When I wrote, here, about this month’s meeting of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, it seemed that it would agree a code to regulate mining of the seabed. Fortunately, the ISA has postponed finalisation of the code until July 2025, to allow time for further consideration of impacts on habitats and biodiversity.
Postponement makes an immediate start of deep sea mining in international waters less likely, but it doesn’t rule it out. The Metals Company (TMC), the Canadian company most committed to deep sea mining, has issued a statement expressing optimism that, although finalisation of the code has been postponed, deep sea mining will definitely go ahead - possibly before the code is finalised.
TMC is gathering celebrity endorsement, notably from Titanic director James Cameron, here. Cameron claims authority on the basis of his conservationist credentials, and of having done more than 75 deep-sea dives in which he has “seen an awful lot of seafloor.” He believes (from what he has seen through the windows of his submersible, rather than from scientific evidence) that the abyssal seafloor contains “very little in the way of a rich and diverse community.” He goes on to suggest that the seafloor should be mined, because it is “less wrong” than mining in rainforests and other areas that he recognises as ecologically sensitive.
Cameron seems to believe that if the metals that are needed for EV batteries are mined from the seabed, they won’t need to be mined from rainforests. This is a common assumption, but one that is unrealistic. Such will be the demand for critical battery metals to meet the requirements of vehicle manufacturers committed to decarbonised growth, minerals supplied from the seabed will be added to those from the rainforests, not substituted for them.
As a conservationist, Cameron wants growth to take place with as little ecological damage as possible. But as a bright green technological optimist, he neither questions what growth is for nor lets anything stand in its way. By not being willing to contemplate giving up on growth, his brand of conservationism allows him to facilitate the greenwashing of a mining company.
The campaign continues to protect the ocean floor, Earth’s last remaining source of untouched biodiversity, from being dug and gauged by machines.