The conservation group Flora and Fauna International (FFI) published a report on the potential consequences of mining below 200 meters (656 feet) for minerals used in mobile phones and batteries. There has been a growing interest in deep-sea mining since land sources are becoming more complicated.
The report says:
Many battery materials, including heavy metals such as nickel and cobalt, pose tremendous environmental and humanitarian risks. Cobalt in particular, which is mined mainly in central Africa, has come under fire for careless and exploitative extraction practices.
The oceans also contain more metal than land sources. For instance, there are six times more cobalt and three times more nickel on the swath of the ocean floor between Hawaii and the West Coast of the US than all known land-based stores.
Open Book
There are currently no international rules set to govern the new practice. They were going to be decided at a meeting of the UN International Seabed Authority in July, which may be postponed due to coronavirus or handled virtually. That means there is still time to make a stand against allowing people to trash the ocean for money, and Sir David Attenborough is doing just that.
With the backing of this new report warning of the potentially devastating consequences of deep-sea mining, Sir Attenborough is calling for a ban on the practice. The extraction of metals and minerals from the deep places of the ocean could harm biodiversity and limit the ocean’s ability to support life, as well as disrupt its ability to store carbon and therefore worsen the climate crisis.
The 93-year-old conservationist and vice president of FFI told Sky News in an interview:
We should not go in and trash an area of the globe about which we know hardly anything until we’ve done the proper research – in short, we want a moratorium against the action of industrializing the deep-sea.
Whatever you do please do the science before you go in and destroy – because that’s what it is – mining is a polite word, mining also means destruction. Destruction of an ecosystem of which we know pathetically little.
The FFI report drew some troubling conclusions on the risks of the practice. It writes that deep-sea mining could:
-Disturb pristine ecosystems;
-Create far-reaching plumes of sediment that could kill marine life far from the mining site;
-Kill microbes in sediments and hydrothermal vents that reduce methane and carbon;
-Disrupt the ocean’s “Biological Pump” that distributes nutrients and sucks carbon out of the atmosphere;
-Expose deep-sea life to toxic metals;
-and Worsen ocean acidification through the mining of sulfide deposits on the seafloor.
In addition to destroying the environment, there are many new compounds for life-saving medicines being found in marine organisms. If we allow deep-sea mining, these precious organisms will be killed, and we risk losing many cures to deadly diseases, like cancer.
The Solution To The Climate Crisis?
Since the oceans are a vast source of many minerals needed for lithium-ion batteries, deep-sea mining appears as the solution to the climate crisis. However, the risks outweigh the benefits, and FFI Director Pippa Howard says it’s better to search for other solutions – such as developing less-metal dependent technologies like batteries from materials extracted from seawater or hydrogen fuel cells.
She wrote:
We need to shatter the myth that deep-seabed mining is the solution to the climate crisis! It is nonsense that this form of mining is a ‘light’ alternative to terrestrial mining and that all the cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese lying ‘for the taking’ on the bottom of the oceans are some kind of silver bullet.
Far from being the answer to our dreams, deep seabed mining could well turn out to be the stuff of nightmares. FFI’s recent assessment of the risks and impacts of the proposed assault on our ocean floor has found that deep-sea mining will cause irreversible loss, and probably widespread extinction, of deep-sea creatures, many of which will be completely new to science. Damage to deep-sea ecosystems – which are largely pristine and super-sensitive to human disturbance – will be irreparable. Changes to the chemistry underpinning these biological systems will not only disrupt the processes on which ocean productivity relies, but also give rise to knock-on effects that we cannot currently comprehend or anticipate.
Now that the climate emergency is back on the global agenda as world leaders prepare coronavirus recovery plans, it is crucial to keep this topic into consideration. We must demand that government and corporate partners not only choose renewable energies but that they designate the appropriate way to bring them about as well. If the method of decarbonization involves lithium-ion batteries that are massively dependent on metals, then they should be mined in a sustainable manner that doesn’t destroy the planet. If that is not possible, another solution needs to be found.
Other alternatives are possible. It would be better to break free from the dependency on metals altogether, and there are opportunities to do so. For example, IBM Research has developed chemistry for a new battery that uses materials extracted from seawater and doesn’t require the use of any heavy metals or other substances with sourcing concerns. Hydrogen fuel cells also don’t require any materials that need to be mined, and their components are all recyclable, which fits perfectly into a circular economy model.
With alternatives like these already available, why are companies racing towards tearing up the seafloor? Deep-sea mining is a short-sighted solution and an ecological irresponsibility of monumental proportions. The only thing it is, is the exchange of one global crisis for another.
