A new era of ocean politics has been triggered by dramatic technological breakthroughs in ocean technology. Man is now more capable of using the ocean's surfaces, deeper waters, and bottoms than ever before, so consequently, worldwide commercial and political rivalries are intensifying over rights to ocean space and ocean resources. The difficulty of accommodating all the ocean's users and uses has made it a highly contentious issue among nations, transnational corporations, and special interest groups.
In a process thought to span millions of years, tiny deep-sea fragments — shark’s teeth or slivers of shell -- get coated in layers of liquidized metal, eventually becoming solid, lumpy rocks that resemble burnt potatoes. These formations, known as polymetallic nodules are rich deposits of commercially sought-after minerals like cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese — the very metals that go into the batteries for renewable technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels.
The International Seabed Authority, the intergovernmental body tasked with overseeing deep-sea mining in international waters, concluded its recent set of meetings in August 2022. The purpose of these meetings was to progress with negotiations of mining regulations, with a view that deep-sea mining will start in July 2023 after the Pacific island nation of Nauru triggered a rule that could obligate this to happen. While many countries appear to support the rapid development of these regulations, an increasing number of other countries have expressed concern with this deadline, indicating a possible turn of events.
One of the first companies that may begin deep sea mining is The Metals Company, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. TMC plans to extract nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese from “polymetallic nodules” dredged from the deep seafloor in an area of international waters called the Clarion Clipperton Zone southwest of San Diego.
All ocean users are politically, physically, and economically interdependent and thus must accept international accountability. Obstacles that must be overcome include: defining seaward limits of national sovereignty and spelling out the rights to ocean resources beyond these limits; allocating privileges between coastal states and others wanting access to their adjacent offshore areas beyond national limits; assuring that powerful maritime nations will have minimum interference and maximum stability for conducting all their ocean activities; and granting less powerful nations regimes from which they can benefit in common.
Deep-sea mining is a sign of addiction. Only a culture driven by a death urge masquerading as a profit-production-motive could contemplate destroying some of the largest and most intact remaining habitats on Earth and call it “green.”