Deep-Sea Mining Moves Closer to Reality as Global Rules Lag Behind

What happened?

Deep-sea mining has continued to advance faster than the international rulebook meant to govern it. The International Seabed Authority, the UN-affiliated body tasked with regulating mineral activity in international waters, has continued negotiating a long-delayed mining code covering exploitation of polymetallic nodules, cobalt-rich crusts and seafloor massive sulphides, while at least one company has pursued national-level or unilateral pathways to begin commercial-scale extraction in the Pacific, arguing existing exploration rules already permit limited operations.

The dispute has intensified a long-running debate between countries and companies eager to secure supplies of nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese — all used in batteries and clean-energy technology — and marine scientists and conservation groups warning that seabed ecosystems in areas such as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone remain poorly studied and could be irreversibly damaged before their biodiversity is even catalogued.

Key points

• The International Seabed Authority has not finalised its mining code despite years of negotiation among its member states.
• The Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific holds an estimated vast reserve of polymetallic nodules containing nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, according to ISA exploration data.
• More than 30 countries have called for a moratorium, precautionary pause or outright ban on deep-sea mining, including France, Germany, Chile and several Pacific Island states.
• The Metals Company has pursued permits to begin commercial mining, testing the boundaries of ISA jurisdiction and national regulatory authority.
• Scientific surveys, including those published in partnership with the Natural History Museum, London, have found large numbers of previously unknown species in nodule fields targeted for mining.

What we know

The ISA, established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, has granted numerous exploration contracts over the past two decades covering areas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Ocean seabeds, but exploitation — actual commercial extraction — has required a finalised regulatory code that member states have not yet agreed upon, despite a 2021 request by Nauru that triggered a two-year deadline provision under the treaty’s so-called ‘two-year rule.’ That provision technically allows exploitation applications to proceed even without a finished code, a legal ambiguity that has become central to the current dispute.

Scientific research funded by governments and NGOs, including expeditions supported by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and the Natural History Museum, has documented thousands of previously undescribed species living on and around polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, reinforcing concerns that mining could eliminate species before they are formally identified, let alone understood.

Background

Interest in seabed minerals dates back decades, but it accelerated sharply as demand for battery metals grew alongside the electric vehicle and renewable energy transition. Polymetallic nodules — potato-sized mineral formations lying on the seabed at depths of 4,000 to 6,000 metres — are attractive because they contain nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese in a single deposit, unlike most land-based ore bodies, potentially offering a more concentrated and, proponents argue, less environmentally disruptive source than expanding terrestrial mining in fragile locations such as Indonesian nickel belts or Congolese cobalt mines.

The ISA has operated under a dual mandate since its founding: to regulate seabed mineral activity while also protecting the marine environment as the ‘common heritage of mankind’ under the Law of the Sea Convention, a tension that has made consensus on exploitation rules difficult, particularly regarding environmental thresholds, revenue-sharing among nations, and liability for environmental damage.

Detailed analysis

The central regulatory dispute concerns whether commercial mining can lawfully proceed before the ISA finalises its exploitation code. Companies pursuing early mining argue the treaty’s two-year rule created a legal pathway, while a majority of ISA member states and most environmental law scholars contend that proceeding without agreed environmental standards, inspection regimes and liability rules would violate the spirit, if not the strict letter, of the convention. This legal uncertainty has created a de facto race: mining advocates have incentive to establish operational precedent before rules tighten, while opponents push for a moratorium precisely to prevent that precedent from being set.

The environmental science underlying the debate remains genuinely contested but is trending toward caution. Independent studies have found that nodule removal is likely to be effectively permanent on human timescales, since nodules themselves take millions of years to form, and that sediment plumes generated by mining equipment could travel far beyond mining sites, affecting a wider area of seabed and midwater ecosystems than direct extraction alone. Industry-funded research has argued mitigation technologies can limit plume dispersal, but peer-reviewed independent verification of these claims at commercial scale remains limited, since no full-scale commercial mining has yet occurred.

Geopolitically, the issue intersects with critical minerals strategy. Countries seeking to reduce dependence on Chinese-processed battery metals view seabed resources as a potential diversification option, while China itself holds significant ISA exploration contracts, meaning no single geopolitical bloc has a straightforward interest in either accelerating or blocking deep-sea mining uniformly.

Why it matters

The outcome of this regulatory standoff will shape whether a substantial new extractive industry opens in one of the least understood environments on Earth, with consequences for biodiversity, international maritime law and the global battery-metal supply chain. A weak or absent regulatory framework at the point commercial mining begins would set a precedent that is difficult to reverse, given the practical difficulty of monitoring and enforcing environmental standards at depths of several kilometres in international waters far from any coastline.

For coastal and Pacific Island states, many of which depend heavily on healthy ocean ecosystems for fisheries and tourism, the stakes are also economic and existential in a way that is easy to overlook in a debate often framed primarily around industrial supply chains.

What happens next?

ISA member states are expected to continue negotiating the mining code at forthcoming council sessions, with growing pressure from moratorium-supporting states to delay any exploitation licences until environmental standards are agreed. Legal challenges are likely if any company or sponsoring state attempts to proceed with commercial extraction absent a finalised code, potentially testing the authority’s enforcement powers for the first time in a real-world dispute.

Financial markets and battery manufacturers will also be watching closely: several major automakers and battery producers have already publicly stated they will not source deep-sea minerals until stronger environmental assurances exist, which could limit commercial demand even if extraction becomes legally possible.

Insight Media Opinion

Insight Media Opinion: The push to begin deep-sea mining before regulators have finished writing the rules is a familiar pattern in extractive industries, and it should be resisted here more firmly than usual, given how little is scientifically known about the ecosystems at stake. The ‘common heritage of mankind’ principle underpinning the Law of the Sea Convention was written precisely to prevent a scramble in which first-movers set precedents that the rest of the world is left to live with.

A moratorium until the ISA completes a robust exploitation code — with genuine environmental thresholds, independent monitoring and enforceable liability — is the more prudent path, even though it delays a potential new source of battery metals. The clean-energy transition should not be built on the same pattern of rushing extraction ahead of environmental understanding that has caused problems on land; the ocean floor deserves at least the caution we belatedly learned to apply to rainforests and river systems.