"Policy Watch: After fraught global meeting, future of deep-sea mining still hangs in balance", 3 August 2023

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Nauru invoked a so-called two-year rule, enforcing a deadline of 9 July 2023 on the ISA to finalise a mining code or face a situation where potentially unregulated mining could take place. Nauru is sponsoring Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), a subsidiary of Canadian firm, The Metals Company, to explore a nickel- and manganese-rich area of the Pacific known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. These resources are held in in polymetallic nodules that have been built up over millions of years. NORI’s remote-controlled collector system moves over the seabed picking up the nodules, which are pumped to the surface for processing.

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Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company, says his firm will not submit a mining application before next July, when the council will have had another four sessions in which to work on regulations. “What we wanted to do is to take a little bit of heat out of it, to say …. ‘don't be looking over your shoulder’.”

In the meantime, the company will go back to the exploration area, from where it collected 3,000 tonnes of nodules last year, to assess recovery rates of species. “We will spend a lot more time wearing (out) our shoe leather to present our results as they become available, just so people can get a sense of the scientific-based evidence that is going (in) to build that final application.”

The arguments for deep sea mining hinge on the vast amounts of metals such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and rare earth metals required for batteries and other technologies to drive a green economy. Proponents assert they can be made available with less destruction than on land, where mining has led to deforestation, human rights abuses, and the pollution of water and soil from mining wastes. “It's a horrible set of impacts. And so, we need to be prepared to look at new frontiers,” says Barron.

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