Matthew Gianni and Duncan Currie

The Environmental Cost of Deep-Sea Mining

By Matthew Gianni and Duncan Currie 2018-08-24 15:34:00

There is growing interest in opening up the deep-sea to industrial mining for copper, nickel, cobalt, gold, rare earths and other metals. But at what cost? The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was established in 1994 under the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is responsible for deciding whether, how and under what conditions, mining could be permitted in the international area of the seabed, an area equal to about a third of the earth’s surface. has...