Guardian: The biggest gold rush in history is about to start in the deep sea – leaving devastation in its wake

[China]

The biggest gold rush in history is about to start in the deep sea – leaving devastation in its wake

 

Sunday 9 July threatens to be a momentous day for the global economy, one that marks the beginning of the biggest gold rush in history, and one that could lead to unprecedented ecological damage. Yet few people seem to be taking much notice. The British government has been silent.

 

To understand the impending drama, a little history is required. In 1982, after 25 years of torturous negotiations, the United Nations passed Unclos (the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). It involved the biggest enclosure in history, turning more than 138m sq km (53m square miles) of seabed into national exclusive economic zones (EEZs) available for exploitation by coastal countries.

 

But Unclos declared that the deep sea outside the EEZs, known as “the Area”, covering 54% of the world’s oceans, was “the common heritage of mankind”. Deep sea mining in the Area was to be banned until a mining code was agreed, which respected the precautionary principle in limiting ecological damage and contained a formula for an equitable sharing of the benefits among all countries of the world.

 

To draw up such a code, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) was set up in 1994, headquartered in the harbour of Kingston, Jamaica. Because rich countries did not want to give small developing countries power, they insisted that decisions had to be made by consensus. Today, there are 167 member countries, plus the European Union. Unsurprisingly, in the past 28 years, the ISA has failed to produce a mining code or a benefit-sharing mechanism.

 

In June 2021, the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru, working with a Canadian mining company, triggered an obscure clause in Unclos that says that if a country applies to start deep-sea mining in the Area, the ISA has precisely two years to produce a code and sharing mechanism. If not, mining can start. On 9 July, the notice period is up. Legally, applications to mine will start.

 

To put that into perspective, this will at first open up mining in the 4.5m sq km of sea bed in the Pacific known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and, in due course, to the whole of the Area. The deep sea is estimated to contain billions of tons of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other minerals, mainly in potato-sized black nodules, which are seen as essential for a transition to a green terrestrial economy, for use in electric cars, windfarms and other purposes.

 

Commentators have noted that all the scientific evidence points to huge environmental risks. In a state of alarm, a growing number of countries have demanded a moratorium, as have hundreds of marine scientists. Sadly, this does not include the UK, although rather belatedly the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Ocean met to consider whether it should.

 

All of us should be deeply alarmed. The environmental impact of deep-sea mining could be catastrophic. Massive machines will scour the ocean bed to pick up polymetallic nodules, destroying everything in their path and creating sediment plumes that can suffocate coral reefs and other organisms hundreds of miles from the mining site. Mining will damage the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink, accelerating global warming. And new research suggests the polymetallic nodules could contain radioactive substances, endangering human health.

 

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