In France, Camille Etienne is a climate activist who embodies an engaged and educated youth for whom the fight against climate change is vital. Like many, I first encountered her through her YouTube video titled “Let’s Wake Up,” shot in the melting Alpine glaciers, which gained thousands of views during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. In 2022, on her Instagram, I found her engaged in a new battle: preventing deep-sea mining (DSM) in Norway. At that time, the issue was clearly underreported. Earlier in the year, Norway had become the first country to authorize commercial exploration of the ocean’s floor, a fact of which I had been unaware. The last time such a possibility crossed my radar was during an interview with a professor at the School of Mining at the University of Arizona for a research project I had on terrestrial copper mining. He had mentioned such prospects alongside Moon mining, which to me seemed distant, even unreal. Camille Etienne’s social media campaign, #LookDown, successfully influenced France’s stance on deep-sea mining, shifting it from support to advocating for a complete ban on the industry. In March 2023, she traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, to participate in a session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), joining Pacific Islanders Indigenous organizations and other youth activists. But, as we look to the future of mining, specifically in regard to its expansion and intensification, rather than its abatement amidst climate change threats, the horizon of deep-sea mining represents a potential for a deeply speculative, “blue” injustice.
Deep sea mining involves a range of activities including exploration, extraction, transportation, and refining minerals sourced from the seabed. Despite all the sudden attention on the topic, in the past few years, only “exploration” work has been authorized. DSM remains controversial, with certain nations (e.g., France, but also Germany, Costa Rica, Chile, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, and several Pacific Island nations) advocating for a moratorium until further research on its effects is conducted. As the debate over deep sea mining intensifies, the International Seabed Authority, established under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and its 1994 Agreement on Implementation, plays a pivotal role in regulating these activities and ensuring environmental protection. The ISA has a twofold mandate. Its primary objective is to authorize and regulate mineral-related activities in the international seabed, recognized as the “common heritage of all mankind,” while also ensuring the protection of the ecosystem within “The Area” beyond national jurisdiction.
Following the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in 2012, frameworks for promoting responsible resource management and conservation efforts to ensure the long-term health and productivity of the ocean has been rapidly adopted at the global scale. These frameworks and technological connections are also cause for concern reminiscent of the “nirvana concepts” as described by François Molle (2008), referring to narratives widely accepted and promoted as universal solutions or best practices, often through success stories of promising, but not validated, socially equitable, or well-understood technologies. These concepts develop a life of their own over time, influencing policy-making and societal norms. However, they are not neutral or scientific; instead, they reflect complex interests, ideologies, and unequal power dynamics. Consequently, they shape the framing of issues, preferences for certain options, and the empowerment or marginalization of specific groups. Thus, it appears relevant to explore projects and discourses surrounding deep sea mining, paying particular attention to scientific discourses and “laws” that are actually underlying debates.
Given the significance of data – data production, availability, and control – in the pursuit of deep-sea mining (identification of potential mining sites, futures environmental impact assessments, economic viability and operational planning of the deposit exploitation), the heuristic contributions of critical political ecology, critical ocean equity studies, and environmental justice research align with more recent propositions of a political ecology of data and data infrastructures (Goldstein and Nost, 2022). In this context as well, data are often portrayed as neutral entities. However, the production and circulation of data are unavoidably entangled in unequal power relations. This involves various actors such as developing countries, conservationists, coastal communities, public entities (state and international agencies), as well as private companies and high-tech start-ups. They each possess varying capabilities and opportunities regarding the visibility and utilization of information derived from geological analyses (such as hydrothermal vents, cobalt-rich crusts, polymetallic nodules, etc.), seismic studies, geochemical assessments, etc. Such an issue is linked to environmental justice concerns because it directly impacts the ability of communities, particularly marginalized and vulnerable populations, to understand and address environmental resources as well as problems. Ensuring equitable access to data and information is therefore crucial for promoting empowering communities to participate in decision-making processes that affect their lives.
Beyond data, the ocean, and perhaps even more so, the deep sea, are subject to the creation of images as well as imaginaries. Numerous geographers have underscored the significance of images for extraterritorial spaces. Remote sensing data from satellite imagery and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) are utilized to examine surface features, ocean currents, and environmental conditions in deep-sea regions. Additionally, sonar systems, employed to generate acoustic images of the seabed and identify potential mineral resources, are also used to study marine life and habitats. These tools are among the diverse technologies used to visualize, monitor, and eventually codify the deep seabed (Li et al., 2020).
As emphasized by Anna Zalik (2015) and John Childs (2022), corporate imaginaries have depicted the deep sea as a space devoid of life, positioned “outside” and detached from any social contestation, in service of the so-called “blue economy”. Such a representation is a kind of construction of a corporate nirvana and is problematic. As recent social sciences literature emphasizes, the need to integrate non-human actors, including lesser-known deep-sea life forms, deep-sea technologies like Remotely Operated Vehicles, and notably, spiritual beings, alongside terrestrially based humans is vital. Spiritual beings hold important cultural significance across diverse societies, serving as integral components of the intricate web of human-ocean relations in many cultures (Hau’ofa, 1994; 2008; Mawyer and Jacka, 2018). Furthermore, the prevailing discourse of a resource frontier as an empty space to conquer within a context where politico-economic power dynamics once again disadvantage developing nations and small island states (Le Meur et al., 2018) evokes parallels with the colonial logics that have previously resulted in cultural, social, and ecological catastrophes. As demonstrated by classic political ecology studies (Bakker and Cohen, 2014), the emergence of new resource exploitation spaces and territorial management merely serves to shift – instead of overturning – potential conflicts of use. The risks and damages encountered by communities affected by terrestrial mining projects could likewise impact coastal communities that have longstanding cultural and spiritual connections to the sea, natural processes, habitats, and seabed formations. For example, the Pacific Ocean holds profound cultural, social, spiritual, and economic importance for Pacific Island communities. The effects of DSM on local communities with rich maritime cultures may be considerable and should not be disregarded (Tilot et al., 2021). In such a context, it is therefore particularly important to pay specific attention to the processes of erasure, enclosure, and grabbing. As Anna Zalik (2015) and John Childs (2022) emphasize, the growth narrative of the blue economy must be decolonized to prevent the reproduction of mercantile, imperial, and colonial dispossession processes.
References
Childs, J. (2022). Geographies of deep sea mining: A critical review. The Extractive Industries and Society, 9, 101044. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2022.101044
Cohen, A., & Bakker, K. (2014). The eco-scalar fix: Rescaling environmental governance and the politics of ecological boundaries in Alberta, Canada. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(1), 128-146. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1068/d0813
Goldstein, J., & Nost, E. (Eds.). (2022). The nature of data: Infrastructures, environments, politics. U of Nebraska Press.
Hau’ofa, E. (1994). Our sea of islands. Contemp. Pacific J. Island Aff. 6, 148–161. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822396116-008
Hau’ofa, E. (2008). We Are the Ocean: Selected Works. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Le Meur, P.-Y., Bambridge, T., Degrémont, M., and Rodary, E. (2018). Les espaces marins du Pacifique entre logiques de communs et d’accaparement. Revue Internationale des Études du Développement 234, 9–30. doi: 10.3917/RIED.234.0009
Li, X., Liu, B., Zheng, G., Ren, Y., Zhang, S., Liu, Y., … & Wang, F. (2020). Deep-learning-based information mining from ocean remote-sensing imagery. National Science Review, 7(10), 1584-1605.
Mawyer, A., & Jacka, J. K. (2018). Sovereignty, conservation and island ecological futures. Environmental Conservation, 45(3), 238-251.
Molle, F. (2008). Nirvana concepts, narratives and policy models: Insights from the water sector. Water alternatives, 1(1), 131-156.
Tilot, V., Willaert, K., Guilloux, B., Chen, W., Mulalap, C. Y., Gaulme, F., … & Dahl, A. (2021). Traditional dimensions of seabed resource management in the context of Deep Sea Mining in the Pacific: learning from the socio-ecological interconnectivity between island communities and the ocean realm. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, 637938.
Zalik, A. (2018). Mining the seabed, enclosing the Area: ocean grabbing, proprietary knowledge and the geopolitics of the extractive frontier beyond national jurisdiction. International social science journal, 68(229-230), 343-359. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12159