Australia’s deep-sea problem

In October, Fiji will host the pre-COP (Opens in new window) talks leading into this year’s global climate negotiations, offering delegates a chance to see first-hand what climate change looks like from sea level. Eroding coastlines, bleached reefs, and fisheries in decline. Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will be in the room, holding the pen on the summit’s cover text as President of Negotiations (Opens in new window).

Will Bowen have anything to say about what is happening on the ocean floor beneath those islands?

Expect silence. That’s because of a gap in the way Australia has chosen to position itself –simultaneously at the centre of the Indo-Pacific’s critical minerals rush and at the helm of its most consequential climate moment, but with no policy connecting the two.

The gap is documented. The government’s Critical Minerals Strategy 2023–30, (Opens in new window) the framework governing Australia’s approach in the region’s extraction economy, commits to environmental approvals yet contains no reference to the ocean that makes the Indo-Pacific what it is. No mention of seabed governance, and nothing about what responsible extraction looks like in the marine environments of the Indo-Pacific’s most climate vulnerable states.

This matters because the governance architecture is collapsing in real time. The International Seabed Authority‘s (ISA) March 2026 session (Opens in new window) failed to finalise its long-delayed mining code. The United States is now issuing unilateral deep-sea mining permits outside the ISA framework entirely. As of April 2026, 40 countries have announced their opposition to deep-seabed mining (Opens in new window), including several Pacific Islands nations, but Australia is not among them.

Meanwhile, the ecological cost is mounting. Coastal nickel mining in Indonesia’s Sulawesi and Maluku provinces is generating sediment runoff that degrades the coral reefs buffering communities against intensifying storms. Independent research (Opens in new window) has found that the average Pacific Island state would receive as little as $46,000 annually from its deep-sea mining revenue, while mining companies stand to pocket 98% of the returns. This is a poor trade-off for the nations whose food security and livelihoods depend on the fisheries and reef systems that these very companies put at risk.

The extraction is accelerating. The communities bearing the cost are the same ones Australia will be hosting in Fiji in October.

The political economy of Australia’s silence is understandable. Raising extraction standards risks straining relationships with Indonesia and other regional partners who are themselves major producers. Australia’s own mining sector is a powerful domestic constituency. And ocean governance sits awkwardly across climate, biodiversity and trade frameworks that rarely speak to each other. This makes it easy to overlook, to leave it to another process, another forum, for another year.

But this understanding is not costless. Australia holds exclusive authority (Opens in new window) as President of Negotiations to manage consultations, draft texts and finalise outcomes at COP31. That is not a ceremonial role. It is a position of influence over what more than 190 governments commit to in November. Using it to advance Pacific climate priorities while remaining silent on the extraction practices degrading Pacific Ocean ecosystems is not a coherent posture – and Pacific Island partners will notice.

The window to change this is specific. The pre-COP in Fiji this October is the moment when ocean states have the undivided attention of the world’s climate ministers. After that the summit moves to Antalya, and the Pacific’s voice becomes one among many.

What would it actually take? Not a new institution. The architecture already exists. Australia could table ocean protection conditions in the US–Australia minerals framework (Opens in new window) – which currently has none. It could work through its Quad relationships with India and Japan to establish baseline environmental standards for extraction across the region. It could make a verified ocean protection benchmark a named deliverable of its COP31 presidency rather than a deferred aspiration – the kind of specific, monitorable outcome that a President of Negotiations is perfectly placed to insist on.

Australia has spent years positioning itself as the Indo-Pacific’s responsible middle power – the country that takes climate seriously and brings its partners with it. Fiji in October is the test. The question is whether Australia arrives with an agenda, or just a front-row seat.