UK government drops support for controversial deep sea mining as it backs temporary pause

Seabed mining

The report explains that the driver for a supposedly ‘greener energy future’ faces an expected global shortage of ‘critical’ raw materials. The problem of course is that just like so-called fossil fuels all these minerals have to be extracted from somewhere, so somebody is inevitably not going to like it. Plus they won’t be relying on renewable power to do the work.
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The UK has for the first time come out in support of a pause in highly controversial mining of the deep sea bed, having previously supported it, reports Sky News.

On Monday, the government added its name to a group of countries seeking a moratorium on new licences to exploit minerals such as lithium, copper and cobalt – vital for green energy – from the deep sea.

The environment department said the precautionary pause is designed to protect the world’s ocean from such projects, which involve heavy machinery scraping deposits from the world’s largest habitat, until more evidence on the impact is available.

It said it would establish a new UK-based network of experts to collect further scientific data.

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey said the UK will use “our scientific expertise to fully understand the impact of deep sea mining on precious ecosystems; and in the meantime, we will not support or sponsor any exploitation licences”.

The announcement comes as negotiations at the United Nations regulator, the International Seabed Authority, start on Monday, and take place one month before the COP28 climate talks commence in Dubai in December.

Previously, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government had been in favour of exploratory licences, a position criticised by Labour and dozens of scientists.

Now the UK joins countries including Germany, France, Chile and Vanuatu in backing a pause on exploitation licences for the new and contested industry.

Other than from a few small tests, no commercial mining has happened at scale yet, and campaigners say it will be extremely destructive, with full environmental impacts hard to predict.

But deep sea mining is regarded as a potential solution to the expected global shortage of raw materials considered critical to a greener energy future, and used in things like batteries and renewable power.

It is also seen as a way to reduce dependence on the relatively few countries that hold deposits on land, including China, Australia, Russia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Full report here.