Inside Out | Are deep-sea ecosystems worth risking to mine metals for green tech?

Greenpeace environmental campaigners this weekend face the prospect of being kicked out of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) meeting currently being held in Jamaica. According to Michael Lodge, ISA secretary general, their protests around an exploration vessel posed “a serious threat … to the marine environment”.

The row is over deep-sea mining. The offended party is the Vancouver-based The Metals Company (TMC), as it lobbies the authority to be allowed to start mining for potato-sized polymetallic nodules that litter the Pacific seabed in their millions in what is called the Clarion-Clipperton zone, lying between Hawaii and Mexico.

TMC complained that Greenpeace activists disrupted one of its research expeditions when they boarded its vessel. Greenpeace campaigner Louisa Casson is indignant: “If Michael Lodge had put as much effort into properly scrutinising deep-sea mining companies and ensuring transparent negotiations as he has chasing dissent, a pristine ecosystem would have a fair chance to remain undisturbed,” he said.

For some, this may seem like a storm in a teacup, but for both the obscure ISA and environmentalists, the stakes run high. Greenpeace calls the Jamaica meeting, which finishes on March 29, “a critical moment for the future of the oceans”.

Deposits, rich in cobalt, nickel, copper and magnesium, were built up on the deep ocean floor 4km-6km below the surface over millions of years. The Clarion-Clipperton zone alone covers 4.5 million sq km, and may be home to 21 billion tonnes of polymetallic nodules – more cobalt and nickel than all the world’s terrestrial mines combined. Estimates put the gross value of these deep-sea resources at between US$8 trillion and US$16 trillion.