You're listening to a CNA podcast. The Twilight Zone. It might make you think about a science fiction film, but in real life, it's actually a segment of the ocean between 200 and 1000 m down, where sunlight can barely reach deep, murky, sub-aquatic, and it's a treasure trove, copious amounts of precious metals hidden in its depths. Today ahead of the UN's ocean conference, we dig below the surface to talk deep sea mining. Hello and welcome
to Climate Conversations. I'm Jack Ford. Hello to Leing Tan as well. Hello. How are you? What's up? Hello, hello. I'm doing well. Planning a holiday, maybe to the beach, far away from everyone and from you. How are you? How are you? I'm just kidding. No, not far from you. It's always nice to know we're in the same time zone or similar time zone, but I am planning a holiday, near the ocean. Lovely, very nice.
I'm good as well. Now, speaking of holiday and speaking of the ocean themes that we're talking about today, do you think you might be taking a little scuba dive, maybe a little bit of a deep sea. Exploration on your upcoming. Yes, I would, but I've actually never scuba dived. I'm more of a snorkes into the depths of the ocean. We're getting a new insight into your personality here. But what about the Titan? We, that was in the news a couple of years ago. That seemed like a really
safe and normal journey to undertake. So ladies and gentlemen, Jack is being sarcastic. That Titan exploded and everybody died in it. So no, Jack, I would not like to go in a submersible like the Titan. Definitely not. But if there was a safer way, I definitely would. Sign me up. OK, you wouldn't I was just imagining you in your flippers and your scuba mask that was more than. I found that amusing. Alright, let's get into it, enough of the nonsense.
Quiz time. Which country was the first to apply for commercial deep sea mining rights? Mm. A very simple question. Was it China? Was it Papua New Guinea, the United States, or Norway? So you've got a few options there. The first country to apply for commercial deep sea mining rights. OK, I have no idea. Let me get back to you. Answer at the end of the show. OK, it's time for our main story this week. All around us, the world functions with the help of precious
metals like cobalt, gold, nickel, copper, and many others. They're in our smartphones, our computers, the batteries of our electric vehicles. We kind of need these metals. On land, mining efforts have ramped up over time to exploit these riches. Now, increasingly, companies and governments are looking for the next frontier, the ocean. It's a mineral rich landscape, but the notion of mining it, ripping up sometimes ancient sea floors in the pursuit of
these minerals is highly controversial. We're going to start this story in what feels like familiar fashion with the man in the White House, Donald Trump. Lee Ling, OK, talk us through how and why the US president is creating more waves in contention about this topic. Yes, President Trump. Now you might have missed this news given all that's happening everywhere else and especially coming out of Washington on a daily basis, but let me break it down.
In April, Trump signed an executive order for US agencies to expedite seabed mining in American territorial waters and international waters. Cue the outrage. Now why this is controversial is that essentially every country. In the world except the US has signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Now that's a broad treaty on all things, oceans and seas, and nations are supposed to refrain from mining in the ocean until
environmental rules and regulations are sorted out. The US is not party to the treaty and Trump is jumping the gun here and safe to say it has everyone a little bit antsy, OK, very antsy, especially as experts and government folks prepare. Together at this top-level ocean talks in Nice in southern France next week. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people pretty unhappy with the moves that the US is starting to
make in this space. Now we might get into what's happening at that forum shortly, but let's just tackle why this issue is so contentious, why the lobbying efforts for exploratory companies seems to be so strong to get this industry happening. Now to date, basically there's been no commercial deep sea mining at all, nothing's really been done, but there have been lots of experiments over the past 40 years or so. But the plans for fully scaled advanced mining are starting
to accelerate. So Lee Ling, who are the players in this space? Obviously we know that the Americans are part of this. Yes. They are pushing for an as an early mover into the space. The North American companies looking at mining underwater close to American Samoa as well as in between Mexico and Hawaii. There's a group called the Metals Company, a Canadian outfit that has done some pretty serious testing of the first so-called.
Integrated nodule collection system. It has apparently spent about half a billion dollars to do so, and it's the first company to apply for a US permit. OK, let me jump in here because we can't just walk past integrated nodule collection system. Never heard of such a thing before we were researching this. So what you're talking about here is basically a robotic machine. That is extracting or sucking up minerals on the ocean floor. So you have these highly valuable mineral-rich little rocks, and
they're called polymetallic nodules. And they're generally just kind of sitting on the ocean floor. If you see pictures of this, it's pretty surprising. I didn't expect to see the sea floor covered in like thousands of little rocks. They're all just there, basically ready to be sucked up by the robot. And there could be some digging involved. As well, and then they're sent through a pipe, which
is called a riser, up to a waiting ship. So, yeah, in short, that's our integrated nodule collection system that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on to create. Great, thank you Jack for that little explainer. A plus for that, Jack. Very good. You're welcome. So underwater robots, but before you interrupted this with all that tech talk, the other big players extend beyond the US. Enter stage right, China.
Now it was just a couple of weeks ago that we saw Beijing holding close talks with the government of Nauru, a country in the South Pacific. We spoke about a few weeks ago around its passports for sale policy. Now, look at Nauru. Nauru coming again. 2 starring roles in the podcast in one month. Who would have thought? So the countries discussed how to fast track deep sea mining, but they also criticized Trump's attempts to circumvent the rules.
Now China, in quite a few Pacific nations are really keen to start extracting part of the Pacific Ocean floor called the Clarion Clipperton zone. There's an estimated $20 trillion US dollars worth of riches down there, apparently, right? Yeah, it's a lot. So you've got China, but there's also Japan, South Korea, and India also looking to the depths of the Pacific to mine its riches. Norway, which you mentioned earlier in the quiz, it has Its eyes on the Arctic Ocean, and of course, there's
Russia as well. We cannot discount Russia, of course. Now, Jack, tell us what the problem here is though. There's a lot of, there's a lot of problem here. Yeah, I mean the controversy is largely centered around environmental impact, probably not surprisingly. As well as the geopolitics. We'll leave that to one side for now. Basically, scientists and environment groups widely believe that this type of activity will fundamentally impact ocean health.
This scooping up of minerals will obviously disturb the sea floor, it's going to raise sediments, it's going to disturb natural habitats of important marine organisms and leave lots of waste. So the slurry that gets brought up will be divided from the valuable minerals, but then it'll just be dumped back into the ocean. So it's a little unknown how all of this debris will impact the ocean, which is obviously,
of course, dynamic, it's a sensitive place, it's under-researched. It's not really known how these sediments might impact plankton, for example. Um, plankton is highly critical to the functions of the oceans and for biodiversity and climate. These organisms help regulate
carbon as well, for example. So these plumes that are created could impact all sorts of marine life, like jellyfish that rely on buoyancy and on dolphins that might be affected by, The persistent noise of mining, other predators as well that require vision to hunt. Overall, how mining would impact these ecosystems and landscapes just isn't very well known, and the scientific community is fairly insistent on a moratorium on commercial activity until better research.
Can be done and safeguards can be put in place, which seems logical. So that leads us to the UN Ocean Conference which is coming up. Now this is the 3rd edition of this forum and there's plenty on the agenda and of course, this issue of mining will be one of them. In a nutshell, basically, there are several multilateral agreements that need to be sorted out. Of key significance is this high seas treaty, which is basically a framework for protecting
marine biodiversity for 2/3 of the global ocean. Now this, of course, won't be easy. Then we've got issues and that's a bit of an understatement. Then we've got issues around marine pollution, ocean acidification and climate change, the sustainable fisheries, green shipping, and lots of other marine science and research topics that they need to iron out and discuss. Yeah, parties also want to mobilize finance for what's referred to as the blue economy.
Which refers to the sustainable use of ocean resources. So another item on the agenda. And our CNA colleague Grace Shin recently spoke with Doctor Lizzie McLeod, the global ocean director at the Nature Conservancy, about why investing in ocean protection is an area that's often overlooked.
Well, I think that one of the main reasons is that a lot of people don't know how incredibly important it is. The ocean provides half of the oxygen that we breathe. It feeds 3 billion people through the fisheries that it supports, and it's been really important in helping to buffer the impacts of climate change by absorbing excess heat.
But it's also super important for our economy. It generates over $2.5 trillion annually, and I think a lot of people just don't fully appreciate and understand the incredible benefits that it provides.
Doctor McLeod also explained why ocean health is especially important in the Asia Pacific region.
I'm standing here in Singapore and I look around and this is such a vitally important for marine trade. 90% of the trade happens on the ocean. But also Asia Pacific is so important for marine biodiversity. Over half of the mangroves and over a third of the world's coral reefs are found here, and there's more biodiversity here underwater than anywhere else on the planet. So it's incredibly important from a conservation perspective.
But it's also so important to the economy. Most of the fishers and aquaculture farmers, almost over 80%, are based here in the Asia Pacific region. So if we want to be protecting and supporting these livelihoods, we have to be making sure that the resources and the marine habitats that they rely on are protected.
But work is being done to turn the tide, so to speak, and get investments into
projects. Well, I think the exciting news is that we're seeing greater awareness, uh, more engagement from the private sector on recognizing that there are investable projects out there. A key role for groups like the Nature Conservancy where I work is to help build and support a pipeline. Of investable projects. So I'll give you an example. We're working in Indonesia with our Indonesia team, Yayasan Conservatilanuattara to
help develop reef positive businesses. So these are ways of supporting businesses that are just starting out and incubating them so that they're generating revenue, but they're also importantly, helping to conserve valuable coral reefs and mangroves around the region.
And that's Doctor Lizzie McLeod, global ocean director at the Nature Conservancy in her recent interview with CNA's Grace Shin. So lot's at stake and mining could put a lot of this in jeopardy potentially if it's not managed correctly. And already we have NGOs including Greenpeace, expressing concern that some of the early drafts for the political declaration at the UN summit, Have removed some of the earlier language that emphasized the
importance of a precautionary approach to seabed mining. So there's no mention, they say, on a moratorium of the industry. And generally it seems that there's a weakening of ambition, not only on this issue but on other ambitions too, like restoring marine ecosystems and building climate resilience. And having reported on the UN climate conferences over the years, you can't say that this is surprising.
So many vested interests, geopolitical dynamics, all mixed up in these declarations, so just like the seabed itself, it's all looking murky indeed. OK, back to our quiz question. I hope you've had a chance to take a guess at home, but repeating the question for you, which country was the first to apply for commercial deep sea mining rights? I don't know if our main story gave you a clue to this. China, Papua New Guinea, the United States, or Norway. I'm gonna go with Norway.
OK. There's Norway. That's correct. It's, it's PNG, Papua New Guinea. So, yeah, the, the Solwara, the Solwara 1 was the world's first commercial deep sea mining venture. The license was issued back in 2007, located in the Bismarck Sea, which is about 30 kilometers off the coast of PNG. It was targeting hydrothermal vent fields, and they were looking for copper, gold, silver, and zinc. Canadian company Nautilus Minerals
behind this. Again, the Canadians seem to be getting keen on these types of projects, but a lot of controversy and eventually the whole project collapsed and Nautilus filed for bankruptcy in 2019. OK, well, so not easy to get down there and mind the riches either. Hey, these nodules that you're talking about, right? The pictures you saw, are these, these just lie on the seabed.
They're just there for the taking? Yep, there's some interesting science that kind of explains why this happens, this buildup of deposits over time. Like it's taken a long time for these nodules to appear. It's kind of interesting. It's a little bit too scientific, I think for the time we have here, but yeah, have a look at them because. It's quite surprising that that that exists. Yeah, I'm gonna look at the pictures now. OK, great. Thanks. OK, that's
all for this episode of Climate Conversations. Thank you as always for joining us. Get in touch with us. We're both on LinkedIn. If you want to say hello. Catch you again next week. I'm Lee Ling Tan. Bye for now. And I'm Jack Board. Thanks as always as well to the team that put together this podcast, Saya Win, Tiffany Ang, Janai Jahari, and Christina Roberts.