacity-building workshops
ISA assisted Indonesia as the country develops its national legislation for deep-seabed activities in the Area through the organization by ISA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia of a virtual workshop from 25 to 27 January 2021 aimed at increasing understanding of the legal framework in the Area and a virtual workshop on 15 October 2021 aimed at increasing understanding of environmental components of the legal framework governing activities carried out in the Area. The workshops involved government officials, policymakers and researchers, and aimed at providing them with the necessary skills to enable Indonesia’s full participation in the work of ISA and in activities in the Area.
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From 1 to 3 June 2021, ISA hosted the third workshop organized in the framework of the ADSR project in collaboration with the Government of Mauritius and with the support of the African Union and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The workshop was attended by 170 representatives from 21 countries of the Indian Ocean region and helped to increase the understanding of regulatory processes related to deep-seabed mineral resources exploration and exploitation – including environmental management practices and tools - and of potential benefits for African States of engaging in activities in the Area.
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From 26 to 29 July 2021, ISA and UN DESA hosted the fourth workshop of the Abyssal Initiative for Blue Growth in collaboration with the Cook Islands and with the support of NORAD. The workshop involved 120 participants including representatives from the four Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) that are currently sponsoring activities in the Area - the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Kingdom of Tonga. The workshop increased understanding among participants of key components of environmental management and monitoring requirements related to activities in the the Area.
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The fellow, to be announced in 2022, will be part of Ifremer’s “Blue Revolution” project and will work on the development and testing of 3D-imaging techniques for the identification of meiofauna organisms of deep-sea ecosystems found in areas currently being explored for mineral resources. The fellow will also contribute to identify key-species that can be used as indicators for assessing potential environmental changes in the future, which will inform the work of ISA.
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protection of the marine environment |
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ISA adopted four additional areas of particular environmental interest (APEIs) in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone
Following the review of the environmental management plan (REMP) for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), the ISA Council endorsed the designation of four additional areas of particular environmental interest (APEIs) to enhance the effectiveness of the network of APEIs in the CCZ. This brings the total number of APEIs in the CCZ to 13 and the total area entirely protected from mining from 1.4 to 1.9 million km2.
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27th session of ISA
ISA Council
- 21 March - 1 April 2022 (tentative): First part of the 27th session of ISA Council
- 18-29 July 2022 (tentative): Second part of the 27th session of ISA Council
- 31 October - 11 November 2022 (tentative): Third part of the 27th session of ISA Council
ISA Assembly
- 1-5 August 2022 (tentative): 27th session of ISA Assembly
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