Deep Seabed Mining and the Green Energy Transition | Article in the Comments

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dieyoufool3 on August 9th, 2022 at 03:57 UTC »

Day 13 of "r/Geopolitics means quality, you heard it hear first!"

Under The Sea Geopolitics | ARTICLE LINK HERE

If you pressed folks to think of an example of deep sea geopolitics, you might hear someone mention Russia planting a flag under the North Pole or Cold War tales of submarines playing hide and seek.

Enter Deep Sea Mining (DSM).

DSM — mining that occurs on the ocean floor below 200 meters depth — offers countries many of the so-called “critical minerals,” such as lithium, zinc, and rare earth elements, essential to achieving the clean energy transition. To put into perspective its promise

the Clarion-Clipperton Zone alone, a Europe-sized area in the eastern Pacific, is estimated to hold more nickel, manganese, and cobalt than all land-based reserves combined.

Asides from the larger need to develop battery/green energy sectors, there's the dominance of China in the global critical mineral supply chain. In addition to potential national security and geopolitical risks posed to western nations, the lax environmental and social standards of Chinese operations is also a matter of concern for many of their citizens.

But before you take scuba diving lesson thinking there's an underwater gold rare earth mineral rush because of macro trends, DSM is just talk at the moment.

A few countries have issued exploration licenses within their EEZs and there are currently no fully active commercial DSM projects.

But in "June 2021, Nauru, a small Pacific island state, informed the ISA of its intent to start mining, triggering a clause in UNCLOS requiring ISA [International Seabed Authority] to finalize regulations within two years of such an announcement or allow mining to proceed under whatever rules are then in place

With this technology untested at scale, whether DSM is even viable economically (let alone environmentally) is completely unknown... All this to say it's something to keep an eye on and consider, as should it prove viable, tourism will certainly no longer be the driving economical force for Pacific Island nations.

Aniket2297 on August 9th, 2022 at 17:07 UTC »

Most of the discourse on the issue of deep sea mining is still limited to technical stuff, as it still hasn't shifted much to realm of state politics. I just have a doubt, as the recent trend of multilateral bodies becoming weak continues will the international Seabed Authority have any enforceable power left, when a real issue of deep see mining conflict comes up?