‘Deep-sea gold rush’ for rare metals could cause irreversible harm
In a windowless conference room in Canary Wharf, dozens of mining executives, bankers and government officials are being promised unique insights into how to profit from “the deep-sea gold rush”.
The hoped-for gold rush lies thousands of miles away on the bed of the Pacific Ocean, where trillions of potato-sized nodules of rare earth elements vital to power the next generation of electric cars have been discovered 4,000m below the surface.
Mining companies are hoping that global rules to allow industrial scale deep-sea mining to collect the haul could be set in place as early as July 2023.
However, environmental campaigners warned that mining for the metals would be “dangerous”, “reckless” and cause “irreversible harm” to little-known ecosystems. One estimate suggests that 90% of the deep-sea species that researchers encounter are new to science.
Louisa Casson, a Greenpeace campaigner, criticised the industry for running the conference and banks for considering investing in the “dangerous and unnecessary” projects to “make a quick profit”.
“This destructive new industry wants to rip up an ecosystem we are only just starting to understand,” she said. “[They are] aiming to make a quick profit while our oceans and the billions of people relying on them bear the costs.”
The nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico were first discovered by the crew of HMS Challenger in 1875, but only recent developments in underwater robotics has made large-scale mining of the metals possible.
The UN-affiliated organisation that oversees the controversial new industry has granted licenses for companies to explore the area, but full-scale mining has yet to start. That could soon change, however, as the tiny Pacific island
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