This is the sixth in a series of articles addressing the global energy transition as an opportunity to reduce continuing damage and inequities, and to revise the global ethic of development in favor of human and earth-centric values. Ed. note: You can find all of the previous posts in this series on Resilience.org here, here, here, here, and here.
As demand projections for minerals critical to a de-carbonized economy become clear and the extent and potential of global resources for those minerals are calculated, attention is increasingly drawn to the prospect of deep-water extraction. Individual nations, the scientific community, and international governing structures have been moving in this direction for two decades. Extended debates within the International Seabed Authority (ISA) over legalities, rules, authority, and timelines for finalizing a regulatory framework for Deep Sea Mining (DSM) in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction are culminating in a promise of producing a comprehensive document in 2025. The process has been anything but smooth.
Since 2001, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an intergovernmental body in charge of regulating deep-sea mining in waters beyond national jurisdictions, has granted 31 exploratory licenses to private companies and governmental agencies. The organization is unlikely to approve commercial mining applications until its 36-member council reaches consensus on rules regarding exploitation and the environment. Member states have set a 2025 timeline to finalize and adopt the regulations.
John L. Mero (1965) sparked considerable interest in mineral deposits when he estimated huge ferromanganese (Fe–Mn)-nodule resources in the Pacific Ocean and predicted an essentially endless supply of metals such as manganese, copper, nickel, and cobalt. Exploratory ventures have since produced a widely accepted understanding of what minerals can be mined, the distinct geological conditions of each, their accessibility, volumes, and concentrations.
Credit: Yang H. Ku/C&EN/Shutterstock
The technology exists to perform these mining operations under highly variable geological conditions and at depths ranging from 300-6000 meters. The potential locations vary from national Economic Exclusion Zones (EEZs) to the continental shelf to the deep and open seas.
Over millions of years, sulfides of manganese, copper, cobalt, lithium, and zinc have erupted from deep in the earth’s crust through hydrothermal vents and collected on the sea floor in increasing concentrations. The abundance of these vents is indicated in red on the map below. Manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, and low concentrations of rare earths have also been slowly precipitating on the remains of organic matter on the sea floor for about 200 million years. Their known distributions are indicated in the blue areas on the map.
These deposits become nodules of potato-sized lumps of rock spread across vast fields (10s-1000s of km2 ) of abyssal plains at depths up to 4000m that are, in the minds of an increasing number of mining executives, just waiting for someone to scoop them up using undersea robots and to be piped to surface vessels for processing. The relative concentrations of metals vary from fields in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific fields near Hawaii, to the Peruvian Basin. The Europe-sized Clarion-Clapperton Zone lying between Hawaii and Mexico is said to contain more nickel and cobalt than all known surface reserves combined.
There is no question as to the abundance of these polymetallic nodules, cobalt crusts on the sides of undersea volcanic rock or the sulfide rich muds surrounding hydrothermal vents. Volume estimates of these high-quality ores exceed billions of tons, with estimates of nodule density as high as 75kg/m2 in some areas. Even if existing sampling technologies (swarms of autonomous hovering vehicles–underwater drones equipped with mapping technologies) used to determine mineral density on the seabed are imperfect, reasonable estimates for a half-dozen metals are 3-5x greater than all known land-based reserves. With demand for critical minerals rising geometrically, there is also no longer any question of the commercial viability of collection and processing.
However, there are just a few kinks to work out. What we now have is a rush to conduct research, with nations and companies edging aggressively toward commercial operations in a manner that threatens to precede the creation of regulatory frameworks or to influence those frameworks before they ever see the light of day. As always, the primary issues at the heart of debate are who determines the sovereignty of the seabed, whether and where nations can oversee DSM or whether private entities can operate independently, who oversees such operations and who decides to issue permits for DSM.
Undersea mining raises the same questions of aesthetics, ecological ethics and sustainability posed by surface mining. When we ponder the vastness, the mystery, and the depth, we may be seduced into thinking the proposed activity couldn’t be any worse than the destruction of the Indonesian rain forest, for example, that we see from nickel mining. Deep sea ecologies remain shrouded in ignorance. DSM does represent a massive extension of existing extractive economics, yet for all its visibility, it might as well be taking place on the moon.
There will be no CO2 released into the ‘atmosphere’ of the ocean. There will be little or no human rights offenses familiar to land-based mining. There are no rivers to pollute. There are no peoples to colonize or displace. There will be no visible scars. Fresh water supplies will not figure into the proposition except in the refining process taking place on land. The ocean might as well be a new, vast, and pristine landscape of abundant resources that nations, Wall Street, and the development banks regard as necessary to spread the benefits of modernity. And DSM will more than compensate for declining ore qualities in land-based mines.
But there’s also this nagging issue of ecological impact. The primary disturbance to the marine environment would be the dredging equipment itself scooping up the surface layers of the seabed, creating giant plumes of sediment in the process, sending it to the surface for separation and processing and dumping the refuse, creating a second plume of sediment. DSM promises the dispersal of mountains of waste, spreading with ocean currents, potentially impacting fisheries, settling in unknown locations populated by a variety of micro- and macro-organisms, many of which remain unfamiliar to science. Immobile fauna will be smothered. The collection of ferro-manganese nodules from richly diverse zones such as the Clarion-Clapperton Zone will remove physical features of a landscape on which fauna depend. Disturbances of cobalt crusts in volcanic zones will remove nursery grounds or hiding places from predators.
What is known about deep seabed organisms is that their metabolic rates are low. They live a long time. They survive on very little food, and they may take many years to reproduce. Studies on the environmental effects of creating plumes of sediment that will settle and cover (and smother) such organisms on the sea floor or the effects of ploughing up large areas of the sea floor indicate that for all practical purposes, the damage is permanent. Sound waves produced by the robotic equipment on the seabed travel through the ocean approximately four times faster than they can travel through air and will increase the ambient background noise level up to 500 kilometers away from the mining site, potentially impacting mammals in that radius.
Dredging for nodules or sucking up the sulfide-rich mud or cracking the cobalt crusts of ancient undersea volcanoes will leave dead zones in their wake. The collection of sulfides will release toxic metals into the currents. Replacement of the Fe-Mn nodules is impossible since their growth rate is approximately on the same scale as fossil fuels—millions of years for a few millimeters of deposits. What we don’t fully understand is whether or how the communities of organisms found in these conditions are essential to the survival of the thousands of species found on the ocean floor yet to be classified, let alone understood, not to mention the larger food web of the sea. The remaining uncertainties about the impact of DSM, and the lack of any coordinated mitigation and restoration plans for disturbed areas or to create exclusion zones currently render DSM inherently unsustainable.
And one more thing. There is no regulatory framework for mining activities within economic exclusion zones and no standard for interpreting the spiritual beliefs and practices of indigenous island communities. In 2020, the prime minister of the Cook Islands, according to a press release, appointed seven members to the Seabed Minerals Advisory Committee to “provide a voice for the community” on whether to exploit seabed minerals within their territory. The committee’s chair, Bishop Tutai Pere, said in a speech at a ceremony licensing exploitation that it would be a sin to leave the nodules on the seabed. He claimed it was the national inheritance. In a Q&A posted on the SBMA website, Pere attributes discussion about the environmental impact of deep-sea mining to “only a fear of the untapped depth of the unknown, surrounded by sacred taboos, superstition, and lack of faith.” How can such an interpretation of science as a path of ‘superstition and sacred taboos’ be accounted for in a world on the brink?
The location of most known mineral deposits generally lie beyond the limits of defined national EEZs (200 nautical miles from shore). Therefore, the regulation of mining activity falls to an international framework. The existing UN Convention on the Law of the Seas expresses profound concern for the ocean environment and its language is uniquely unequivocal when it comes to compliance with its provisions as they are implemented by the ISA.
Seafloor minerals are the only example of a global resource that is under international contractual management by an international organization established exclusively for that purpose. This immediately distinguishes them from other resources in frontier environments, such as those in outer space. Therefore, the International Seabed Authority represents a unique experiment in international law, international relations, and international regulatory development.
Adjudication of disputes is established with clearly defined national responsibilities and liabilities. Within the ISA process, there is also a group of lawyers, scientists, geologists, and diplomats charged with technical assessment of all contracts issued by the ISA and follow-up review of performance and compliance with reporting requirements on a uniform mandated array of short and long-term scientific investigative procedures. None of this shields the ISA from criticism that it favors corporate interests.
Nevertheless, sovereignty issues are arising as nations jockey to define their EEZs, claiming areas beyond accepted national jurisdiction to be open to exclusive exploitation. Norway and Russia are jockeying over the polar ocean. China supports fast-tracking exploration contracts and is already engaging in slow-motion hegemonic incursions by claiming jurisdiction over large areas of the South China Sea for future exploitation. Territorial disputes are already underway with Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei. Globally, as of 2020, there are over 100 unresolved maritime boundary disputes.
Despite the existence of a highly evolved regulatory framework, the social license of DSM depends on resolving outstanding issues and upon completing a regulatory framework that is acceptable to all stakeholders. Such a process finds itself, just as it has in the case of surface extraction, in a direct encounter with an increasingly contorted definition of sustainability itself, evaluating the seemingly contradictory imperatives of social and environmental justice and the profit-driven motives of high finance to serve and enhance the human presence on the planet.
This is why hundreds of scientists and corporate giants such as Google, Volvo, BMW, and Samsung have called for a pause in any further deep sea mining development until adequate environmental safeguards can be defined. They are joined by Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Finland, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, and Vanuatu among 21 countries that also support a ban, moratorium, or precautionary pause on deep sea mining.
One might well ask whether any of the potential damage that could be done by sanctioned DSM could ever overtake the systemic damage already wrought by acidification and overheating or whether the purposes to which those minerals could be put could ever stall the ongoing damage.I doubt they ever could. The corporate juggernaut is loosed, and that pedestrian view is unlikely to have any bearing on what we are likely to see in the near future.
Citations:
A Critical Social Perspective on Deep Sea Mining: Lessons from the Emergent Industry in Japan
Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction
Clean Energy Can’t Come at the Expense of the Ocean—and it Doesn’t Have To
UN Convention on the Law of the Seas
Deep-Ocean Mineral Deposits: Metal Resources and Windows into Earth Processes
Deep-Sea Mining: International Regulatory Challenges and Responses
Ecological Aspects of Dee Sea Mining
Energetics of Life on the Deep Sea Floor
For Some Islanders, Seabed Mining Evokes Colonialism
Mining Deep Ocean Mineral Deposits: What Are the Ecological Risks?
Norway Leader on Deep Sea Mining, Carbon Capture and Wind Woes
Overcoming Critical Minerals Shortages Is Key to Achieving US Climate Goals
Palauan President Urges Global Moratorium on Deep-Sea Mining
Seabed Minerals Authority: Cook Islands
Seabed Mining in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction: Issues for Congress
The South China Sea’s Resource Wars
The Dangers of Deep Seabed Mining
The Geopolitics of Deep-Sea Mining and Green Technologies
The Mining Industry’s Next Frontier Is Deep, Deep Under the Sea
Total Competition: China’s Challenge in the South China Sea
Troubled Seas? The Changing Politics of Maritime Boundary Disputes
What We Know About Deep-sea Mining — And What We Don’t
