Deep Sea Mining: the quandary for us all
Just think for yourself and your family: How many redundant pieces of technology or any sort of gear containing metals are sitting in your home today? Perhaps between us we could do a count in each household so we get a better idea of the collective total for Arran. Because if recycling was much better managed on an individual, and island recycling and government policy level, the shouts for Deep Sea Mining for metals would be far less!
This month the 29th Session of the ISA Council has met from 18-29 March and the General Assembly will meet at the end of July 2024. So, what is the ISA?
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is a Kingston, Jamaica-based intergovernmental body of 167 member states and the European Union established under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and its 1994 Agreement on Implementation.
The ISA’s dual mission is to
- authorize and control development of mineral related operations in the international seabed considered the “common heritage of all mankind“
- and also protect the ecosystem of the seabed, ocean floor and subsoil in “The Area” beyond national jurisdiction. The ISA is to safeguard the international deep sea, the waters below 200 metres or 656 feet, where photosynthesis is hampered by inadequate light. Governing approximately half of the total area of the world’s oceans.
In addition, the ISA is to exercise oversight of activities that might threaten biological diversity and harm the marine environment. The Authority operates as an autonomous international organisation with its own Assembly, Council and Secretariat.
Greenpeace has been advocating no deep sea mining for years, and its objection has sound scientific and ecosystem evidence to support this stance. The deep oceans play an important part in the ecosystems of climate control and there is a rich living ecosystem even at great depths, part of the great complexity of the marine exchange ecosystem. Behind the scenes, a new destructive industry is emerging which threatens to become a new frontier of ocean destruction – deep sea mining. Now miners and environmentalists are locked in a battle over a multi-billion dollar treasure trove of metals at the bottom of our deepest oceans.
Now drama on the high seas miles above the seafloor is heating up the fight. One mining company, The Metals Company, wants Greenpeace out of UN talks for disrupting its research expedition. The company claims Greenpeace activists caused this disruption when they boarded its research vessel in the remote Pacific. As a result, the campaign group could be thrown out of the UN body ISA overseeing these controversial plans to begin deep-sea mining. Member states of the UN’s International Seabed Authority could choose to strip Greenpeace of its observer status within the group.
The question for all of us is who will hold these pirates of the high seas to account, and provide the evidence that counters the arguments that mining the deep oceans is critical to provide the metals needed?
What are these metals that are being sought from the deep oceans floor? Four major ones for the growth in demand from clean energy technologies are cobalt, nickel, manganese and copper. Green campaigners say there are sufficient supplies of the metals on land and no ocean mining should be allowed until the deep-sea environment, and the impact mining will have on it, are much better understood.
Whether action will be taken against Greenpeace will be decided by country representatives at an International Seabed Authority (ISA) meeting this week., the last week of March. Greenpeace says the action they took was justified because The Metals Company has said it plans to press ahead with mining before regulations have been agreed.
Mining companies plan to use machines like huge vacuum cleaners to trundle over the seabed, hoovering up the nodules.
These latest international talks continue an ongoing effort to decide what rules should apply to companies that want to collect minerals from the abyssal plain, one of the deepest parts of the ocean. The ISA has said it aims to have rules in place by 2025. The greatest concentration of these mineral nodules is at depths between 4,000m and 6,000m (13,123-19,685ft). They are found across much of the deep ocean floor. The Metals Company plans to mine in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. The CEO of The Metals Company, Gerard Barron, acknowledges that the 75,000 sq km his company plans to mine is big, but says it represents a tiny proportion of the deep seabed.
Until recent research indicated otherwise, it was assumed that very little could live in these cold, dark and oxygen-poor depths. The density of living things is indeed low, but findings over the last few decades has revealed a huge diversity of species, including a great many which are new to science. The abyssal plain is vast. It covers 40% of the entire surface of the Earth. Land makes up just 29%. A vast stretch of ocean floor earmarked for deep sea mining is home to thousands of oddball sea creatures, most of them, until recently, unknown to science. They include weird worms, brightly coloured sea cucumbers and corals. Scientists have put together the first full stocktake of species to help weigh up the risks to biodiversity. They say more than 5,000 different animals have been found in the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean. This area is a prime contender for the mining of precious metals from the sea bed, which could begin as early as this year.
Greenpeace rejects the idea that deep-sea mining could have any environmental benefits. “Deep-sea mining is not a climate solution,” says the organisation’s lead oceans campaigner, Louisa Casson. “I think it is clear that to protect the climate, we need to be restoring our oceans, protecting them, not destroying them further by adding new pressures.” Greenpeace maintains it was justified in disrupting The Metals Company’s research because it was “tick-box science by a company with a commercial interest in the outcomes of that research”.
Both the mining companies and green activists claim to be acting in the best interests of the planet. Miners and a range of environmentalists are now locked in a battle over a multi-billion dollar treasure trove of metals at the bottom of our deepest oceans. The metals the companies want to exploit have built up over tens of millions of years into potato-sized lumps, known as polymetallic nodules. Mining companies say the copper, cobalt, nickel and manganese they contain are crucial battery metals.
The technology associated with renewable energy including generation, transmission, battery storage and energy transfer to heat and mechanical movement is moving fast and forms of other more abundant elements will be found in due course to displace the demand for exotic often rare minerals.
Twenty-four countries, including the UK, have said they support a moratorium on deep-sea mining. They say licensing must wait until sufficient scientific evidence is available to assess the impact and to draw up regulations that protect the deep oceans. A group of British scientists is currently surveying species on the abyssal plain in the eastern Pacific. Speaking from the research vessel RRS James Cook, Dr Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum told the BBC he supported the regulatory process the UN has put in place. “It is a new industry and we should be concerned and we should ask difficult questions,” Dr Glover said.
Sadly, Norway has become the first country in the world to move forward with the controversial practice of commercial-scale deep-sea mining. The bill, passed recently, will accelerate the hunt for precious metals which are in high demand for green technologies. Norway’s proposal will open up 280,000 sq km (108,000 sq miles) of its national waters for companies to apply to mine these sources – an area bigger than the size of the UK. Already environmental scientists have warned it could be devastating for marine life. The plan concerns Norwegian waters only for now, but agreement on mining in international waters could also be reached this year. Martin Webeler, oceans campaigner and researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation, said it is “catastrophic” for the ocean habitat. “The Norwegian government always highlighted that they want to implement the highest environmental standards,” he said. “That is hypocritical whilst you are throwing away all the scientific advice.” Techniques to harvest the minerals from the sea floor could generate significant noise and light pollution, as well as damage to the habitat of organisms relying on the nodules, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
But there is some swell of opinion from industry too in this long-running dispute over plans to start mining the ocean floor. For years it was only environmental groups that objected to the idea of digging up metals from the deep sea. But now BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung are lending their weight in calls for a moratorium on the proposals.
So, now the deep oceans appear to be up for grabs, even with environmental groups and some industry giants, users of these metals, objecting. A new money tree for miners, banks and wealthy companies to exploit. All of us need to be more aware of the importance of recycling metals, especially those with electronics incorporated. We need to pressure North Ayrshire Council to recycle all these as a priority and individually look at what happens to our “old” IT equipment and as I wrote at the top of this article, JUST HOW MUCH ARE YOU HOARDING IN DRAWERS, CUPBOARDS, EVEN the GARDEN SHED and not thinking that each one has a value in the circular economy, and recycling responsibly can protect the ecosystems of the oceans, from small jellyfish to our great whales. Perhaps an Arran project to count our hoards would assist an understanding at the quantity about 5,000 residents have on Arran will open our eyes?
Sally Campbell
March 2024
