The council of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) opens this Monday, October 31, in Kingston, Jamaica. This meeting will be very important, as it could open the door to seabed mining. This raises a lot of opposition.
The Clarion-Clipperton fault is certainly not the best known to the general public. 7,240 kilometers long, it runs along the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. However, for several years now it has been at the center of many discussions. The ocean floor there is indeed full of resources that are still untapped to this day. ” These are mineral resources, cobalt, nickel, manganese »,explains Jean-Marc Daniel, director of the Physical Resources and Seabed Ecosystems Department at IFREMER. ” These metals, for a certain number of them, are mainly used for electric vehicles, in telephones as well. »
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These are indeed essential components for the production of batteries in particular. They will therefore be led to play an even more important role in the years to come with the increasing electrification, of the car fleet for example, necessary for the ecological transition. Gold, ” a resource like cobalt makes us dependent on a single state, since only the Democratic Republic of Congo, or almost, produces it. Rising demand and dependence on few players contribute to heightened attention and tension “, he continues.
No mining contracts yet
In this context, the still untapped resources of the deep seas are attracting a great deal of interest. If to date, there is still no awarded exploitation contract, 31 exploration licenses have nevertheless been granted by the AIFM, the International Seabed Authority, which regulates the sector., including 19 in the Clarion-Clipperton area.
Already ships crisscross the area to map the wealth and the first mining groups have made the request to move from exploration to exploitation. ” But before exploiting, it would be necessary to know, believes Christian Tamburini, CNRS researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanology, and seabed specialist. ” For now, we know very little about the seabed. I have been working on this subject for twenty years, but the international community has only been interested in it for a few years; we are just beginning to have the technological tools that allow us to explore. This lack of knowledge of these environments is one of the arguments raised by opponents of seabed mining. ” We don’t yet understand how this deep ocean works “, explains the researcher.
What environmental impact?
Under these conditions, how can the environmental and biodiversity impact of such projects be estimated? ” Especially since the ocean must be considered as something continuous », continues Christian Tamburini. ” Going to exploit an area on the ocean floor will have consequences for the water column,” this area between the bottom and the surface. ” Biodiversity, which we do not know well, is found on the ocean floor, in the sediments, and also in the column. We know that a lot of organisms live at a depth of 500 meters and migrate to the surface during the day and come back down at night. The boats that would support the exploitation of the deep seas would reject plumes in the vicinity of 200 to 500 meters deep, where there are a lot of very important organisms. We don’t know them well, but we know they’re there “.
The mining of the seabed would also be a source of other nuisances, chemical, light, sound, etc., in areas that can go up to several tens or even hundreds of kilometers around the site itself. Finally, a last possible impact concerns the carbon sequestered for millions of years in the sediments lining the seabed. If it were to be released, it would constitute a potential climatic bomb, of which it is still difficult to say whether it can burst or not because of this activity, for lack of knowledge.
The idea of a moratorium is not unanimous
Go mining in the silent world “, as the Captain Cousteau, will therefore in any case not be without consequences, especially since it is one of the last ecosystems still relatively preserved from human activity. It is for this reason that many States, Pacific islanders in particular, have come out in favor of setting up a moratorium. The President of Palau Surangel Whipps had notably launched an appeal in this direction during the last ocean conference organized by the United Nations in June 2022.
However, not all of these states are unanimous and it was one of them, Nauru, that started the movement towards exploitation: “ We tend to see the EPacific states as a bloc against seabed mining, but that is not the case,” Anne-Sophie Roux analysis of theOcean Sustainable Alliance. “A majority is indeed opposed, but states like Nauru want to accelerate exploitation. Nauru is a South Pacific state of 10 000 inhabitants. Its only interest in this sense is economic. They made a partnership with the Canadian mining company The Metals Company. She is commissioned by Nauru to collect these rare metals in exchange for astronomical sums of money for the development of the island. »
Read also: Biodiversity in the high seas: will states manage to create marine protected areas?
It is in this context that The Metal Company made the request in June 2021 to the AIFM to convert its exploration contract into an exploitation contract. This request triggered a two-year delay, until June 2023. From then on, for lack of a response, “Any mining company that requests it can obtain an operating permit based on the current draft of the mining code”explains Anne-Sophie Roux. “It is very dangerous, because it will only be a draft legal framework, which will not be binding at all. »
It is in this context that the Board of the AIFM opens, the penultimate before the expiry of this period and the activation of the ” two year law “. It is for this reason that the proponents of the moratorium path throw all their forces into battle. ” During the last negotiations, Chile and Costa Rica had particularly pushed in this direction “recalls Anne-Sophie Roux. ” These two countries were constantly pushing to submit the moratorium to the vote of the member states of the AIFM. Since then, a growing number of states have joined them. Spain and Portugal are moving in this direction ».
France could also plead for a moratorium
Indeed, during the conference on the oceans organized by the UN in Lisbon last June, Emmanuel Macron took a position to everyone’s surprise: ” I think we need to develop a legal framework to put a stop to deep sea mining and not allow new activities that would endanger ecosystems”. As France is the world’s second largest maritime power, its voice is important on the board of the AIFM. Especially since the first power is not a member: the United States has never ratified the world convention on the law of the sea.
Contacted by RFI, the Élysée and the Ministry of Ecological Transition did not respond to our questions on the position that France will hold during this AIFM council. If this does not go in the direction of the moratorium or at least of a pause in mining exploration, there will still be one before the June 2023 deadline, scheduled for early spring.
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