The Politics of the Seabed: Navigating Sovereignty, Solidarity and Shared Inheritance

What If There Is Only One Ocean? Who Gets to Decide Its Future?

As the prospect of deep-sea mining moves closer, questions about critical minerals and the global energy transition are also questions about power, sovereignty and whose interests shape our shared ocean. In this special audio episode, Stephanie Leitch explores the politics of deep-sea mining through the Caribbean’s and Pacific’s histories of extraction, the legacies of colonialism and the challenges of regional cooperation.

Featuring conversations with Asha Challenger, a Caribbean diplomat; Laisa Nainoka of the Pacific Network on Globalisation; and Khadija Stewart, Founder of EcoVybz Environmental Creatives and Senior Campaigner at RISE UP for the Ocean, the story examines what is at stake when decisions about the seabed are made, who bears the risks and whether the regions most affected can shape their own futures.

Emerging from the Caribbean Deep Sea Mining Media Fellowship, an initiative involving Climate Tracker, Jamaica Environment Trust, EcoVybz Environmental Creatives and RISE UP for the Ocean, this special episode asks what it would mean to treat the ocean not simply as a resource to be exploited, but as a shared inheritance that demands accountability, solidarity and care.