[Miner Dig Deep Pc
Virginie Fayad
Deep-sea mining is the process of extracting and often excavating mineral deposits from the deep seabed. The deep seabed is the seabed at ocean depths greater than 200m, and covers about two-thirds of the total seafloor. Research suggests deep-sea mining could severely harm marine biodiversity and ecosystems, but we still lack the knowledge and means to implement protections.
Despite this, there is growing interest in the mineral deposits of the seabed. This is said to be due to depleting terrestrial deposits of metals such as copper, nickel, aluminium, manganese, zinc, lithium and cobalt. Demand for these metals is also increasing to produce technologies like smartphones, wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.
To date, the ISA has only issued exploration contracts, but is developing regulations to govern the transition to exploitation. In June 2021, the Government of Nauru notified the ISA of their intention to start deep-sea mining, triggering a rush to finalise the ISA regulations.
Mining in international waters could commence as soon as 2026; even though vital research and work to adopt the required regulations, standards and guidelines to manage deep-sea mining sustainably is far from complete.
As the deep sea remains understudied and poorly understood, there are many gaps in our understanding of its biodiversity and ecosystems. This makes it difficult to assess the potential impacts of deep-sea mining or to put in place adequate safeguards to protect the marine environment, and the three billion people whose livelihoods depend on marine and coastal biodiversity.
Disturbance of the seafloor
The digging and gauging of the ocean floor by machines can alter or destroy deep-sea habitats. This leads to the loss of species, many of which are found nowhere else, and the fragmentation or loss of ecosystem structure and function. It is the most direct impact from deep-sea mining and the damage caused is most likely permanent.
Pollution
Species such as whales, tuna and sharks could be affected by noise, vibrations and light pollution caused by mining equipment and surface vessels, as well as potential leaks and spills of fuel and toxic products.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Area and its mineral resources are the common heritage of humankind. This means they must be managed on behalf of and in the interests of all humanity including through: the sharing of economic benefits; support for marine scientific research; and the effective protection of the marine environment.
At the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille (September 2021), IUCN Members adopted Resolution 122 to protect deep-ocean ecosystems and biodiversity through a moratorium on deep-sea mining unless and until a number of conditions are met. These include:
Reliance on metals from mining can be reduced by redesigning, reusing and recycling. In addition, research should focus on creating more sustainable alternatives to their use because deep-sea mining could irreparably harm marine ecosystems, and limit the many benefits the deep sea provides to humanity.
Session 1: What is Deep Sea Mining?
With keynotes by Lauren Kubiak and Katherine G. Sammler, this session will introduce the various types of materials, technologies, and stakeholders involved in deep sea mining and clarify its processes and consequences. It will introduce the scenarios and geographies planned for this future type of experimental mining, particularly in the context of the Pacific, taking into account that first tests of the process have already begun in Papua New Guinea and more are planned for other island territories in the region.
Session 2: Deep Sea Frontier
Frontiers regimes are being negotiated as the rush towards deep sea mining brings about a new horizon for extraction. With a recorded introduction by Stefan Helmreich, and keynotes by D. Graham Burnett and Jessica F. Green, this session explores historical and ontological questions surrounding deep sea ecosystems by speculating about complex forms of planetary life and its origins, while introducing policy debates. Speakers will address the shift towards underwater colonialism and how visual and rhetorical strategies serve as tools for representing the unknown, be they in the fields of scientific analysis, politics, or data visualization.
Katherine G. Sammler is an Assistant Professor at California State University Maritime Academy in the department of Global Studies and Maritime Affairs. She has a background in physics and atmospheric sciences and received her doctorate in geography from the University of Arizona. She conducts research on issues where politics and power intersect with geophysics and environmental change. Her work has included investigations of competing interests in outer space access and resources, resistance to Pacific seabed mining prospecting, and the construction of Mean Sea Level as a vertical datum in relation to legal implications of rising seas.
Jessica F. Green is an assistant professor in the environmental studies department at New York University. Her research focuses on transnational private regulation and its interactions with authority. She is the author of Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance (Princeton, 2014).
Inhabitants is a website and online video channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting. Inhabitants produces and streams short-form videos intended for online distribution, with each episode focusing on a different topic or working in the format of thematic webseries.
Support for public programs is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The Joint Action is implemented through two consecutive research projects which ran from 2015 untill 2022. Since 2018, the MiningImpact 2 project followed up on the results of the first JPI Oceans supported MiningImpact project (2015-2017). While the initial project investigated experimental and rather small disturbances of the seafloor over decadal timescales, the new project conducted a comprehensive monitoring programme to ensure an independent scientific investigation of the environmental impacts of a manganese nodule collector system by the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (DEME-GSR).
After an evaluation of the MiningImpact 2 project in the fall of 2022, funders, supported by experts, policy makers explored the potential of a succcesor activity. This was complemented by a stakeholder consultation workshop in March 2023 at which representatives from NGOs and industry were consulted to provide their perspective on a third phase of the Joint Action. Following up, in April 2023 the JPI Oceans Management Board approved the successor phase of the Joint Action on the ecological aspects of deep-sea mining under the condition of support from four JPI Oceans member countries.
Since 2015 the JPI Oceans Joint Action has successfully demonstrated how integrated scientific research can be organized in two European trans-disciplinary research projects (MiningImpact I & II) and how marine research infrastructure can be utilized jointly and efficiently to tackle deep-sea research questions and close scientific knowledge gaps. With both MiningImpact projects having delivered valuable input into the ongoing development of an international Mining Code at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), JPI Oceans has made a significant contribution to generate the necessary evidence base underpinning the development of the international governance framework for the potential exploitation of deep seabed resources. By funding top-notch interdisciplinary science, JPI Oceans and its member countries have given the European science community a common approach to these global long-term negotiations, ensuring that global policies are based on the best available scientific knowledge.
With deep-sea mining inevitably causing disturbances to abyssal ecosystems, because mineral deposits in focus cover extended areas of the inhabited seafloor that will be disturbed directly and indirectly by mining operations, it is important that international legislation is based on the best available knowledge. JPI Oceans aimed to contribute to the development of the Mining Code by filling knowledge gaps in the field.
In the deep sea, these minerals are contained within slow-forming, potato-sized polymetallic nodules, as well as in polymetallic sulphides (large deposits made up of sulphur compounds and other metals that form around hydrothermal vents) and metal-rich crusts on underwater mountains (seamounts). While there has been commercial interest in these minerals for decades, recent advancements in technology have made it possible to mine these areas by sending vehicles down to harvest mineral deposits from the seafloor.
While exploratory mining to test equipment has occurred at a small scale, deep-sea mining has not yet been undertaken commercially. But some national governments and mining companies plan to begin as soon as possible, which could be within the next few years. What happens next will largely hinge on the ISA and how it decides to regulate deep-sea mining.
In January 2024, Norway initiated a process to open its own waters for exploration of deep-sea mineral resources, likely starting in the early 2030s. Other countries may follow suit, though in practice, many will be constrained by a lack of available funding and technical ability. There is also a great diversity of opinion on seabed mining among nation states. Some, such as Norway and Nauru, are leading the charge for exploration and extraction; others, such as Germany and Canada, as well as the European Parliament, have called for national and regional moratoria.
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