Social Science | Southern Fried Science

One Mining Code to Rule Them All: The poison pill at the heart of the Deep-Sea Mining negotiations.

The International Seabed Authority is once again gathered in Kingston, Jamaica to continue negotiations on a set of rules and regulations to govern seafloor mining in the high seas, beyond any nation’s borders.

At stake is access to vast fields of polymetallic nodules spread across the abyssal plains. These nodules are rich in nickel and cobalt, essential elements in the current batteries needed to electrify the world’s automotive fleets. Deep-sea mining for polymetallic nodules is presented as a means of breaking the world free of fossil fuel production that has the potential to be less harmful to the environment than current terrestrial cobalt and nickel mines.

And that might be right. As I said in the last talk I gave on deep-sea mining:

“I remain undecided. I do believe that there is a version of polymetallic nodule mining that has the potential to produce the metals we need for the electrification of the world’s automotive fleet in a way that represents a responsible compromise between the direct impacts of nodule extraction and the existential threat of failing to get emissions under control before the worst predictions of the International Panel on Climate Change become inevitable. I think it’s very hard to argue that polymetallic nodule mining is worse for the world than strip mining Indonesia’s remaining rainforests for nickel or having the children of Congo dig for cobalt.”
Deep-Sea Mining: A whirlwind tour of the state of the industry and current policy regimes

Polymetallic nodule mining is not the only form of deep-sea mining. The ISA is tasked with governing mineral resources on the deep-seabed. This includes nodules, but also cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (seamounts containing cobalt ore) and seafloor massive sulphides (deep-sea hydrothermal vents). These three deposits are mined in wildly different ways and come with dramatically different environmental risks. I frequently argue that they comprise three entirely different industries.

No, the deep-sea mining debate is not “gone”

Posted on April 20 by Andrew Thaler

Earlier this month, Mining.com published an article on the next steps in the development of deep-sea mining which featured a pretty surprising statement from the CEO of The Metals Company:

“People think we are debating if this (deep sea mining) should happen or not, and that’s gone. It’s happening.”
Gerard Barron/Mining.com

One of the interesting things about deep-sea mining is that most of the people involved in the industry are environmentally motivated: the folks leading the charge for deep-sea mining and the folks urging caution have much more shared environmental values than coverage of the deep-sea mining negotiations would suggest. Which is why this quote caught me off-guard. Though an unapologetic proponent for the potential of deep-sea mining, Barron is usually much more diplomatic in his media statements. To declare that the debate is done seems reckless.

The deep-sea mining debate is most certainly not “gone”. It is, at the moment, more fiercely discussed that at any previous point in the industry’s 50 year history. While mining contractors have overcome significant political and technological hurdles to reach a point where they are on the cusp of the first commercial trials, the call for a moratorium on the development of the industry has more support, both within the International Seabed Authority, and without, than ever before. The invocation of the 2-year-trigger in 2021 jumpstarted the debate and forced the ISA to meet a deadline for finalization of the Mining Code, the legal structure that will determine when and how mining will proceed in the high seas.

What does the high seas biodiversity treaty means for the future of deep-sea mining?

Posted on March 17 by Andrew Thaler

This month, delegations from around the world agreed upon a treaty to protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction — ocean life beyond the limit of any country’s borders. The High Seas Treaty represents the culmination of over 2 decades of debate and negotiation. Once adopted, it establishes a framework for the protection and equitable sharing of marine genetic resources — animals and their DNA; promotes the implementation of marine protected areas in the high seas; and creates a scientific and technical body to review environmental impact assessments for ocean activities beyond borders.

While this treaty is a monumental achievement for protecting the common heritage of humankind, it still leaves several loopholes for ocean exploitation. Chief among them is the exemption of deep-sea mining from the final regulations.

Deep-Sea Mining: A whirlwind tour of the state of the industry and current policy regimes

Posted on September 23, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

On April 28, 2022, I was invited to give a short talk to a gathering of Environmental NGO representatives to provide an overview and my perspective on the current state of development for deep-sea mining. Below is the transcript of that talk.

Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me. Today I’m going to give you a very brief whirlwind tour of the current state of deep-sea mining and the policy regime around this developing industry.

The first thing I need to highlight is that we often talk about deep-sea mining as one cohesive thing, but it’s really four separate and distinct industries, all developing in tandem, with significant differences in the types of metals targeted, the technology necessary to exploit those metals, and the motivations for doing so.

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: For Deep-sea mining, battery technology is the ultimate x-factor

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

As in-person negotiations on the future of exploitation in the deep ocean resume this week in Kingston Jamaica, we reflect back on the last two years of development as reported on our sister site, the Deep-sea Mining Observer. This article first appeared on August 26, 2021.

Deep-sea mining is frequently framed as a race to the seafloor. While that is not technically true–deep-sea mining has, in fact, been incredibly slow to develop as an industry, with nearly half a century of technological innovation, diplomatic negotiation, and environmental exploration under its belt without producing a single ounce of commercial ore–the deep-sea mining industry is in a race against the one major technological innovation that could upend the industry’s claim to being a foundational technology for the renewable resource transition.

The race is not to the bottom of the sea before fossil fuel consumption creates runaway global warming (with a 30-year-horizon, deep-sea mining is well positioned to facilitate the long-term transition to renewables, but is unlikely to make a major impact in the resource demands needed to meat the IPCC 2030 targets). The race is to reach commercial production before the evolving state of battery technology renders the majority of seabed resources superfluous. Battery chemistry is the x-factor that will shape the long-term prospects for the viability of deep-sea mining.

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: Major Brands Say No to Deep-sea Mining, for the Moment

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

On Wednesday, March 30, several major technology and automotive companies joined the deep-sea mining moratorium movement. Google, BMW, Volvo, and Samsung SDI (a Samsung subsidiary responsible for manufacturing small lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and other applications) signed on to the World Wide Fund For Nature’s Global Deep-sea Mining Moratorium Campaign. These are the first major corporations to commit not to source minerals from the deep seabed or finance deep-sea mining activities, and to exclude seafloor minerals from their supply chain.

“Sustainability leaders should be concerned about how their green image could be affected by incorporating deep sea minerals into their metal supply chain,” says Kristina M. Gjerde, Senior High Seas Advisor to the IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme. “Deep sea minerals are not solving the problem of harmful impacts, just relocating it elsewhere, where the affected communities are less able to speak for themselves. Moreover, it should be clear by now that relocating mining to the deep sea is unlikely to reduce the issues associated with terrestrial mining. By increasing the availability of minerals, deep sea mining could in fact make it harder to clean up terrestrial mining activities.”

As major automotive manufacturers in the midst of a pivot to electric vehicles, BMW and Volvo’s announcements represent a potential threat to the deep-sea metal market. BMW expects 50% of all its vehicle sales to be electric by the end of the decade, with several BMW subsidiaries, including Mini, producing only EVs by 2030. Volvo, who also intends to be fully electric by 2030, recently shipped its first all-electric vehicle to the United States, though software issues caused the long-awaited XC40 Recharge to be held in port pending a critical system update.

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: Delegates struggle to develop Regional Environmental Management Plans during a global pandemic

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

Since the pandemic brought travel to a halt, the International Seabed Authority has been working to meet contractor deadlines and make progress on a variety of issues revolving around finalizing the mining code, facilitating workshops, and engaging stakeholders and experts through remote meetings. These efforts include workshops on the development of Regional Environmental Management Plans (REMPs) for the Northwest Pacific and the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Though some stakeholders were satisfied with the efforts to move workshops online, many were left frustrated by a process that felt rushed, less transparent, and less inclusive of the breadth of stakeholders represented by the deep-sea mining community.

Regional Environmental Management Plans are one of the foundational policy instruments that determine how contractors act and interact within a geographic region. They provide guidance for not just individual lease blocks, but for how the whole of an area, including multiple lease blocks by multiple contractors, as well as areas of particular environmental interest and set asides will be managed. The process of negotiating a REMP is long and detail-oriented and includes the input of numerous stakeholder groups and expert advisors. So far, only a single REMP, for the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, has been approved by the International Seabed Authority.

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: Has pulling the Trigger already backfired?

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

The Republic of Nauru turned the deep-sea mining world on its head this summer when it invoked Article 15, colloquially known as the Trigger, starting a 2-year countdown on the finalization of mining regulations for polymetallic nodules in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This countdown means that commercial deep-sea mining could potentially commence within 3 years. But that commencement depends on a suite of benchmarks, both procedural and technological, that have yet to be met.

While Nauru and its deep-sea mining contractor, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of The Metals Company), emphasize the urgency of unlocking seafloor metals to accelerate the transition to a fossil fuel-free future, many stakeholders have expressed surprise at what they feel is a premature invocation of a rule designed to prevent oppositional member states from stonewalling progress on a mining code.

The two year clock doesn’t guarantee that a mining code will be complete within that time frame, but rather that either the mining code be finalized or a submitted Plan of Work be considered by the Council based on current and best-available standards and guidelines. Though The Metals Company has stated in the past that it would not support invoking Article 15 unless it was certain it had the backing of the majority of the Council, those political winds could easily change in the next three years, and the Council retains the authority to reject a Plan of Work.

It remains to be seen whether and if a mining code drafted under ticking clock of the two-year countdown will be more or less amenable to the preferences of deep-sea mining contractors and their sponsor states, but initial responses from delegations representing ISA Council members, the Legal and Technical Commission, and observers suggest that invoking Article 15 is just as likely to backfire on the Republic of Nauru and The Metals Company.

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: A pivotal moment in the history of deep-sea mining

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

The spring and summer of 2021 will likely stand as the pivotal moment in the history of deep-sea mining. Months of intense protest amidst significant at-sea progress on environmental impact studies and prototype testing were capped off earlier this week by the explosive announcement that the Republic of Nauru, sponsoring state of Nauru Ocean Resources Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Metals Company (formerly DeepGreen), was invoking Article 15 triggering the 2-year countdown to complete the Mining Code.

An apparent sea change in the relationship between mining contractors, environmental NGOs, and other stakeholders, began in late March, when the Worldwide Fund for Nature announced a new campaign to get major corporations to pledge to exclude minerals produced from the deep sea from their supply chains until the impacts to the ocean were more thoroughly understood. These companies included BMW and Volvo, which have a major stake in electric vehicle manufacturing, and Samsung SDI, who produce small cell lithium batteries for electronic devices.

That announcement came just days before both GSR and The Metals Company were preparing for at-sea campaigns to continue their environmental baseline work and prototype nodule collector testing in the Clarion Clipperton Zone. The Metals Company’s Expedition 5B was one of several research cruises conducted over the last few years as part of a comprehensive plan to characterize the ecosystems, including pelagic communities, around their polymetallic nodule leases in the NORI-D contract areas and assess the potential impacts of their eventual nodule extraction operations. As DeepGreen, The Metals Company had previously lent the use of their ship, the Maersk Launcher, to the high seas plastic collection program The Ocean Cleanup.

Only days later, GSR launched its own four-week research campaign in collaboration with the EU MiningImpact program. During a month at sea, they tested the Patania II nodule collector prototype. The Patania II did suffer an engineering failure during sea trials which left the collector detached on the seafloor for several days before successful recovery to the surface, a scenario which is not unexpected during prototype testing. “This is pioneering engineering work and we were prepared for multiple eventualities.” said Kris Van Nijen, Managing Director of GSR in a press release. “…we were able to reconnect Patania II and we look forward to completing the mission, including further deployments of Patania II.”

Two Years of Deep-sea Mining in Review: What happens when we pull the trigger?

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Andrew Thaler

Throughout the 26th Session of the International Seabed Authority, during both the council meeting and via media interviews, deep-sea mining contractors have begun to talk about “the trigger”. The trigger is a protocol within UNCLOS which would allow sponsoring states to jumpstart the deep-sea mining process, placing a ticking clock on the development of the mining exploitation regulations. Annex I, Section 1(15) of the 1994 Agreement on the Implementation of Part XI of UNCLOS (colloquially referred to as “Article 15” or more informally, “the trigger”) allows a sponsoring state to expedite the current mining code negotiations by submitting a plan of work for a contractor that is imminently ready to begin production.

Article 15 lays out the conditions under which a sponsoring state could initiate deep-sea mining in the Area absent a finalized mining code. If a sponsoring state submits a plan of work for a commercial deep-sea mining operation, that action starts a two-year countdown. If there is no approved code by the two-year deadline, the contractor and sponsoring state can move forward with exploitation in accordance with their own submitted plan of work and a set of provisional regulations that have been approved by the Council.

“Without this provision,” says Pradeep Singh of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, “it was technically possible pursuant to UNCLOS for one or a few Council members to deploy filibuster tactics to frustrate or impede the adoption of key regulations. With the introduction of this provision and in the context of exploitation activities, it is possible for a member state of the Authority to request for exploitation regulations to be adopted by the Council within a prescribed period of two years from the date of the request, failing which, it would still have to consider any application submitted for exploitation activities despite the absence of the said regulations.”