The UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) has begun a crucial round of negotiations in Jamaica to try to reach agreement on the rules governing deep-sea mining, a day after companies were allowed to file for permits to mine the oceans. Defenders of the deep are also ramping up their efforts to stop or at least slow down the process.
The ocean is home to many rare earth minerals and metals that are vital to the renewable energy technologies driving the energy transition.
"We're talking about cobalt, nickel and manganese," says Jean-Marc Daniel, director of the Physical Resources and Seabed Ecosystems department at Ifremer.
Manganese is used in steel production, copper or nickel in batteries and cobalt in electric cars.
"When we talk about electrifying a fleet of vehicles, we need to find cobalt,” Daniel told RFI’s Simon Roze. “For this resource, we’re hugely dependent on a single state – the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
Cobalt-mining in DRC has been denounced as a dirty business, not least for its exploitation of cobalt miners, including children.
And yet the demand for resources like lithium and cobalt continues to rise, and fast.
The International Energy Agency estimates that if climate goals are fully pursued through the expansion of renewable energies, cobalt supplies will need to increase four-fold by 2030.
To fill the gap, some countries and companies are increasingly looking seaward.
Nauru pushes for permit
While there is still no internationally agreed code for mining the ocean floor, it’s the job of Kingston-based ISA, which was set up under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to oversee mining in international waters.
And that could happen sooner rather than later.
In 2021, the small Pacific island state of Nauru sparked controversy by making a formal request to ISA for a commercial licence to begin deep sea mining, in support of an application by the Canadian company The Metals Company (TMC).
Nauru triggered a clause demanding that an agreement to examine mining permits be reached within two years, while negotiations on a mining code are ongoing.
As a result, countries and companies can now file for mining permits.
The 36-member ISA council will have to consider Nauru's request during the meeting in Kingston from 10 to 21 July, but may not necessarily give the green light.
ISA is entering “the most critical decision-making period in the history of its existence,” said Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
An under-researched ecosystem
Promoters of deep-sea mining vaunt its importance in the fight against global warming, including far lower carbon emissions compared to nickel extraction on land.
But environmentalist NGOs are worried about the damage it will cause to the seabed – a treasure trove for biodiversity.
Mining could destroy habitats and species that may still be unknown but which could be vital to ecosystems.
They say it also risks disrupting the ocean's capacity to absorb the CO2 emitted by human activities.
"We have the opportunity to anticipate this new extractive industry and stop it before it can do any damage to our planet," said Louisa Casson of Greenpeace.
In a recent report, Europe's science academies (EASAC) warned of the dire consequences on marine ecosystems and challenged the business case for deep-sea mining on any scale until the potential for recycling has been fully explored.
“The narrative that deep-sea mining is essential to meeting our climate targets and thus a green technology is misleading”, said Michael Norton, EASAC's Environment Director.
Finding a legal framework
While some NGOs fear companies could exploit the current legal vacuum, they hope that the 36 member states of the ISA council, the decision-making body on contracts, will delay the start of deep-sea mining for as long as possible.
"There is a fairly broad consensus that mining should not begin immediately without a legal framework or solid scientific data,” Anne-Sophie Roux of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance told RFI’s Simon Roze.
Long-term, however, it will be more complicated since some of the countries that are currently opposed to allowing deep sea mining, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, are interested in the long-term.
"In the Council, they will be in favour of preventing mining from starting up straight away, but because of their economic interests, they would like to go and mine one day.”
Louisa Casson of Greenpeace takes heart in the fact some companies appear to be losing interest.
"We're seeing more and more private sector players losing interest," she tells RFI, citing Lockheed Martin pulling out of the sector and global shipping and logistics company Maersk having “sold all its shares in The Metals Company (TMC)”.
Casson claims the slump in the price of TMC shares shows “a sign of low investor confidence”.
Precautionary pause
Meanwhile, Chile, France, Palau and Vanuatu have chosen to take the debate to the political level.
At their request, the assembly of ISA's 167 member states will discuss a "precautionary pause" in mining when it meets between July 24 and 28.
France – the world's second largest maritime power – hopes to weigh in the balance.
"The aim is to put the issue on the table, to have a debate that has never taken place before", French Secretary of State for the Sea Herve Berville told French news agency AFP, hoping that this will "encourage other countries to follow suit."
The coalition supporting the moratorium, although gaining ground, is currently made up of just under 20 countries.
Berville hopes that "by 2024, it will be clear to a majority of countries that a precautionary pause in the exploitation of the seabed is the right thing to do if we are to meet the challenges of climate change and biodiversity".
He insists it's a "question of credibility" at a time when the world has just adopted the first treaty to protect the high seas and has set itself the target of preserving 30 percent of land and oceans by 2030.
