Decisive crossroads in race to bottom

It is a part of our world that is more alien to us than the surface of Mars. There are precious treasures that can give our sustainable transition a boost – and a fragile environment with species that we have never seen. Soon a decision will be made about mining at the deepest bottom of the world’s oceans. Major stakeholders are in the starting pits.

In a certain area of the Pacific Ocean, at depths of between 3,500 and 5,500 meters, there are vast fields covered in lumps of rock the size of potatoes. The lumps contain nickel, copper, manganese and cobalt – and in this particular area there are probably more of these metals than there are on land on the whole earth.

The area is called the Clarion-Clipperton zone and major powers and big business have already been given the right to start prospecting for a large-scale mining of its bottom.

The industry is ready with large machines that can be lowered into the depths and, like threshers, harvest lumps of stone from the bottom corals.

Aspiring mining giants have ensured that the UN-chartered seabed authority ISA must shortly make a decision on whether to allow bottom mining – or stop altogether.

Be in commercials

As the world turns away from fossil fuels, the value of rare metals used in, for example, car batteries and wind turbines rises.

– Land-based resources are becoming increasingly difficult to access. We have already taken the best resources,” says Michael Lodge, director general of the seabed authority ISA, in a film clip that has attracted the attention of, among others, the Los Angeles Times.

The film clip in question attracted a lot of criticism, even among Lodge’s colleagues within the ISA. The general manager spoke during a trip to the Clarion-Clipperton zone, where he accompanied the fast-growing Canadian mining company The Metals Company (formerly Deepgreen Metals).

The clip in which Lodge speaks out became part of the company’s marketing, as part of a commercial in which all the benefits of the planned business were highlighted.

ISA has already issued 31 exploration permits for the seabed in international waters. It is both private and state actors who have been given permission to investigate the possibilities of mining and it is above all in the Clarion-Clipperton zone in the Pacific Ocean.

The research community is sounding the alarm

All in all, it is about 1.3 million square kilometers of seabed that is being explored. The mission of the UN agency ISA is to regulate the exploitation of the seabed in international waters, manage “humanity’s common heritage” and safeguard the deep-sea sensitive ecosystems.

More than 650 marine environment researchers from about 40 different countries have signed a demand for a moratorium on the exploitation of the seabed. Several international and largely battery-dependent corporate giants have also backed it.

It is discovered for even new animals and organisms in the depths, far further down than sunlight reaches. We know too little about how ecosystems will be affected, according to scientists and environmental organizations. They warn of the mass death of life forms that have not yet even been discovered.

It is pointed out that large noisy machines will stir up sediment and pollute the deep sea – which is often held up as the earth’s main carbon sink.

“Deep-sea mining could cause a devastating array of effects that would threaten the processes that are critical to the health and functioning of the oceans,” British star zoologist David Attenborough warned the other year, when the organisation Fauna & Flora International released a report highlighting the downsides of mining.

Many critics argue that much would be gained with a more successful recycling of the rare metals already mined on land.

Collaborating with island nation

The industry, and The Metals Company, state, among other things, that the stones on the seabed contain no toxic heavy metals and that the mining does not cause any waste.

The ISA has long been trying to develop an international regulatory framework, but now it is urgent. It depends on Nauru.

The Oceanian island state, which has about 10,000 inhabitants, has partnered with The Metals Company and last summer made a formal request for a Naurian company to begin deep-sea mining. The Nauranian company is wholly owned by the Canadian corporation.

According to a special formality within the ISA, a decision must then be made within two years. Rules must therefore be nailed down by next summer.

China is the state actor with the greatest interest in the issue, as the country’s companies have secured the most exploration permits, five. The country has already subjugated a large part of the world’s cobalt production, including through a large ownership in the criticized mining industry in Congo-Kinshasa.

Russia, Japan and South Korea are also reported to have pushed for a permissive line within the ISA. The United States has opted out of international cooperation.

In the north, many states, including a Norwegian company, have begun to take an interest in deep-sea mining in the Arctic.

“Haven’t we learned?”

When ISA members met last summer, several states objected to a decision being forced in a short period of time. Chile requested a 15-year moratorium in order for science to provide further answers. Several Pacific nations called for a definitive halt.

– How can we in good conscience say that we should start mining without knowing what the risks are? Palestinian President Surangel Whipps asked the Assembly at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon.

– Haven’t we learned our lesson? We simply do not know what we will unleash by descending hundreds, thousands of meters to the bottom of the ocean,” World Wide Fund for Nature’s top executive Marco Lambertini told Reuters at the same conference.

The ISA and its chief executive Michael Lodge have been repeatedly criticized for a lack of transparency in decision-making. Lodge has refuted all such allegations and, among other things, attributed much of the criticism to “almost fanatical” environmentalists.

At the beginning of September, a new development took place in anticipation of the big decision. The Metals Company announced that it had received permission from the ISA to conduct an initial test drilling in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. When the company itself announced this, the drilling had already been completed.