What is at stake for deep-sea mining?

The term “deep sea” brings to mind the adven­tures of Cap­tain Nemo aboard Jules Verne’s Nau­tilus… Since then, we have learned a lit­tle more about these envi­ron­ments – imag­ine vast expans­es that rep­re­sent 56% of the total sur­face of the ocean. For sci­en­tists, the deep sea gen­er­al­ly begins at a depth of more than 2,000 metres. But the geopo­lit­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion is dif­fer­ent in that the deep sea begins at the end of the con­ti­nen­tal shelf – clos­er to the con­ti­nents – at depths of over 200 metres. For the rest of the arti­cle, we will refer to the lat­ter definition.

If you look at a satel­lite view of the Earth, you can iden­ti­fy the deep sea at first glance. It is the dark blue water because, at these depths, light does not pen­e­trate. How­ev­er, there are many ani­mal species that reside there, even if they are few in num­ber. If you were to take a trip on the Nau­tilus, you would see large, flat, monot­o­nous areas – the abyssal plains – inter­spersed with numer­ous land­forms: seamounts, some­times active vol­ca­noes ¹ and ocean trench­es. Fly­ing over the ridges, you would see huge moun­tain ranges in the cen­tre of the oceans, which togeth­er total more than 60,000 km. That’s equiv­a­lent to 1.5 times around the Earth! 

“We know the sur­face of the Moon bet­ter than the bot­tom of our oceans!” Flo­ri­an Besson reveals. “The best bathy­met­ric map [aka. topog­ra­phy of the seabed] in exis­tence world­wide has a res­o­lu­tion of about 500 metres, com­pared with 1.5 metres on the Moon.” How­ev­er, almost 20% of the deep sea has been mapped more accu­rate­ly by ships equipped with depth probes. Through the Seabed2030 project, the Unit­ed Nations aims to map the entire seabed at high res­o­lu­tion by 2030.

One of the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the deep seabed is its polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion: only a small part of it lies with­in the Exclu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zones (EEZ). In this case, they come under nation­al juris­dic­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the exploita­tion of the min­er­als they con­tain. “In France, the min­ing code gov­erns the explo­ration and exploita­tion of resources on land but also applies at sea,” explains Flo­ri­an Besson. Since it was last updat­ed in 2021, it con­tains stricter envi­ron­men­tal require­ments. But most of the deep sea is locat­ed out­side the EEZ, in inter­na­tion­al waters. It is then the Inter­na­tion­al Seabed Author­i­ty (ISA) that leg­is­lates. It was cre­at­ed in 1994 fol­low­ing the entry into force of the 3rd Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The IAMF issues explo­ration and exploita­tion con­tracts and ensures their con­trol. Today, 31 con­tracts of explo­ration with a dura­tion of 15 years have already been grant­ed to 22 entities.

No frame­work has yet been defined for min­ing in inter­na­tion­al waters. “The cur­rent chal­lenge is to define reg­u­la­tions: it must guar­an­tee very high envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards and a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of ben­e­fits among the UNCLOS sig­na­to­ry coun­tries, as inter­na­tion­al waters are defined as the ‘com­mon her­itage of mankind’,” says Flo­ri­an Besson. “Most min­er­al resources are locat­ed in inter­na­tion­al waters, and some states, such as the island of Nau­ru, are putting pres­sure on the IAMF to define an inter­na­tion­al min­ing code by July 2023 ².” In par­al­lel, a treaty to pro­tect the high seas is being dis­cussed under the aus­pices of the Unit­ed Nations (UN). Nego­ti­a­tions have been stalled since 2018, and this treaty could, among oth­er things, allow the cre­ation of marine pro­tect­ed areas on the high seas and pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble ecosys­tems often asso­ci­at­ed with marine min­er­al resources.

These nego­ti­a­tions reveal the inter­est of states in the deep sea. “Inter­est in the deep sea is not new: numer­ous oceano­graph­ic mis­sions took place in the 1970s and 1980s, enabling knowl­edge of cer­tain min­er­al resources to be increased,” adds Flo­ri­an Besson. “But in recent years, we have seen a strong revival of inter­est inter­na­tion­al­ly: some deep-sea met­als are of strate­gic inter­est for new tech­nolo­gies and green ener­gy.” In France, a nation­al strat­e­gy for deep-sea explo­ration and min­ing was ini­ti­at­ed in 2015 and approved at the Inter-min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee for the Sea in Jan­u­ary 2021 ³. The first con­crete expres­sion of this strat­e­gy is the France 2030 nation­al invest­ment plan pre­sent­ed at the end of 2021, which pro­vides for a “Deep Seabed” objec­tive with a bud­get of 300 mil­lion euros. 300 mil­lion. It is intend­ed for explo­ration to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of these envi­ron­ments ⁴, the roadmap for which was recent­ly adopted.

No exploita­tion con­tracts have been issued by the IAMF in inter­na­tion­al waters, but two exploita­tion per­mits exist in the EEZs. These are the Atlantis II Deep project in the Red Sea and Nau­tilus Min­er­als’ Sol­wara 1 project in Papua New Guinea. “Nei­ther of them has been suc­cess­ful and prob­a­bly nev­er will be,” says Flo­ri­an Besson. “The Red Sea project has been blocked since 2013 by a con­trac­tu­al dis­agree­ment between two com­pa­nies. In Papua New Guinea, the new enti­ty that bought Nau­tilus Min­er­als fol­low­ing its liq­ui­da­tion in 2019 now holds the licence, but its activ­i­ties are rather opaque.”

Apart from the poten­tial eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, the deep seabed crys­tallis­es many issues. A report by the Acad­e­mies of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy ⁵ con­sid­ers that they “offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­bine sci­en­tif­ic research, tech­no­log­i­cal progress, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, secu­ri­ty for cer­tain met­als and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the col­lec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of sus­tain­able man­age­ment of this new space.” This goes even fur­ther than min­er­al resources: France, for exam­ple, recent­ly adopt­ed a mil­i­tary strat­e­gy to con­trol the seabed ⁶, in par­tic­u­lar to pro­tect the many under­sea com­mu­ni­ca­tion cables that lit­ter the seabed, as well as the resources and biodiversity.

In this con­text, research has an impor­tant role to play. Knowl­edge of the con­se­quences of poten­tial deep-sea min­ing is very lim­it­ed: in France, there is only one sci­en­tif­ic assess­ment of envi­ron­men­tal impacts ⁷. The sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty is increas­ing­ly look­ing into this sub­ject, in par­tic­u­lar to ensure envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing dur­ing the test­ing of exploita­tion pro­to­types. An analy­sis of the num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions ded­i­cat­ed to oceano­graph­ic sci­ences ⁸ also reveals a sig­nif­i­cant dynam­ic. The num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions is accel­er­at­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly thanks to the con­tri­bu­tions of Chi­na, Japan, and the Repub­lic of Korea. Jules Verne did not think he was antic­i­pat­ing the future so well with his Nautilus …