Thanks to Ian Angus and Climate and Capitalism for sharing this story. Capital's drive to accumulate finds new ecosystems to destroy.
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A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 381, Issue 6655.Download PDF
A high-stakes effort to hash out environmental regulations governing mining of the seabed in international waters ended without agreement last week, after negotiators missed a July deadline. The lack of progress by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) raises an alarming prospect, observers say: that mining operations targeting metals needed by the electric vehicle industry could commence without effective regulations in place.
“The ISA has just passed into uncharted territory,” says Matthew Gianni, a policy adviser for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition who attended the meeting in Kingston, Jamaica. It’s a situation that could put the health of deep-sea ecosystems at risk—especially because so much remains unknown. “It will take a long time to really understand the biodiversity,” says Patricia Esquete Garrote, a marine ecologist and taxonomist with the University of Aveiro.
Much of the discussion has centered on a remote region of the eastern Pacific Ocean called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which stretches from south of Hawaii to Mexico. Four kilometers down, the sea floor in the region is dotted with trillions of polymetallic nodules that are estimated to contain more cobalt and nickel than all known land deposits. Companies hope to mine the nodules by sucking them into bus-size seafloor mining machines and pumping them to the surface. But many living things have an earlier claim on the ancient nodules: They serve as habitat for sponges, polychaete worms, corals, and other deep-sea creatures.
Scientists say mining operations could cause irreversible damage to the habitat because the nodules can take millions of years to form via precipitation of dissolved minerals. Any creatures living on them would be killed. The operation would also stir up sediment plumes, laced with metals, and generate noise and light that could spread harm far beyond the mining site.
Managing these risks is the job of ISA, which regulates seabed mining beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The intergovernmental body, which was established under a 1994 agreement by the United Nations, spent years developing rules for commercial exploration and has issued 31 permits to mining companies and government agencies. One of those companies—Canadian-owned Nauru Ocean Resources—hopes to start mining operations in the CCZ in late 2024.
Those plans jump-started the current flurry of diplomatic activity. In 2021, the tiny island nation of Nauru, which serves as the company’s sponsor in ISA proceedings, invoked an obscure provision of international law, which holds that within 2 years of being notified of intent to apply for permission to mine in the deep sea, ISA must complete its mining regulations. If not, it must “provisionally” approve a commercial permit despite the absence of final regulations. The draft regulations for full-scale mining had been in the works since 2011, but the pressure to finalize them intensified after Nauru triggered the rule and forced a 9 July deadline.
In March, negotiators failed to make much progress on the more than 60 pages of draft environmental regulations. Last week, Gianni says, consensus emerged around a few issues, such as the need for regional environment management plans and environmental standards—rules that would set acceptable amounts of noise, for example—before mining contracts are issued. The meeting won’t wrap up until 28 July, but the sessions focused on environmental regulations have ended and observers say ISA is unlikely to release regulations this month. One key question that remains, Gianni says, is whether any damage to deep-sea species and ecosystems would be permitted and, if so, how much it could be mitigated or offset.
That’s a difficult issue to settle, scientists say, because so much remains unknown about deep-sea ecosystems and how mining operations might harm them. In May, for example, a paper found that thousands of species have yet to be identified in the CCZ. After examining some 100,000 records of specimens collected or observed during expeditions in the region, deep-sea ecologist Muriel Rabone of the Natural History Museum in London found that just 436 species identified in the hauls have been officially named, suggesting more than 5500 others may remain to be described, she and her colleagues reported in Current Biology. “With every sample, we see new species,” Rabone says. “What we could lose if we mine is a question we can’t really answer right now.”
Another recent study looked at the lingering effects of deep-sea mining after the operators and their equipment leave the area. In 2020, researchers with the Geological Survey of Japan and other institutions conducted a 2-hour test of a small mining machine on the cobalt-rich Takuyo-Daigo seamount, about 1900 kilometers southeast of Tokyo. A year after the operations, fish and other mobile organisms were 43% less abundant in the mining area and 56% less in nearby areas, up to 150 meters away. The study, which was published last week in Current Biology, was small and short, but it suggests the area impacted by sediment plumes could be larger than previously thought. “We may need to broaden what we think of in terms of deep-sea mining impacts,” says Travis Washburn, a benthic ecologist now with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who led the study. “My biggest concern is moving forward on regulations too quickly, and our study reinforces that concern.”
ISA will convene another meeting on 30 October to try to nail down the environmental regulations, as well as other controversial details, such as how companies will share financial benefits with all of ISA’s member nations. A final set of rules likely won’t be ready for adoption even after that, Gianni says. All 36 countries with a seat on ISA’s Council would have to approve them before they go through, and “too many states are too far apart on many different aspects,” he says.
Meanwhile, Nauru Ocean Resources could file its mining application. But Pradeep Singh, a lawyer and fellow at the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam’s Research Institute for Sustainability, doubts ISA will wave it through. A large majority of Council members would be opposed, he says, and the Council has taken the position it can deny an application submitted under the 2-year rule in the absence of regulations.
A company spokesperson told Science that it would rather submit its application once the regulations are put into place. But if it or others lose patience with ISA, Gianni says they could find ways to advance an application because of the way voting works. When the members of the Council can’t unanimously agree on the fate of an application, the decision goes to subgroups, where just a few members can force its approval. Nauru is on the Council, as is Norway, which Gianni says is eager to proceed deep-sea mining. “A handful of countries can basically hold the rest of the organization hostage,” he says.
1 comment:
Important and grossly underreported
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