Socialism on the Seafloor

By Grace Peven, Huxley Class of 2016

*Tube worms thrive in close proximity to deep-sea hydrothermal vents.* *NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, Galapagos Rift Expedition 2011* */ Public domain*

Imagine that there is another continent on Earth that occupies over a third of our world’s surface, is inhabited by no humans, is teeming with biological diversity and natural resources and only 20% of it has been explored. The potential for scientific discovery is infinite. How would the world manage such a place? Who would own it? Should we preserve it?

A place like this does exist on Earth: the seafloor.

Scientists estimate that 80% of the world’s oceans are unexplored and unmapped, but a growing global demand for natural resources is beginning to lower that percentage. In fact, exploration expeditions with the goal of deep-sea mining are happening right now.

Natural resource extraction, including mining, has typically occurred in the context of capitalism, focused on profit and plunder of the natural environment. In so many historical and modern instances, we see large corporations, emboldened by lax regulations, exploit a landscape and leave the land in a tattered state. Like the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, the world’s largest proposed open-pit mine, mining companies would benefit monetarily at the expense of an intact ecosystem, a commercial fishing economy, and indigenous people.

*‘Twelve Brief Lessons About the Ocean and the World’ by* *Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Available at* *Flickr* *under a* *Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0*

Largely, mining has left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, validating deeply held beliefs that resource extraction is bad news for the environment and social justice. But resource extraction is not inherently bad — it’s the methods that can make it detrimental. We can choose what our methods and impact look like.

Unlike the Pebble Mine, a socialist approach has entered the world of mining on the international seafloor. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), an agency of the United Nations, has developed a deep-sea mining program that provides equitable economic opportunities and a sharing of resources with developing countries, while prioritizing protection of the marine environment.

At its core, the ISA was created to protect the seabed resources from harm and exclusively manage the seafloor for peaceful purposes and the use of their resources for the common interests of mankind. It’s a good thing that the ISA is around, because the seafloor’s resources have gained the attention of many countries worldwide for their economic use in electronics.

The ISA has been tasked with managing the seafloor of the world’s international waters since 1982. The boundary of international waters starts outside of a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), 200 nautical miles offshore, to which a country has exclusive management rights. The ISA’s jurisdiction begins beyond the EEZ boundary and covers approximately 54% of the world’s oceans, or 38% of the Earth’s surface. The international area of the seafloor has been declared by the United Nations through a major international treaty, the Law of the Sea, “the common heritage of mankind” and is accordingly managed by the ISA on behalf of all mankind throughout the world. In total, 168 countries around the world have signed the Law of the Sea, committing to manage the resources of our oceans as an international community, adhering to strict environmental guidelines. Unfortunately, the United States, citing the legislation’s economic constraints, is not one of those countries.

Following the guidelines outlined in the Law of the Sea, collective resource sharing is at the foundation of the ISA’s regulatory framework. As a part of the United Nations, the ISA also follows the principles outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs exist to implement policies and practices for social justice, environmental conservation, and a peaceful economy. Through resource extraction and the opportunities and profit generated from it, the ISA has a goal of developing meaningful capacity-building opportunities for developing states throughout the world.

The resources of the seafloor have captured the attention of developed countries worldwide that currently have a contract through the ISA to explore the seafloor and take inventory for future mining. Exploration missions, awarded by the ISA to educational institutions, governments, and private companies, are occurring now and require meticulous environmental baseline studies. On par with the ISA’s mission of equitable opportunities, half of each exploration contract area must be preserved for a developing state that can later exploit it through a joint venture with a developed state.

In addition to the preservation of mining areas for developing states, the ISA is helping to develop “Blue” economies for developing states to increase scientific knowledge, research capacity, and sustainable economic ventures. The ISA is working with various African countries to promote a sustainable blue economy that facilitates deep-sea mining while implementing high standards of environmental protection and social justice. With these policies, developing countries could become world leaders in the sustainable and ethical extraction of minerals from the seafloor.

*How deep-sea mining works.* *MimiDeepSea* / *CC BY-SA*

As the ocean floor pulses with geologic activity to form underwater landscapes, the seafloor leaves behind precious metals of great interest to our modern electronic society. There are three seafloor products that are of most interest: sulphide deposits, manganese crust, and polymetallic nodules.

Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, containing cobalt and platinum, are found on the flanks of seamounts throughout the oceans of the world and in areas of high volcanic activity. Polymetallic nodules are dense oval-shaped rocks that resemble a dinosaur egg. Crack open the egg, and you’ll find a strong cocktail of nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. They are the deepest metals of interest, occurring at depths between 4,000 and 6,000 meters. Polymetallic sulphides are found on black smokers, or hydrothermal vents on top of mid-ocean ridges and seamounts. They are rich with copper, zinc, lead, iron, and gold. Active vents are teeming with biological diversity and are said to be where life on Earth evolved from.

Like any thoughtful natural resource policy, there are restrictions to what can be mined and what needs to be preserved. Comprehensive regulations are still being drafted and are incredibly complex. But the ISA views the protection of the environment as a critical component of their regulatory framework.

Since active hydrothermal sea-vents provide excellent habitat for a diverse array of species, mining for polymetallic sulphides will only be allowed on inactive vents. The ISA has also established preservation reference areas and “Areas of Particular Environmental Interest” adjacent to exploration and prospecting contracts. These preserved areas will not only be protected from mining but will be used as the standard to compare the environmental condition of the areas being mined. Only after years of data collection and assessment can mining be considered on the seafloor.

Most members of our species once had the commonsense view that the sun came up in the east and set in the west, that the sun’s rising and setting were the sun’s movements, not the earth’s. It was natural to believe this. But who believes it now?

Global demand for electronics is growing, and not just for smartphones and laptops. Batteries that power electric cars and store renewable energy require metals like nickel, cobalt, and lead that are found in all three metallic environments. In an age of rapid environmental change requiring us to produce carbon-alternative energy, precious metals are a key ingredient in renewable energy.

Not only does the modern world need metals, but there is a large portion of the developing world without access to these metallic goods and the technology needed to process them. Understandably, people are weary of extracting from an environment we have already damaged so much, but by opposing deep sea mining, do “first-world” environmentalists restrict the growth and progress of developing nations?

There are many questions and potential answers related to environmental ethics, equity, and what it means to have an international community in the context of seafloor mining. Although written from the perspective of environmental degradation through industrial agriculture, I’m reminded of Wes Jackson’s elegant words when thinking about the difficult ethical question of mining the seafloor. In Consulting the Genius of the Place, Jackson writes,

“…most members of our species once had the commonsense view that the sun came up in the east and set in the west, that the sun’s rising and setting were the sun’s movements, not the earth’s. It was natural to believe this. But who believes it now? More importantly, it doesn’t hurt much if someone does believe the sun is moving around the earth, but it does matter if we continue to believe that the individual is more important than social growth, the person more important than the world, and the economic growth more important than the wild ecosystems seriously under siege that ‘hold answers to questions we have not yet learned to ask.’”

On one hand, the economic opportunity and shared profit of mineral extraction places collective social growth higher than the individual, allowing developing countries a fair share of a communal resource and opportunity for scientific growth. On the other hand, the ocean holds many answers to questions we have not asked, or that we have asked and not yet answered. There are so many critters left to discover, perhaps medicinal plants to heal us, and certainly landscapes to awe at. Is deep sea mining a gateway to discovering and protecting these wild ecosystems? Do we exploit in order to explore? Can mining the seafloor provide a path for developing countries to grow?

As we continue to explore the seamounts and vents of the seafloor, we will also continue to explore a changing social and natural world, and discover new ways of thinking and interacting with each other and our environment.

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