Q2.b. What is deep sea mining? What are the potential benefits and risks associated with it? 15

Introduction

Deep sea mining is the extraction of mineral deposits from the seabed at depths exceeding two hundred meters, primarily targeting polymetallic (manganese) nodules, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, and polymetallic sulphides. These potato-sized mineral-rich nodules form over millions of years through precipitation of metals from seawater around a core, accumulating at growth rates of only a few millimeters per million years. The deep seabed contains concentrations of critical metals—nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum, and rare earth elements—essential for battery manufacturing, renewable energy technologies, and electronics. This analysis integrates environmental and economic philosophies to evaluate deep sea mining’s appropriateness as a resource strategy.

---

1. Definition and Mineral Resources

Polymetallic Nodules: Ferromanganese nodules are rock-like concretions ranging from 1 to 20 centimeters in diameter, comprising primarily iron and manganese oxides/hydroxides surrounding cores of shell fragments or basalt debris. Their composition includes manganese (20-30%), iron (5-15%), nickel (0.5-1.5%), cobalt (0.1-0.3%), copper (0.3-1%), and molybdenum, lithium, and rare earth elements. Nodule fields are distributed across vast seabed regions at depths of 4,000 to 6,500 meters, particularly concentrated in three economically significant zones:

• Clarion-Clipperton Zone: North-central Pacific Ocean, spanning approximately 5 million square kilometers
• Peru Basin: Southeastern Pacific Ocean
• Central Indian Ocean Basin: Indian Ocean region

Other Deep-Sea Mineral Resources: Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts and polymetallic sulphides formed around hydrothermal vents, containing copper, zinc, lead, silver, and gold.

---

2. Deep Sea Mining Technologies and Methods

Collection Methods: Three primary technologies proposed for nodule harvesting include mechanical collection using tracked vehicles, hydraulic suction systems creating sediment plumes, and combined hybrid approaches. Processing Techniques: Three proposed pathways include pyrometallurgical-hydrometallurgical combined processes using rotary kiln roasting at 900°C, wholly hydrometallurgical processes using acid leaching, and the Cuprion process using cuprous ions.

---

3. Potential Benefits of Deep Sea Mining

Mineral Resource Supply: Global cobalt demand will reach approximately three hundred thousand tons by 2030. Deep sea mining could supply substantial quantities of critical minerals, alleviating pressure on terrestrial mining and reducing land-based environmental degradation.

Economic Development: Small Island Developing States like Nauru, Kiribati, and Tonga face severe economic constraints and climate vulnerabilities. Exploration contracts generate approximately two million dollars annually per island nation, offering potential revenue for infrastructure and adaptation.

Reduction of Terrestrial Mining Impacts: Conventional nickel and cobalt mining causes extensive deforestation, soil degradation, and community displacement. Deep sea mining potentially reduces environmental pressure on tropical forests and agricultural lands.

Supply Chain Security: Critical mineral concentration in few countries (Indonesia controls seventy percent global nickel; Democratic Republic of Congo controls eighty percent cobalt). Diversifying sources through deep sea mining enhances supply security for energy transition.

Energy Transition Acceleration: Critical minerals from deep sea mining support expanded production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, and grid stabilization, essential for net-zero targets.

---

4. Environmental Risks and Impacts

Direct Habitat Destruction: Mining vehicles mechanically crush organisms and remove nodules across 300-700 kilometers, creating mining zones twice that size through near-surface sediment disturbance. Benthic organisms (sponges, corals, sea cucumbers) face near-complete mortality.

Sediment Plume Generation: Hydraulic collection creates plumes extending kilometers from mining sites, potentially reaching twilight zones (200-1,500 meters depth). Research shows mining waste particles replicate natural food particle sizes, causing zooplankton and small fish to ingest sediment instead of nutrients, disrupting food webs.

Biodiversity Loss: Deep-sea organisms show slow growth, extended lifespans, low reproduction rates, and high specialization. Recovery timescales potentially extend to centuries or millennia—effectively permanent on human timescales.

Marine Carbon Sequestration Disruption: The deep ocean absorbs five hundred million tons atmospheric CO₂ annually. Mining resuspends particulate organic carbon, making it available for microbial respiration, releasing CO₂ to atmosphere. UNFCCC reports conclude DSM could substantially compromise ocean carbon sequestration, accelerating climate change.

Fisheries and Food Security Threats: The Clarion-Clipperton Zone hosts Earth’s richest tuna fishing areas. Sediment plumes disrupt tuna habitats, threatening fisheries supporting Small Island Developing States. Potential annual losses reach one hundred forty million dollars by 2050.

Long-Term Ecosystem Recovery Failure: Experimental mining conducted in the 1980s-1990s showed environments had not fully recovered after twenty-six years.

---

5. Environmental Philosophies and Deep Sea Mining

Environmental Determinism Perspective:
Environmental determinism asserts that physical environments rigidly control human actions and societal development. Applied to deep sea mining, determinism would argue that the ocean’s mineral wealth inevitably compels extraction—that resource scarcity drives human activity inexorably toward mining, regardless of consequences. This perspective is fundamentally flawed for DSM because it denies human agency and moral responsibility. The extreme harsh environment of the deep sea (pressure 400+ atmospheres, near-freezing temperatures, darkness, limited biodiversity) sets constraints that should rightfully impose severe limitations on economic activity, not mandate extraction. Determinism absolves responsibility, suggesting DSM is inevitable and non-negotiable.

Environmental Possibilism Perspective:
Possibilism, pioneered by Lucien Febvre and Vidal de la Blache, asserts that while environments set constraints, humans possess capabilities to adapt, negotiate, and choose actions within those limits. Possibilism applied to DSM suggests humans have agency and choice: the existence of deep-sea minerals does not necessitate their extraction; possibilism permits choosing not to mine despite mineral availability. This perspective empowers human decision-making—we can choose alternative pathways (recycling, circular economy, reduced consumption) rather than inevitably pursuing extraction. Possibilism shifts responsibility to human choice, enabling ethical decision-making that considers environmental consequences.

Neo-Determinism (Stop-and-Go Determinism) Perspective:
Griffith Taylor developed neo-determinism as a middle path between determinism and possibilism. He argued that nature determines the broad framework within which humans operate, but humans can accelerate, pause, or stop within those frameworks—analogous to a traffic signal. Taylor stated: “Man is like a traffic controller who can accelerate, slow, or stop down the progress but he cannot change the direction.” Neo-determinism applied to DSM would recognize that while the ocean exists with mineral deposits, nature “signals” through ecosystem fragility, carbon cycle disruption, and biodiversity vulnerability. These “red signals” from nature suggest humans should pause or stop DSM activity, heeding environmental limits. Neo-determinism demands that humans respect nature’s constraints through intelligent decision-making, choosing not to pursue extraction where nature clearly signals prohibitive risks.

Critical Evaluation: Neo-determinism appears most philosophically sound for DSM because it balances environmental respect with human agency. It acknowledges that DSM’s environmental costs represent nature’s “red signal” commanding cessation of the activity, not acceleration. Ignoring these signals—as current DSM advocacy does—constitutes foolish rather than wise decision-making within environmental limits.

---

6. Boulding’s Economic Models and Deep Sea Mining

Cowboy Economy Model (Kenneth Boulding, 1966):
Kenneth Boulding, a Quaker economist, distinguished between two economic models in his landmark essay “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth.” The cowboy economy represents an open-ended system premised on apparently limitless resources and infinite waste absorption capacity. Boulding stated: “The cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies.”

The cowboy economy operates through:

• Belief that markets optimally allocate resources through invisible-hand mechanisms
• Assumption that substitution is always possible, making scarcity only relative
• Expectation that rising prices automatically stimulate technological innovation and new resource discovery
• Practice of extracting resources, consuming them, and externalizing waste costs onto society without accounting

Deep Sea Mining as Cowboy Economics: Deep sea mining exemplifies cowboy economy logic. DSM advocates argue that ocean resources are vast and essentially unlimited; mining operations will be constrained only by economic viability. They assume technological innovation will solve environmental problems (sediment plume containment, ecosystem restoration, pollution management). They treat ocean externalities—ecosystem destruction, carbon cycle disruption, fisheries loss—as unpriced external costs borne by society rather than mining operators. The cowboy framing treats the deep ocean as another frontier to be exploited without constraint, lacking understanding that Earth is a closed system with finite capacity.

Spaceship Economy Model (Kenneth Boulding, 1966):
Boulding contrasted the cowboy economy with the spaceship economy, representing Earth as a closed system—a spaceship—with finite resources, limited waste-absorption capacity, and no external inputs except solar energy. Boulding wrote: “The spaceship economy…in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form.”

The spaceship economy operates through:

• Recognition of planetary boundaries and finite resource stocks
• Circular material flows where waste becomes input (recycling, regeneration)
• Internalizing all costs (environmental, social, climate) into economic decision-making
• Optimization through efficiency and renewal rather than extraction and expansion
• Precautionary approach to activities posing irreversible damage

Deep Sea Mining as Spaceship Economics: Under spaceship economic principles, DSM is fundamentally inappropriate. The spaceship model recognizes that ecosystem services—carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, biodiversity—have finite capacity and immense value. DSM would degrade these services irreversibly, imposing permanent costs on global climate and food security. From a spaceship perspective, recycling and urban mining represent appropriate resource strategies (circular material flows), whereas deep sea extraction represents cowboy exploitation of a finite system.

Philosophical Distinction: Boulding argued that “economists in particular, for the most part, have failed to come to grips with the ultimate consequences of the transition from the open to the closed earth.” DSM advocates remain trapped in cowboy thinking, denying planetary boundaries and pursuing extraction as economically rational despite catastrophic environmental consequences. Spaceship economics, by contrast, recognizes that DSM’s environmental costs—disrupted carbon sequestration, ecosystem destruction, fisheries collapse—far exceed monetary benefits and represent catastrophic planetary-scale damage incompatible with sustainable economy.

---

7. Economic and Social Risks

Insurance and Financial Sector Impacts: University of British Columbia research (2025) finds DSM poses significant risks for insurers and investors. Risk scores surge due to environmental damage liability, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Single DSM disasters could generate liabilities exceeding Small Island Developing States’ GDP.

Small Island Developing States Vulnerability: Climate change already imposes severe consequences through sea-level rise and tropical cyclones. DSM-induced ecosystem degradation increases sovereign risk scores, raising borrowing costs and limiting access to climate adaptation funding.

Fisheries Economic Loss: Annual losses could reach one hundred forty to two hundred million dollars by 2050 for Pacific island nations from tuna fisheries disruption combined with temperature-driven migration.

---

8. Regulatory Framework

International Seabed Authority Mandate: The ISA must ensure effective marine environmental protection. As of December 2024, thirty-one exploration contracts issued but comprehensive exploitation regulations remain unadopted. Regulatory gaps and enforcement limitations restrict ISA control.

Conflicting SIDS Positions: Pro-mining nations (Nauru, Kiribati) prioritize economic opportunity; anti-mining nations (Fiji, Vanuatu, Palau) prioritize environmental protection and fisheries sustainability.

---

9. Emerging Trends (2024-2025)

Moratorium Advocacy: IUCN adopted Resolution 122 calling for DSM moratorium unless risks are fully understood. Over two hundred fifty organizations and several nations support mining moratorium. Pacific island alliance calls for prohibition.

Circular Economy Alternative: Recycling and urban mining recover nearly all lithium from used batteries. Maximizing material recovery could substantially reduce virgin mineral demand, eliminating DSM necessity while avoiding environmental catastrophe.

Insurance Market Contraction: Private insurers withdraw from DSM-related sectors, forcing governments to provide inadequate state-backed coverage, signaling market recognition of unmanageable risks.

---

Conclusion

Deep sea mining exemplifies the tension between cowboy and spaceship economic models. While cowboy economics justifies DSM as inevitable resource extraction promising economic benefits, spaceship economics recognizes DSM as incompatible with planetary boundaries and climate imperatives. Environmental philosophies reveal that neo-determinism and possibilism both argue against DSM: nature’s red signals (ecosystem fragility, carbon disruption, irreversible damage) command humans to pause or stop extraction activity. Boulding’s prescient framework—recognizing Earth’s closed-system nature—demonstrates that DSM represents outdated cowboy thinking dangerously out of alignment with planetary realities. Circular economy alternatives—recycling, urban mining, reduced consumption—align with spaceship economic principles and should supersede deep sea extraction. The 2025 regulatory juncture offers opportunity to transition from cowboy to spaceship economics, rejecting DSM in favor of sustainable, circular resource strategies compatible with planetary boundaries and climate imperatives.