World leaders on Monday called for global rules to govern the seabed and warned against racing to exploit the ocean floor in a thinly-veiled rebuke of US President Donald Trump.
Growing anxiety over Trump's unilateral push to fast-track deep-sea mining in international waters shot to the surface at the opening of the UN Ocean Conference in France.
"I think it's madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it and release irrecoverable carbon sinks -- when we know nothing about it," said French President Emmanuel Macron.
Imposing a moratorium on seabed mining was "an international necessity", said Macron.
The number of countries opposed to seabed mining rose to 36 on Monday, according to a tally kept by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an umbrella group of non-governmental organisations.
Trump was not among the roughly 60 heads of state and government in Nice but his spectre loomed large as leaders defended the global multilateralism he has spurned.
Of particular concern, his move to sidestep the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and issue permits directly to companies wanting to extract nickel and other metals from waters beyond US jurisdiction.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for "clear action" from the seabed authority to end a "predatory race" to exploit the ocean floor.
"We now see the threat of unilateralism looming over the ocean. We cannot allow what happened to international trade to happen to the sea," he said.
The deep sea, Greenland and Antarctica were "not for sale", Macron said in further remarks directed clearly at Trump's expansionist claims.
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