This week, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous organization within the United Nations, is meeting in Kingston, Jamaica to decide the fate of the planet’s oceans.
ISA’s 168 member-nations ultimately possess the regulatory responsibilities and governance rules for the protection of the marine environment for all mineral activities on the sea floor.
A geopolitical shift is underway against land-based mining, due to its social and environmental costs. This is why ISA is debating the environmental challenges and risks associated with deep-seabed mining.
Seabed mining permits the commercial exploitation of marine minerals for various everyday applications, such as to power laptops, phones and electric vehicles and to help secure a low-carbon future. Unlike land-based mining, which often involves extreme destruction and pollution of thousands of acres, seabed mining simply involves vacuuming up mineral-rich nodules, which sit unattached to the ocean floor.
Despite last month’s historic UN Ocean Treaty, aiming to conserve marine biodiversity, both private and public interest in exploiting these minerals has now brought ISA into the global spotlight.
More than 21 governments and numerous non-government organizations, including the U.S., are calling for a ban or moratorium on seabed mining. There is resistance to this because the world faces a conundrum on how best to meet the world’s demand for cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese — elements essential to the manufacture of batteries used in electric vehicles and for clean-energy storage.
This week’s meeting in Jamaica was prompted by a 2021 announcement by the Central Pacific island nation of Nauru. Its decision to begin exploiting deep sea minerals under a controversial two-year rule requires ISA’s provisional approval. This has in turn forced ISA to finalize and adopt regulations for deep-sea mining going forward.
The question is more complex than simply whether such activity is desirable. We might not mine for undersea minerals in an ideal world, but leaders have already made crucial commitments to limit the rise in the earth’s temperature under the Paris Agreement. And these commitments probably cannot be met without seabed mining.
If the future of American vehicles is electric, then China’s government already stands to dominate the battery supply chain. Even more, a massive new supply of key minerals will be necessary just to meet California’s state goal of almost-all-electric road transportation by 2035, let alone bigger national or international goals that involve extensive use of battery technology.
This has not been lost on Washington. With proactive policies to make deep sea mining easier, the federal government could strengthen national security and increase economic output. Yet two weeks ago, Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) introduced H.R. 4537, prohibiting deep seabed mining activities.
The International Energy Agency expects demand for cobalt, copper, nickel, and rare earth elements to double or even triple within the next twenty years. By on-shoring primary processing and refining of these valuable minerals from the seafloor relatively close to the U.S. mainland, the U.S. can secure supply and achieve mineral independence in four battery metals while supporting domestic companies and jobs.
But the deeper impetus is the need to reduce the extremely negative environmental and social impact of geopolitically-complex material supply chains controlled by China, which can be seen in such places as the unstable Democratic Republic of Congo.
The negative environmental impacts associated with land-based mining are well documented. They include toxic wastewater, deforestation, soil contamination and even, in some parts of the globe, child labor. Many believe that deep-sea mining can accomplish the same goals without these dire effects.
The exploration of deep seabed claims is expensive. One Canadian company has spent more than $300 million since 2012 to demonstrate the concept. It has collected more than 3,000 tons of potato-sized nodules from the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, a 1,7 million square-mile area situated in the ocean area between Hawaii and the West Coast that is up to 3.4 miles beneath the ocean’s surface.
These mineral-rich nodules could play a valuable role in the U.S. economy, contributing to such industries as transportation, defense, aerospace, electronics, energy, construction, and health care.
America faces a mineral deficit. The U.S. can no longer rely on China for its supply of the minerals necessary either for sensitive military hardware or the battery technologies required for an environmentally sustainable future. This action is especially pressing since China holds five out of 31 ISA deep-sea mineral exploration contract, and the productivity of environmentally-destructive land mining is in decline.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a member of the International Seabed Authority, which was mandated under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Some suggest that the U.S. lost its way after the U.S. Congress passed the Marine Resources and Engineering Act of 1966, which sought to advance ocean research, resources development and meteorological prediction.
Under President Nixon, a commission was appointed to create a national action plan to mine ocean minerals, but it never gained any traction because of the high costs and lack of technology.
Now U.S. companies are reluctant to make that seabed investment, because of the risk that their mining activities will not withstand a legal challenge, since the U.S. is not a party to the Convention. Conversely, foreign companies, including China, who are UNCLOS member nations, have access to the international bodies that grant legal claims to operate in the deep seabed area.
While the U.S. Congress is weighing in on this national security interest, it may also wish to consider ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, since the treaty considers all deep-sea minerals collected in areas beyond national jurisdictions to be available for everyone’s use and benefit. The U.S. has never accepted that provision.
Although the environmentalist opposition has invoked science to halt or hit the pause button on seabed explorations, it is essential to close the gaps on available knowledge about mining’s impact on the marine biology and environment. One MIT exploration study has revealed that there may be less damage to marine ecosystems associated with the plumes of sediment stirred up by the collector vacuums, but more modeling efforts may be required to analyze the results after the dust settles.
While there remain some questions about the costs and environmental effects in the search for new sources of metals, the many opportunities for a green future are unlikely to be met without seabed mining. Without access to the minerals needed to meet the demand for electric cars and reduce carbon emissions, our hoped-for green energy future will be in peril.
James Borton is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins/SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and the author of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground.