Deep sea mining divides environmentalists

As diplomats from around the world gather in Jamaica next month to discuss international guidelines on deep-sea mining, environmental activists are urging nations to consider a California law they say could ease the need to destroy fragile ocean ecosystems.

“Deep sea mining will destroy one of the most mysterious and isolated wildernesses on the planet, all to extract the same metals we throw in the trash every day,” said Laura Deehan, director of the Environment California Research & Policy Center. “As we work to protect California’s coastal ocean life, we should join calls to protect the ocean depths before it is too late.”

The report was written by experts from the environmental groups Environment America and US PIRG, as well as the Frontier Group, a nonprofit environmental think tank and research firm.

As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, many replacement technologies – electric vehicles and wind turbines, for example – rely on metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earths. And as production ramps up, international mining conglomerates are increasingly interested in the depths of the ocean, where large numbers of polymetallic nodules – natural concentrations of many of these metals – are found.

Deep-sea polymetallic nodules can fit in the palm of your hand and contain many elements essential to modern technologies.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

These nodules, formed over millions of years, measure between one and four inches in diameter and are found in the top three inches of the ocean floor.

Today, mining companies such as Canada’s Metals Co. want to take their deep-sea harvesters or underwater collectors to the ocean floor and bulldoze the sea floor to grab these “rocks.” as they pass through the cold, dark waters of the ocean depths. .

Their first target: the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean, which extends west from the Central American coast for about 4,500 miles and is approximately 1,700,000 square miles in size.

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In 2016, an international team of scientists studied the seafloor and found that it contained abundant and diverse marine life. Not only were more than half of the species collected new to science, but they also discovered a positive association between the amount of marine life and the number of nodules.

The Metal Co. and those who support deep-sea mining say their industry is critical to providing the raw materials needed to combat fossil fuel-driven climate change.

“Metal mining, whether on land or in the deep sea, will impact ecosystems…” the company acknowledges on its website. However, “the transition to clean energy will require compromises.”

But the authors of the new report – and other experts – say that’s false. They argue that technological innovation, dedicated e-waste recycling, and laws allowing consumers to extend the life of their electronic products can meet this need.

“I agree with the deep sea mining industry that climate change is our greatest global challenge, our greatest threat… if there was ever one thing that merited the title of existential crisis , that would be the one,” said Douglas McCauley, associate. professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the report.

But, he said, “it is a deception, a lie to think that if we want to fight climate change or take meaningful climate action, then we have to exploit the oceans. »

In 2021, the Pacific island nation of Nauru, in partnership with Mineral Co., notified the International Seabed Authority – an intergovernmental body of 167 member states and the European Union established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) – of plans to begin mining in international waters. The move triggered the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’s “two-year rule,” which requires the 36-member council to review and provisionally approve mining applications by July 9, 2023. .

The board missed that deadline and ended its meeting without finalizing the settlement. The council is currently working to adopt regulations by 2025.

Next month, the council will begin its deliberations in Jamaica, and environmentalists hope to persuade it to ban deep-sea mining, or at least impose a moratorium.

They argue that innovations in battery technology and production, as well as recycling and right-to-repair laws, will make the need to continue this destructive practice obsolete.

“Why destroy one place and jump to the next place to destroy it to get new minerals, when suddenly we have new technologies that help us increase circularity and close the loop, extracting the materials inventory we already have,” McCauley said. .

According to the report, consumers discard more copper and cobalt in electronic waste each year than could be produced by 2035 by Metals Co. in the Clarion Clipperton area.

Gerard Barron, Chairman and CEO of Metals Co., stands in front of a mining research vessel in San Diego in June 2021.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

And they say extending the life of electronic products through repair and reuse could reduce the need for new materials. For example, doubling the lifespan of a product can reduce demand by 50%, while increasing the lifespan of a product by only half can reduce demand by a third.

“Right now, we throw away 47 pounds of e-waste per person every year,” said Fiona Hines, legislative analyst at CALPIRG. “This represents 3 million tonnes per year in the United States”

Currently, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and New York are the only states with right to repair laws, but 30 others are considering adoption.

There are currently no deep sea mining operations in the world’s oceans, although pilot trials and testing have been conducted to assess the ecosystem response to mining nodules from the ocean floor.

These experiments and models showed irreparable local damage, as well as more widespread damage from the sediment clouds that these activities could spread in ocean currents.

“These are some of the most resilient ecosystems on the planet,” McCauley said.

Mining them would create “damages that we haven’t seen yet, in all of our studies, so far, on recovery,” he said, referring to a 1989 offshore mining simulation of South America, which has still not rebounded 35 years later.

He said the deep-sea zone is unlike shallower regions of the ocean, such as the Bikini Atoll in the central Pacific – on which 23 atomic bombs were dropped between 1946 and 1958 – but which is arguably thriving today, having recovered coral, fish, turtle and invertebrate populations. Or like a rainforest, which may be devastated, but will eventually grow back – even if it is not old.

In areas proposed for deep-sea mining, nothing seems to be coming back, he said.

“There are physical reasons for this: we are talking about a space where the light is very low, the energy very low, the temperatures extremely cold and the pressures high. So life there moves at a much slower pace,” he said.

And then there are plumes of sediment that could block sunlight or cloud the usually crystal-clear waters, which worry fishermen and environmentalists. Unlike land-based operations, these plumes, tailings and waste cannot be contained – and models show them moving hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

“There are no recognized wildlife boundaries in the ocean,” said Deehan, state director at Environment California. She mentioned the Pacific leatherback turtle, considered an endangered species. “It travels every year from Indonesia across the Pacific Ocean to California. And then there are the whales that migrate all over the world. These ecosystems are all interconnected and support our ocean’s wildlife.