Do we need deep sea mining? With Seas At Risk

Welcome to the second instalment of our mining arc. After covering the geopolitics of critical minerals (check out the episode here), this week we ask a harder question: is deep sea mining a necessary innovation, or a risk we don’t yet understand well enough to take?

Deep sea mining means extracting minerals from the bottom of the ocean, at depths of 200 metres and beyond, no easy feat. It’s often framed as the next frontier for securing the metals needed for the energy transition – batteries, renewables, electrification. But that framing sits alongside a more uncomfortable reality: these ecosystems are among the least understood on Earth, and the consequences of disturbing them may be irreversible.

This is a question of baseline knowledge: whether we even understand what normal looks like at those depths, and therefore whether impact can be meaningfully assessed at all.

Governance remains contested. Negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the body regulating the mineral resources of the seabed beyond national jurisdiction – have been slow and fraught, reflecting deep disagreement over whether the industry should proceed at all, or under what conditions.

In this episode, Giulia speaks with Simon Holmström, senior deep sea mining policy officer at Seas At Risk, an association of over 30 environmental NGOs from across Europe. Together, they unpack the environmental risks, the limits of current knowledge,and the evolving policy landscape. 

Simon highlights the economic viability of deep sea mining, the need for precautionary measures, and the importance of sustainable practices in the face of growing demand for critical minerals.

Their main takeaways are:

• The deep ocean is one of the least understood ecosystems 
• The economic viability of deep sea mining remains highly speculative 
• Opposition to deep sea mining is growing across civil society and parts of industry 
• The regulatory pathway, and therefore the industry’s future,  is still unresolved

What emerges is not a simple case for or against, but a more fundamental question: how should we make decisions about technologies where the downside risks are uncertain, potentially systemic and not easily reversible – especially when they are being justified in the name of solving a different global problem? 

In trying to address climate change, if we introduce new environmental risks we don't yet fully understand, how should those trade-offs be evaluated? Who gets to decide what level of risk is acceptable, and for whom?

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