In March, the Canadian deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) made an extraordinary bid to win approval to harvest seabed minerals in international waters, by bypassing the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and seeking authorization from the United States instead.
Weeks later, President Donald Trump issued an executive order signalling his administration’s support for seabed mining in both U.S. and international waters, claiming a “core national security and economic interest” in deep-sea resources.
The ISA has yet to make a decision about whether it will allow deep-sea mining or adopt rules to regulate such an industry, and the UN-backed authority is pushing back against the rush to develop the ocean floor. At the close of its latest meeting in July, the ISA launched an official investigation into efforts by deep-sea miners like TMC to circumvent international law.
Deep-sea mining poses profound risks to ocean ecosystems. Prior to the recent ISA assembly meeting in Jamaica, a group of 40 financial institutions representing nearly €4 trillion in assets urged governments to refrain from permitting deep-sea mining until the environmental, social and economic risks are better understood and alternatives have been explored. The statement was coordinated by the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, whose mission is to reverse nature loss this decade.
Questioning the rationale for seabed mining
Gerard Barron, TMC’s chairman and CEO, has claimed that seabed mining supports the green energy transition, but critics call this greenwashing. The narrative has since shifted toward defense and competition with China.
Also coinciding with the ISA gathering in July, Greenpeace published a new report on the deep-sea mining industry’s efforts to fast-track underwater mineral exploitation, calling the latest push “a lifeline for an industry in crisis” and challenging the national security argument for seabed mining.
“Deep sea mining is not a strategic necessity,” Randy Manner, a retired major general in the U.S. Army, wrote in an introductory letter to the report. “What we are witnessing is not a fact-based response to a military need, but an attempt by private actors to drape a speculative commercial venture in the flag of national defense.”
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In a March 2024 report, the sustainable finance non-profit Planet Tracker found that mining the deep sea would be a financial mistake “due to negative returns on invested capital” given the high operating expenses and liabilities, and that “preserving the planet’s abyssal plains is worth at the very least ten times more than exploiting them.”
TMC has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States for two exploration licences and one commercial-recovery permit in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean.
“The scale of strip mining proposed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is unprecedented. The area under consideration is the size of India,” Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Republic of Palau, said at the ISA assembly. “Is this the legacy we want to leave our children? A lifeless ocean floor stretching across millions of square kilometres, that could have cascading impacts on the entire Pacific ecosystem and beyond?”
Mark Mann is a journalist and editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.
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