Outgunned Island States Vow To Fight Deep-sea Mining

Lisbon, July 1 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 2nd Jul, 2022 ) :A handful of postage-stamp nations in the South Pacific launched an uphill battle this week against the deep-sea mining of unattached, fist-sized rocks rich in rare Earth metals.

The stakes are potentially enormous.

Companies keen to scrape the ocean floor five to six thousand metres (17,000 to 20,000 feet) below sea level stand to earn billions harvesting manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel currently used to build batteries for electric vehicles.

But the extraction process would disfigure what may be the most pristine ecosystem on the planet and could take millennia, if not longer, for nature to repair.

The deep-sea jewels in question, called polymetallic nodules, grow with the help of microbes over millions of years around a kernel of organic matter, such as a shark's tooth or the ear-bone of a whale.

"They are living rocks, not just dead stones," former US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief scientist Sylvia Earle said in Lisbon.

"I look at them as miracles." An incipient deep-sea mining industry also sees them as miraculous, though for different reasons.

"High grades of four metals in a single rock means that four times less ore needs to be processed to obtain the same amount of metal," notes The Metals Company, which has formed exploratory partnerships with three South Pacific nations -- Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga -- in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone.

Nodules also have low levels of heavy elements, which means less toxic waste compared to land-based extraction, according to the company.

Commercial mining has not started anywhere in the world, but about 20 research institutes or companies hold exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Surangel Whipps Jr., president of Palau, kicked off the anti-mining campaign at the just-concluded UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, flanked by Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

"Deep-sea mining compromises the integrity of our ocean habitat and should be discouraged to the greatest extent possible," Whipps said, calling for an open-ended moratorium.

Likeminded neighbouring nation states Samoa, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands have backed the call, along with more than 100 mostly green party legislators from three dozen nations across the world.

A similar motion put to a vote last September before the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) -- an umbrella organisation of 1,400 research institutes, environmental NGOs and indigenous groups -- passed easily.

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