A huge area of the open ocean lying between Hawai`i and Mexico could be open to the mining of metallic nodules found on the seafloor as early as the middle of next year. And, at this time, it’s an open question as to whether there will be any meaningful environmental restrictions on how that mining is conducted.
The International Seabed Authority, an agency of the United Nations, is charged with developing the regulations, also known as the Mining Code. So far, draft rules have been proposed but, at the ISA’s latest meeting, held in March, there was no agreement on adopting them.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a member nation can give the agency a two-year notice that it plans to move forward with mining in the area the ISA has allotted to it. If, within that period, the ISA has not adopted its own regulations, the member nation can begin mining under whatever draft protocols exist at the time.
And so, by letter of June 25, 2021, the president of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea, informed the ISA that it was invoking the so-called two-year rule, requesting that the agency finalize its mining code by July of 2023. Failing that, the ISA will apparently have to give provisional approval to Nauru Ocean Resources, Inc. (NORI), a partnership between Nauru and The Metals Company of Canada, to move forward with its plan to mine polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ).
Reaching agreement on the Mining Code, which is to govern exploitation of seabed resources, has proven difficult. As Nauru pointed out in its notice letter, the ISA has been engaged in discussions of draft rules since 2014. At its most recent meeting, in late March, the ISA was still unable to come to any consensus, despite Nauru holding a figurative gun to its head.
Uncertainties
In its letter to the ISA, Nauru defended its decision to move forward with seabed mining as a step forward in fighting climate change. Many of the metals in the nodules found in the CCZ – including cobalt, manganese, nickel, and copper – are used in the batteries that are a critical component of post-fossil-fuel technologies. Invoking the two-year rule, Aingimea wrote, was a decision “compelled by the impetus to build forward better by ensuring that polymetallic nodules are part of the solution to the global transition required to secure a clean renewable energy future.”
“For Pacific Island countries like Nauru,” he wrote, “climate change poses an existential threat to the wellbeing, livelihoods, and security of our people.” Referring to Nauru’s devastating history of guano mining, which has left much of the island a wasteland, Aingimea mentioned his country’s own “firsthand experience of careless resource extraction.” This, he said, gives Nauru “a unique insight into the future of our world if mining on land continues to meet the exponential growth in demand” for the metals needed for renewable energy technologies. “We strongly believe that moving to responsible collection of polymetallic nodules from the seafloor will help deliver us to a carbon neutral future.”
Other proponents of seabed mining have argued that land-based mining of metals is not free of terrible environmental consequences either, including the destroyed ecosystems, mountains of toxic tailings, and polluted bodies of water.
In March, Nauru and NORI led an online webinar to discuss feedback that they had received on a draft environmental impact statement prepared in anticipation of launching a nodule collector test. The next step is a review of the final EIS by the International Seabed Authority’s Legal and Technical Commission, which is expected to be completed in July. Sometime in the fall, NORI anticipates conducting further studies at sea on the impacts of its nodule collection activities.
A Moratorium?
Even as Nauru presses forward with its mining plans, critics of deep-sea mining are pushing for a moratorium until more is known about the long-term impacts of mining in an environment that is one of the most pristine on earth. Several companies have signed on, including Google, BMW, Volvo, and Samsung.
At last year’s World Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 88 governments and government agencies and 577 organizations endorsed a moratorium on seabed mining until sufficient evidence is in hand to determine if it could be done responsibly.
In March, more than 30 scientists co-authored an article in Marine Policy that looked at peer-reviewed literature on the environmental effects of seabed mining. After reviewing some 300 articles, they concluded that the state of knowledge was insufficient to “enable evidence-based decision-making regarding environmental management, including whether to proceed with mining in regions where exploration contracts” have already been granted by the ISA.
Among the co-authors was Craig Smith, professor emeritus of oceanography at the University of Hawai`i’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “Considering that the ecosystems targeted for mining are among the most pristine and biodiverse in the ocean, we must use extreme caution in moving forward with seabed mining,” he said. “Otherwise, mining in the deep sea may accelerate the crises of species extinctions and loss of ecosystem services we are witnessing on our planet.”
Divergent Trends
As the 7th Our Ocean Conference opened last month in Palau, a group of leaders of Pacific island nations announced the formation of an alliance that hopes to slow down the push to mine the seabed.
Members of the Pacific Parliamentarians’ Alliance on Deep Sea Mining (PPADSM) include elected officials from New Zeland, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Palau.
In the group’s “Call to Protect Our Pacific Ocean,” it urged Pacific and world leaders to join the growing movement opposing “the rush to mine the ocean floor” and for a suspension of deep-sea mining activities in the Pacific, “to allow for greater scientific understanding” about its potential impacts.
“[G]iven the experimental nature of this industry and growing scientific consensus around the probable irreversible damage to the ocean and ocean systems, all deep-sea mining activities must cease immediately to allow the scientific research to establish whether or not it should be pursued,” the group stated.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Lockheed Martin has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service to extend for five years two exploration licenses for seabed mining in an area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
The company has no immediate plans to mine the areas, but needs the additional time to determine whether seabed mining activities will be worth the “enormous capital expenditures of billions of dollars” required.
There are additional caveats, however. The licenses held by the company were issued in 1984, under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA). That law, passed in 1980, was supposed to be an interim law pending completion of negotiations on the Law of the Sea Convention. But the U.S. never signed on to the Law of the Sea and is not a member of the International Seabed Authority.
As noted in the Federal Register announcement of the extension request, “As the United States is not a party to the Law of the Sea Convention and thus not a member of the ISA, the United States is unable to seek from the ISA an exploration contract to obtain international legal recognition of Lockheed Martin’s domestic law rights under DSHMRA.”
Further complicating matters is the fact that the ISA recently set aside an area that overlaps with the company’s licenses as an Area of Particular Environmental Interest, and, as such, not available for exploitation. But, since the United States isn’t a signatory to the Law of the Sea Convention, the National Ocean Service stated in the Federal Register notice, “the ISA designation has no bearing on the extension request currently under consideration.”
The comment period on the extension request (NOAA-NOS-2022-0033) ends on May 17.
An Impartial Agency?
The International Seabed Authority has itself come under fire, with critics asserting that its secretary general, Michael Lodge, has clearly aligned himself with the mining interests. In 2018, Lodge was featured in a promotional video produced by Deep Green, now known as The Metals Company – the same company that has partnered with Nauru.
After the video generated negative attention, it was removed from the company’s website. However, The Los Angeles Times recently released it again in connection with an investigation into the ISA and its close ties with the industry it is to regulate.
As the newspaper reported, documents reviewed by its reporters “point to a closeness with mining companies that stands out as unorthodox in environmental regulation.”
The article quotes a marine geologist, Sandor Mulsow, who was employed for more than five years by the ISA as its lead environmental officer until he left in 2019. “The ISA is not fit to regulate any activity in international waters,” he was reported to have told the Times. “It is like to ask the wolf to take care of the sheep.”
By Patricia Tummons
For Further Reading
To read more about the potential environmental consequences of seabed mining, see, “Treasures of Pristine Ocean Ecosystems Could Be Lost to Mining for Metal Nodules,” Environment Hawai`i, January 2019. Available at www.environment-hawaii.org
The article on the apparently compromised leadership of the International Seabed Authority was published in The Los Angeles Times on April 19, under the headline, “A Gold Rush in the Deep Sea Raises Questions About the Authority Charged with Protecting It,” by Todd Woody and Evan Halper. Online at: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-04-19/gold-rush-in-the-deep-sea-raises-questions-about-international-seabed-authority
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