Deep-sea mining is less a question about discovery and more of a question about decisions shaping future political and economic arrangements, according to Theresa Arriola, Blue Ocean Law director of operations and chairwoman of Our Common Wealth 670.
As one of the presenters at Pacific Centre for Island Sustainability’s Micronesia Security webinar last Friday, Arriola said the process to lease acres of seabed in the Pacific Ocean and kickstart commercial deep-sea mining for minerals reveals a familiar pattern where the administration lacks accountability and ignores Pacific islands’ sovereignty.
“Once those arrangements are in place, they can influence which alternatives are available, which investments are encouraged, et cetera. It starts to snowball. The anticipated strategic value of minerals is already becoming a basis for federal action, even though many of the assumptions underlining that value are unresolved,” Arriola said.
Especially considering how local governments in the Pacific islands are or are not being consulted or accommodated, Arriola’s presentation focused on deep-sea mining in the context of security and militarization in Micronesia.
As of July, 46 countries called for a moratorium, precautionary pause or ban on commercial deep-sea mining, including several Pacific Island countries.
Arriola said these countries are not all advancing the same policy, but they are raising concerns about moving into commercial mining before understanding the consequences.
“That’s important out here in the Marianas in particular, because the United States is advancing its offshore mineral policies at a time when technology, economics and regulatory frameworks are still developing,” Arriola said.
Arriola cited a 2020 paper by Jeffrey Drazen that challenges the assumption that the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining would be confined to the ocean floor. It said the specific equipment and methods that might be used in the Marianas have not yet been established, so the impacts cannot be fully understood.
“Essentially, scientists across different fields of deep ocean research have emphasised how limited our baseline data still is, particularly when it comes to understanding what species live in these environments and how these ecosystems function,” Arriola said.
In some areas, Arriola added, mining is being considered in environments lacking a complete record of what lives there, “much less how these ecosystems would respond to any kind of disturbance.”
Without adequate baseline data, she said it is difficult to establish what conditions existed before mining or measure the full extent of any changes incurred.
“This is an issue we’ve encountered in other environmental review processes in the CNMI. An impact is determined to be less than significant, simply because the scientific baseline data is missing or absent,” Arriola said.
Put simply, deep-sea mining involves extracting mineral deposits from the ocean floor at depths greater than 200 meters. This activity stirs up sediment that can interfere with surrounding species, compromise their breathing, feeding, ability to sense surroundings, as well as habitat loss.
On the push for deep-sea mining in the United States, Arriola conveys it as the most recent action to access “places with deep cultural and historical significance to island communities” for the sake of “strategic” action.
Arriola said “national security” is likewise thrown around to justify impacts on communities for the sake of military planning, land use or war planning.
She said it is a familiar pattern for island territories extending from access to land to access to the ocean, rationalized by “supposed critical need.”
“I’m really interested in how that value gets determined and connected to global, national and local security concerns. At what point does the possibility that a resource might be needed in the future become enough to justify decisions about that resource in and around our islands?” Arriola said.
Arriola added that minerals are not born critical but are made critical by how governments anticipate needing them.
Arriola also mentioned that commercial deep-sea mining has yet to become established.
“That’s a really important point to make. It’s not yet a profitable industry on a large scale,” Arriola said.
She said the Cook Islands has issued exploration licenses and is studying the potential for seabed mining but has no authorized commercial extraction.
While deep-sea mining is mostly intended to find cobalt, zinc, copper and other minerals, some deep-sea discoveries simply are not profitable yet.
For example, Japan, a country known for developing and testing technology to recover these deep-ocean minerals, recovered rare earth mud in February that is “not commercially feasible yet,” Arriola added.
With governments and community groups voicing disapproval, concerns and outcry against deep sea mining in Guam, the CNMI and America Samoa, Arriola said the continued push shows how federal interest trumps local interest.
“If we take a closer look at the offshore mineral leasing process that has unfolded in the Marianas, we can see how federal interest in these resources has translated into specific administrative actions in this really condensed timeframe … People have been asking a lot of questions and making their concerns known in a pretty unprecedented way,” Arriola said.
Arriola recalled how the Marine Minerals Administration moved forward to the next stage of the leasing process, area identification, despite allowing an extended comment period where hundreds of letters and petitions against the activity were submitted.
In that time, legislation was also made to deter or make use of deep-sea mining in the Marianas, namely Guam’s Public Law 38-129, which prevents seabed mineral extraction in Guam’s territorial waters.
CNMI Delegate Kimberlyn King-Hinds also proposed a bill that would split certain federal seabed leasing revenues, 50 percent for the U.S Treasury and 50 percent to be shared among the territories that would be included in the plans.
Arriola said the amount received would depend on how close a territory is to the particular mining area, but the idea would be for the funds to support environmental restoration and infrastructure.
“Of course, it’s not law yet, and there’s still a lot of questions about how much the CNMI would actually receive in this deal, and whether or not that money would be enough to cover potential damage,” Arriola said.
