breaking it down: seabed mining

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breaking it down: the rush to mine the deep seabed

See the seabed mining page for a general introduction to the topic

The extraction of seabed minerals from the ocean floor is seen by some as the way forward in our transition away from fossil fuels. Batteries, solar panels and wind turbines all need metals and minerals which can be found in the polymetalic nodules lying on the ocean floor. By ‘harvesting’ these nodules we can extract cobalt, lithium, copper, zinc, iron, nickel and maganese as well as rare earth elements and thereby reduce the necessity for land-based mining in parts of the world where human rights and child labour issues cause concern.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been working on the so-called Mining Code since 2014, this is the regulatory framework for prospecting, exploration and exploration of the international seabed Area (the ocean floor beyond national jurisdiction), which should be in place before any extractive activity may take place. Progress is slow and the Legal and Technical Committee of the ISA is still far from completing the code.

In 2021, Nauru triggered a rule embedded in the 1994 Implementation Agreement, putting pressure on the ISA to complete the Code by summer 2023. Since then, in view of the tight timeframe and the unlikely situation that the Code will be completed in time, the number of calls for a pause in seabed mining have been growing, calling for further research to take place in order to evaluate the impact of seabed mining before the industry takes off. Discussion is ongoing as to whether Nauru should be allowed to continue without the adoption of the code.