According to the Ocean Panel, deep-sea mining could destroy undiscovered life forms
According to the Ocean Panel, deep-sea mining could destroy undiscovered life forms
Mining on the ocean floor should not begin until a full assessment of the likely environmental impact can be made, according to a report commissioned by the High Level Panel on Sustainable Ocean Management (Ocean Panel).
Environmentalists, including Britain's David Attenborough, have called for a ban on deep sea mining that would extract resources such as copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, lithium and rare earth elements from the tubers on the seabed.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN organization based in Jamaica, has developed exploration regulations, but has yet to determine the extraction rules that are required for the proposed mine.
The report, written by six academics, said that deep-sea bottom mining is a “sustainability puzzle”.
Seabed bulbs contain battery metals that are needed to drive the global shift towards clean energy, but if the seabed is scoured for these metals by tugs, it is likely that the ecosystems that little research has been done so far will be disrupted since they are very difficult to reach.
"If mining continued with current knowledge, species and their properties could be lost before they are known and understood," the authors wrote.
At its annual meeting, which was postponed due to the Covid 19 pandemic from July to October this year, the ISA will discuss a regulation that could enable deep-sea underground mining.
According to the report, international research should be carried out to close knowledge gaps before seabed mining is allowed, and protection zones should be established in all marine regions that are under the jurisdiction of the ISA.
The authors also recommended that countries promote recycling of battery metals to reduce the need for new supplies.
The Ocean Panel includes heads of state from 14 countries, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Kenya, Japan and Norway.
