kingston The commercial Mining of raw materials on the bottom of international seas harbors dangers of an unforeseeable extent for the local ecosystem – urgent discussions on how to deal with deep-sea mining have now come to an end without any binding decisions. At the end of the two-week meeting of the Council of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the 36 member states on Friday evening (local time) only agreed on the goal of adopting a set of rules in 2025.

No concrete solution has been decided on how to decide on deep-sea mining applications, which can now be submitted to the ISA for the first time. Rather, after late discussions behind closed doors on the last day of the meeting, it was agreed that an agreement would only be reached when an application was received and no set of rules – a so-called mining code – was to be in place.

“By delaying further, the Council is putting itself under immense pressure”

A day before the start of the session, on July 9, a deadline had expired to regulate deep-sea mining. As a sponsor of a subsidiary of the Canadian group The Metals Company (TMC), the Pacific state of Nauru had announced two years earlier that it would submit an application for mining, thereby triggering the deadline under a clause in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). After the deadline, applications must be processed by the ISA even if there is no mining code.

“By further postponing the Council is putting itself under immense pressure when dealing with future applications,” said Greenpeace marine expert Till Seidensticker. “Deep-sea mining has slowed down, at least for the time being,” said Tim Packeiser, an expert on deep-sea mining at WWF Germany. At the meeting, the ISA member states made it clear that they did not want to approve any deep-sea mining projects as long as there was no robust set of rules.

Neither Nauru nor any other country has so far submitted an application. The main argument against pushing ahead is that state sponsors of mining companies could be held liable for any damage under international law even without a mining code – which must be adopted by consensus. The expert Pradeep Singh from the Research Institute for Sustainability at the Helmholtz Center Potsdam recently presented this in a discussion paper.

The deep sea floor is part of humanity’s common heritage

According to the Unclos, which came into force in 1994 and from which the ISA arose, the deep seabed belongs to the common heritage of mankind and the use of the resources there must be done for the benefit of mankind. At stake is “the agency being cornered into allowing unregulated mining,” Singh wrote, “against the will of most member states and against the best interests of humanity at large.”

WWF said Nauru and other states have indicated they would refrain from submitting applications if there was a clear target date for the completion of a rulebook. The progress made so far is manageable, said Packeiser. “Many issues remain open in all chapters and fundamental questions remain controversial.” From the point of view of the environmental foundation, gaps in research must be closed.

Specifically, it is about the mining of so-called manganese nodules on the sea floor at a depth of 4000 to 6000 meters. They are formed over millions of years from deposits and contain raw materials such as manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel that could be used in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars, for example. Sponges and corals grow on the nodules, providing habitat for numerous other animals. For TMC, manganese nodules are “batteries in a brick” and the “cleanest path to electric vehicles”.

Investigations by the European research project MiningImpact on the seabed mining tests by TMC and the Belgian company GSR in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii call this into question. Their shell-like “collectors” not only suck up the nodules, but also all the organisms that live on them and in and on the sediment. In addition, the resulting cloud of sediment caused extensive damage. Further studies warn of the dangers for whales from noise and for humans from the radioactivity of the nodules.

Germany calls for a precautionary break in deep-sea mining

According to reports by the WWF and the Öko-Institut on behalf of Greenpeace, deep-sea mining is not absolutely necessary for the energy and transport transition. According to a May report in the journal Current Biology, around 90 percent of the estimated 6,000 to 8,000 animal species in the CCZ are still unexplored.

Germany is calling for a precautionary pause in deep-sea mining until the environmental impact has been better researched. A good 20 countries have now spoken out in favor of such a pause, a moratorium or a ban. China has signaled interest in deep-sea mining. A government proposal to use an area of ​​its own waters almost the size of Italy to extract raw materials for the energy transition will soon be discussed in Norway’s parliament.

Despite the postponement of the deadline for the mining code, an exciting development is pending at an ISA general assembly next week, according to Seidensticker from Greenpeace: a possible moratorium on deep-sea mining is to be debated there. “We need this moratorium to prevent a new industry from exploiting this unique habitat without rhyme or reason.”

RND/dpa