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 …