Mining has always been a risky business. Consumers and businesses have for centuries turned the blind eye to the irreversible damage to the natural world. Mining companies operating in fragile states get away with shady deals with the elites leading to the extinction of local ecosystems.
The blind eye has turned green, and is no longer only nurtured by vanity and greed.
If documenting environmental damage in hard to reach areas in remote rain forests is difficult, how on earth can investigative journalists reveal what is happening on the seabed?
To date, even the best seabed miners have not succeeded. But, as we learn almost every day, the green economy is screaming for minerals. And for seabed miners this means billions of dollars just waiting to be extracted.
Replacing one extinction with another
To avoid extinction of ecosystems, the green economy is looking for minerals around the world, including the seabed. The knowledge about the consequences is in pair with ambitions. Digging in the seabed, vibrations, sound- and light pollution can extinct ecosystems and the seabeds ability to absorb CO2.
Unanswered questions
The EU parliament said in 2018 that seabed mining should be banned until there we know more about the environmental risks.
Machines like the one pictured are developed in Canada and was meant to extract minerals in the Bismarck sea outside Papua New Guinea. The Solwara 1-prosjektet is the first of its kind to extract gold and copper. The Canadian Nautilus Minerals with Russian and Oman as majority owners had big plans. Nautilus Minerals is regarded as the leading company in seabed mining and the first to start operating.
The project was the first of its kind but has been halted. Nautilus has lost huge amounts of money. Prime minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape has called the project a total fiasko.
The demand for copper, rare earth minerals (REM) and cobalt increases as the world screams for more zero emission energy. Copper and REM demands are expected to increase by 2-4 per cent by 2027. Lithium is expected a 650 per cent increase. A total of 149,500 tonnes of minerals was extracted in 2019 worth 4.5 billion dollars.
China and The democratic republic of Congo supply most of the worlds cobalt and minerals. Many countries therefore want extraction from more places.
Mineral vacuum cleaner
How this can be done without damaging life in the oceans is uncertain. Canadian Deep Green plans to vacuum thousands of tons of nickel, copper and cobalt-rich polymetallic nodules from the ocean bed. They will start in the Northern Pacific.
China as mineral super power
China has a near monopoly on minerals. Some 80 per cent of all US mineral import came from China between 2014 and 2017. 220,000 tonnes are extracted annually in China. This is five times more than the capacity of the rest of the world. Many feared that China would use this position during the trade dispute between the two countries last year.
Chinas has built up its capacity not because geographical concentration. Minerals are found many places. The near monopoly is due to the country’s development of the industry and low cost labour. Recently Japan for instance discovered huge reserves of minerals.
As a curiosity: In this BBC story you can read how a CIA operation outside Hawaii to elevate a Soviet nuclear submarine kick started seabed mining.
01/02/2020
