Deep-sea mining is a possibility, but not a definite

Hard on the heels of Norway's announcement that it intends to mine the seabed for rare mineral nodules, comes another announcement, by the Canadian-owned company The Metals Company (TMC), that it is looking to mine the deeo sea around Nauru in the South Pacific.

Now, you'd think that there were laws against that, but not so. Or not quite. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the autonomous organization whose task it is to regulate mining on the ocean floor, failed - as of July 9th - to agree and legalize those rules (known as the Mining Code), and companies can technically now legally apply for deep-sea mining permits, despite an almost complete absence of environmental protections. 

So, of course, they will. In spite of the huge investments involved in such a technically challenging project, there will always be companies (and states) willing to take those risks because the potential payback is huge. Minerals like nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese and other rare-earth elements - minerals that are essential for electrification and energy transition (think EV batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, etc) - are available in large quantities in the deep ocean.

Mining companies like The Metals Company argue that climate change and the energy transition is too important to be held up by some bureaucratic rules about potential seabed harms. They hold themselves up as environmental saviours, although their real motivation is the profit motive. They also argue that mining of any kind is inherently destructive (true), and that deep-sea mining can actually be less environmentally destructive than land mining (very debatable).

The mining of deep-sea rocks known as polymetallic nodules using robotic cutting machines presents many environmental challenges, principally the destruction and compaction of substantial tracts of the ocean floor, and the creation of huge sediment plumes that impact aquatic life well above the sea-bed. Add to this noise pollution, electromagnetic effects, disruption of larvae habitat, contamination, fluid flow changes, and changes to the flow of nutrients, and it is clear that there are plenty of reasons to ban such deep-sea mining.

The Metals Company is just one of 18 companies or states that have applied to the ISA for testing and sampling permits. Thus far, none of them has been granted an actual mining contract, but time is pressing. If the ISA and its constituents members cannot get its act together soon to establish oceans protections, then the genie may be out of the bottle. If rapacious and unethical actors like Russia snd China are allowed in on the act, then all bets are off for the health of the ocean floor.

The ISA has been negotiating the Mining Code since 2014, but these negotiations have become bogged down in recent years, and now matters have come to a head. If the ISA manages to finalize the Mining Code by July 21st, then it could be agreed by the entire ISA Assembly at their end-of-the-month meeting. But this seems like a very tall order.

In the meantime, there is perhaps one saving grace. The ISA Council did make one important decision at its March meeting: commercial deep-sea mining should NOT take place in the ABSENCE of regulations. The ISA could also choose to issue a temporary moratorium on deep-sea mining, something that many environmental organizations, countries (Canada recently came out in favour of it, to its credit, joining a growing list of nations), seafood and other concerned companies (Google, BMW, Volvo and Samsung among them) are strongly advocating.