The debate over deep-seabed mining has long been trapped in a binary: either it is the essential bridge for the clean-energy transition, or it is an unacceptable threat to the ocean carbon sink. As this Policy and Practice Review makes clear, neither framing serves the regulatory process well. The more productive question is not whether to mine, but under what legal conditions. And on that front, the article identifies a tangible gap: while the International Seabed Authority (ISA) negotiates exploitation rules, its environmental impact assessment (EIA) framework does not yet mandate a coherent, verifiable accounting of project-associated greenhouse-gas emissions. This is not an abstract concern. It is a concrete omission with measurable consequences.
The legal analysis draws on the 2024 ITLOS and 2025 ICJ advisory opinions to argue that due diligence, the precautionary approach, and the duty to regulate private operators now provide a stronger basis for integrating climate considerations into DSM authorization. That is a significant development, but it is also a bounded one. The article does not claim the ISA should become a climate regulator. Instead, it proposes a climate-sensitive GHG-EIA component: a defined block of required content covering accounting boundaries, reporting metrics, independent verification, a mitigation hierarchy, and adaptive review triggers. This is a pragmatic, operational step, not a rhetorical one. It gives the ISA a way to exercise its existing mandate more completely, without overreaching into domains better handled by the International Maritime Organization or domestic regimes. For readers tracking governance gaps, this is where the conversation shifts from whether climate matters to how it can be made actionable within existing legal instruments.
The timing is significant. As the related coverage on the World Ocean Assessment Highlights Governance Gaps Amidst Ocean Degradation shows, the broader governance landscape is already under strain, and the Deep-Sea Mining Governance: Charting a Course for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone article underscores that the ISA's current negotiations are the critical juncture. What this review adds is a clear legal rationale for why those negotiations cannot proceed on the assumption that climate impacts are someone else's problem. The entry into force of the BBNJ Agreement and the evolving IMO framework reinforce the need for GHG-specific content within the ISA's own rules, but they do not replace it. The ISA's exploitation-approval process is the choke point. If it does not require quantification and disclosure of downstream processing emissions, those emissions will go unregulated by design.
What would we tell a reader who asks what this means in practice? That the next round of ISA negotiations should be watched for one specific indicator: whether the draft exploitation regulations include a mandatory GHG-EIA component with independent verification. Not a voluntary guideline, not a reference to best practices, but a binding requirement. The article's contribution is to show that the legal foundation for such a requirement is already in place. The question is whether the ISA will use it. A concrete point to watch: whether the mining code's standard-setting body adopts a mitigation hierarchy that explicitly includes downstream metallurgical processing, or whether it continues to limit the assessment boundary to extraction and transport. That single decision will determine whether the ISA's climate governance is real or symbolic.