Planning Sustainable Deep Sea Mining

Abstract

The increase in world population and the expected global development of the world economy after the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to impose unprecedented pressure on securing the supply of minerals. The World Bank report “Minerals for Climate Action: The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition” finds that the production of minerals such as graphite, lithium and cobalt could increase by nearly 500% by 2050, to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies. Many of these critical minerals are found in the deep seabed, the only place on earth where mineral resources have not been exploited yet. There is a strong need to ensure that these critical minerals will be extracted in a sustainable way, verifying the protection of the marine environment and biodiversity. The regulatory, financial and engineering challenges for deep sea mining are considerable, but in fact are not considered prohibitive, taking into account the remarkable achievements in recent years. On the other hand, it is evident that the existing modern ecosystem-based management approaches cannot be applied to deep sea areas without detailed knowledge of the individual species and ecosystems; most of the species living on the deep-sea floor remain unknown up until now. There is a need for the development of a new environmental management approach for each specific area. The successful procedures of Natura 2000 can be followed, and the necessary information on the existing environmental conditions has to be collected separately at every site for a minimum period of 10–15 years. Natura 2000, the world’s largest ecological network united under a single, uniform regulatory framework, is regarded as one of the conservations success stories in the global effort to protect biodiversity.