UN to start allowing deep sea mining operations from July

Subject :Geography

Section: Physical geography

Concept :

After two weeks of negotiations, the International Seabed Authority has decided that it will start taking permit applications in July from companies that want to mine the ocean’s floor.
The undersea mining will be conducted to extract key battery materials — cobalt, copper, nickel, and manganese — from potato-sized rocks called “polymetallic nodules” found at depths of 4 kilometres to 6 kilometres.
The UN’s decision to take deep-sea mining applications comes when there is no mining code in place.
Several countries have insisted that industrial undersea mining should require strict rules.

Deep Sea Mining

Deep sea mining is a growing subfield of experimental seabed mining that involves the retrieval of minerals and deposits from the ocean floor found at depths of 200 metres (660 ft), up to 6,500 metres (21,300 ft).
Where are the deep-sea minerals located?
The deep sea contains three primary sources for mining critical minerals:
Potato-size manganese nodules (rich in manganese, cobalt, copper, nickel, and rare earth elements);
Deposits of sulfur-containing minerals around underwater openings known as hydrothermal vents; and
Cobalt-rich crusts lining the sides of mid-ocean ridges and underwater mountains, also known as seamounts.
The majority of proposed deep sea mining sites are near of polymetallic nodules or active and extinct hydrothermal vents at 1,400 to 3,700 metres below the ocean’s surface.
The vents create globular or massive sulfide deposits, which contain valuable metals such as silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc.
The deposits are mined using either hydraulic pumps or bucket systems that take ore to the surface to be processed.

Note :

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone that spans 1.7 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico, and it is a potential hotbed for critical minerals.
The Clipperton Fracture Zone, is a geological submarine fracture zone of the Pacific Ocean, with a length of around 4500 miles (7240 km). The fracture, an unusually mountainous topographical feature, begins east-northeast of the Line Islands and ends in the Middle America Trench off the coast of Central America.

Concern:

The draft decision of ISA’s governing council allows companies to file permit applications from July 9.
In the absence of a mining code, which has been under discussion for nearly 10 years, the 36-member council is uncertain about the process it should adopt for reviewing applications for mining contracts.

Mining Code/ Regulatory Framework

The mining code currently under development lacks sufficient knowledge of the deep sea and a thorough assessment of environmental impacts of mining operations that are necessary to ensure effective protection of deep-sea life, according to IUCN experts.
An effective regulatory framework is needed to avoid lasting harm to the marine environment, based on high-quality environmental impact assessments and mitigation strategies.
These, in turn, must be based on comprehensive baseline studies to improve the understanding of the deep sea, which remains understudied and poorly understood.

United Nations Convention On The Law Of The Sea (UNCLOS)

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international agreement that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities.
167 countries and the European Union are parties to the convention.
UNCLOS came into force in 1994.
It lays down a comprehensive regime of law and order in the world’s oceans and seas establishing rules governing all uses of the oceans and their resources.