Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for a legal framework to stop deep-sea mining and urged countries to invest in science to better understand and protect the world’s oceans.
There is growing international interest in deep-sea mining, but there is also pressure from some environmental groups and governments to either ban it or ensure it only takes place if there are appropriate regulations.
Deep-sea mining would involve using heavy machinery on the ocean floor to suck up small rocks, known as nodules, that contain cobalt, manganese and other rare metals used mostly in batteries.
“We must … create a legal framework to stop mining in the high seas and not allow new activities that put these ecosystems at risk,” Macron said Thursday at an event on the sidelines of the UN ocean conference in Lisbon.
“But at the same time, we need to promote our scientists and researchers to get to know the open sea better,” he added. “We need to understand better to protect.”
Although the president has expressed concern about deep-sea mining, France has an exploration contract through L’Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (National Institute of Ocean Science) for an area of 75,000 sq km (29,000 sq mi ) in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area of the North Pacific seafloor rich in polymetallic nodules.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body, draws up regulations governing seabed mining in the high seas – areas that are outside national jurisdiction. Until global rules are in place, seabed mining is not permitted.
Several nations, such as the Pacific islands of Palau and Fiji, but also Chile, have called for a global moratorium on all deep-sea mining activities, citing environmental concerns and a lack of sufficient scientific data.
But not all countries are against it. China is a leader in deepwater mining exploration, and smaller nations have also gotten involved. The tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru gave the ISA an ultimatum last year, declaring its intention to begin deepwater mining by June 2023 and asking authorities to speed up the adoption of seabed mining regulations.
The G7 countries agreed last month that they would only approve such mining projects if they did not seriously damage the environment. Peter Thomson, the UN’s special envoy for the ocean, told Reuters he believed regulations would soon emerge to counter those concerns.
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