Palau urges Pacific unity to oppose seabed mining as US moves forward with Mariana Trench leases

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Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr has taken his campaign against deep‑sea mining to the international stage, telling Mariana Islands leaders bluntly that mining activity near the Marianas would “impact us” and urging them not to “hurt your brother.” Whipps made the remarks in an interview after delivering a keynote address at the World Ocean Summit in Montreal, where he pressed the case that proposed seabed extraction east of the Mariana Trench would inflict harm across the Pacific community.

Whipps’s warning comes as the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) moves to lease roughly 35.5 million acres of seafloor for hard‑mineral extraction adjacent to the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. The proposal has alarmed Pacific leaders and civil society because of limited scientific understanding of deep‑sea ecosystems. “There is not enough science to know what the impacts are going to be,” Whipps said, noting that recent research suggests more than 8,000 species on the ocean floor remain unidentified and that deep seabeds store carbon and sustain fisheries vital to Pacific economies.

The issue has become more immediate for Guam after a recent closed‑door BOEM meeting at the Ricardo J. Bordallo Governor’s Complex left acting Governor Josh Tenorio “more unsettled than before,” with no new environmental data provided, no revenue‑sharing framework agreed and no binding commitment on how Guam would be kept informed. Whipps urged Guam to make use of established U.S. regulatory channels, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to ensure robust environmental review and oversight of any proposed activity.

As part of Palau’s effort to bolster monitoring and scientific capacity, Whipps signed an agreement with Biosphere Dynamics to deploy long‑range unmanned aerial systems to surveil Palau’s vast exclusive economic zone. He described the step as part of Palau’s broader precautionary stance: “At home in Palau, we don’t. Deep‑sea mining is not allowed. Deep‑sea trawling is not allowed. Our ocean is protected,” he said, calling on more Pacific nations to join a precautionary moratorium on seabed mining in international waters.

Whipps also signalled plans to attend this year’s International Seabed Authority meeting, where he said French President Emmanuel Macron may be present, offering a potential high‑level ally for Pacific concerns. He acknowledged the diplomatic constraints facing island states — and the limits of pressuring sovereign nations like the Cook Islands, Nauru and Tonga that have pursued seabed development in their own waters — but urged continued engagement in multilateral processes despite setbacks, citing recent U.S. withdrawals from some multilateral organisations.

Echoing regional concerns about representation and influence, Melvin Won Pat‑Borja, executive director of Guam’s Commission on Decolonisation, argued that international forums are among the few venues where Guam can “collaborate with other countries as an equal.” That point underscores the broader political dimension of the seabed debate: who gets to decide the fate of ocean resources that stretch beyond national jurisdictions, and whether current governance, science and oversight are sufficient to prevent irreversible damage. Whipps’s Montreal interventions and new monitoring pact mark the latest effort by Palau to shape that debate as the ISA and BOEM processes move forward.