"A Sea of Trouble: Seabed Mining and International Arbitration in Mexico", 24 February 2022

...The Gulf of Ulloa off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico...[-]...Its seafloor is also rich in phosphate, a key component of fertilizers, at the center of a multi-billion-dollar arbitration suit that US company Odyssey Marine Exploration has brought against Mexico under the terms of the original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Odyssey...secured financing from a private litigation firm in the US to file the claim after local opposition arose to its project and Mexican authorities denied it an environmental permit.

The fishing concessions of the Puerto Chale Fishing Cooperative are where the company would like to dredge the seafloor. The Cooperative has opposed the project from the start and filed for permission to submit its concerns to the NAFTA tribunal in October...They sought to communicate the impacts that this company’s project could have on their lives and environment...

...[T]he NAFTA tribunal recently refused to admit their submission. The majority...says the cooperative’s input is basically not relevant. Surprisingly, however, one arbitrator expressed a dissenting opinion, arguing that not only should the cooperative be heard, but that failing to admit their concerns exposes the failings of the arbitration system with potentially far reaching impacts on environmental protection in Mexico...

In 2012, Odyssey acquired a majority holding in Oceanic Resources (ExO) and obtained a 50-year, renewable concession for the Don Diego marine phosphate project in the Gulf of Ulloa... Mexican environmental authorities denied Odyssey the environmental permit necessary to operate... Odyssey has sued at every stage of the process...

Odyssey’s phosphate project overlaps with the Cooperatives fishing concession, located about 12 miles off the coast of Baja California Sur near the seaside towns of San Juanico and Las Barrancas...

The cost of such suits is not just monetary, as Sands acknowledges in his dissenting opinion, but can effectively pressure governments to weaken protections for people and the environment in order to settle or avoid future suits...