The new security excuse for mining the deep-sea

The race to mine the deep-sea is intensifying, with countries that stand to benefit now arguing there is a security, as well as an economic and energy, imperative.

That’s a change in tone and focus which should concern all who care about our moana, waitui, solwara, write South Pacific scholars Claire Slatter and Maureen Penjueli.

 

The debate around deep-sea mining has been gaining international attention for the likely irreversible harm it will cause to the ocean’s ecosystems and climate regulatory function. Thirty-three countries are now calling for a “pause” or a global moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Meanwhile, leading proponents have framed deep-sea mining as critical to addressing the climate crisis. They claim it is a solution that would entail a tradeoff between biodiversity protection and climate change action. In this imaginary scenario, the oceans’ seafloor, considered the common heritage of humankind, is a new sacrifice zone.

At the same time, there are growing doubts about the extraction industry’s financial viability and whether minerals from the deep-sea will even be needed for the energy transition. Battery technologies for electric vehicles and solar panels have been rapidly advancing with alternatives that could eliminate the need for cobalt, nickel and copper.

Heeding caution, 63 companies (and that number is growing) — among them Volkswagen, BMW Group, Samsung, Ford, Microsoft, Apple, Philips, and Patagonia — have either agreed not to use seabed minerals in their supply chains or have declared support for a moratorium.

The group includes financial and insurance institutions, such as Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, the European Investment Bank and Swiss Re, which have announced that they will not lend or offer insurance due to the high risks associated with deep-sea mining.

Mining for “security”

We believe it’s important to shift the spotlight from arguments around energy security to the more recent aggressive promotion of critical minerals for “national security” and “defence” imperatives in the context of escalating geopolitical tensions driven by western powers.

There is a race by US, UK, European and Nordic countries to secure mineral supply chains that are not dependent on a handful of countries, namely China, but also the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Russia, all of which are considered either politically unstable or with interests that don’t align with those of the US and its allies.

The dominance of China in critical minerals has refocused the search for new frontiers of minerals free from supply-chain disruptions.

The main focus has been on the massive region of the Pacific Ocean between Hawai‘i and Mexico, which is known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ).

This area falls under the jurisdiction of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) which is mandated to organise, carry out and regulate seabed mining by licensed contractors.

State-sponsored venture capital start-up companies, led by serial entrepreneurs seeking to make fortunes from public shareholder investments, have been at the forefront of the push to commence deep-sea mining in the CCZ. The shares of one such venture capital start-up, The Metals Company (TMC), surged briefly in January amid growing anticipation of support for deep-sea mining by the Trump administration.

From a governance point of view, oceans, including areas beyond national jurisdiction, present unique and complex challenges. On land, there has been a global push to establish enhanced due diligence to responsibly source critical minerals from conflict zones for the “green transition.” On the ocean floor, however, international rules, regulations and procedures for mining the deep seabed are still being negotiated. Important environmental protection, financial and liability questions remain unresolved.

Thanks to Nauru, there is, however, a possibility that mining under provisional licences could commence ahead of regulations being adopted. Nauru is one of the sponsoring states of The Metals Company. In its capacity as sponsor, it triggered an obscure rule under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in June 2021.

The rule permits a sponsoring state to give notice that it would be submitting a plan of work for exploitation in two years’ time. This imposed a two-year deadline (which has since passed) for the ISA to adopt mining regulations, failing which, plans of work to commence exploitation could be provisionally approved.

Yet international discussion on “defence” critical minerals and the military-industrial complex driving the pursuit of them in the ocean — which is to say, the intertwined interests of national armies, weapons manufacturing industries, and increasingly civilian institutions such as academic institutions — is almost non-existent.

This is despite the clear principle in UNCLOS that the use of the targeted area be “exclusively for peaceful purposes”.

Mechanisms to address concerns over the hyper-securitisation of oceans, including within Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) linked to military activities and defence “strategic interests” in the ocean, are not well developed.

Meanwhile, there has been a noticeable rise in often overlapping security and defence pacts negotiated in secret among allies to secure continued unfettered access to vast tracts of the Pacific Ocean, including EEZs.

One of the largest security pacts to be signed in 2021 was AUKUS — the Australia, UK, and US enhanced trilateral security partnership. The aims of this security pact are to promote deeper information and technology sharing and foster deeper integration of security and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains, including minerals.

Military activities in the ocean are becoming more and more frequent for a host of reasons which include: recognition of the geo-strategic importance of the sea and of sea power; the rise in size and capability of navies of many states, including China; escalating geo-political rivalry; increased defence spending on munitions and advanced weapons systems, including nuclear powered (or armed) submarines; and the resurgence of undersea competition and underwater surveillance, all of which involve naval powers extending their activities across vast oceanic areas.

An often-overlooked factor in advanced defence capabilities and technological innovations is the supply chain of minerals, which are used to produce virtually every component of the arsenals of states with military forces and navies.

These minerals are deemed vital to countries’ defence industrial bases, enabling the production of military platforms such as fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines, ammunition, artillery shells and nuclear warheads.

Yet the importance of mineral supply chains makes them dangerously vulnerable to three types of disruptions: foreign export controls, rising military demand (in addition to energy transition demands) amid great power competition (the US-China conflict), and disrupted sea lanes in key areas, including the Panama Canal.

With their limited domestic mineral production capacity, both the US and Europe have traditionally been heavily dependent on mineral imports, including from China and Russia. The EU imports between 75 and 100 percent of most metals it consumes, while the US is almost 100 percent import-reliant for 12 of the 50 minerals identified as critical by the US Geological Survey, and 50 percent import-reliant for another 29.

China is the top producer of these critical minerals and also dominates the mineral processing sector, refining between 40 and 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth elements such as graphite, lithium, cobalt and copper. Russia dominates the supply of nickel.

NATO’s Secretary General warned in 2023 of the need to avoid over-dependence on Chinese minerals, while the US accused China of weaponising minerals using trade rules such as export restrictions, including complete bans.

In increased efforts to diversify supply chain sources, the US Department of Defense announced early this year that it had added the UK and Australia (AUKUS allies) in addition to Canada as domestic supply sources of defence critical minerals, a “friendshoring” strategy making them eligible to receive priority funding under the Defense Production Act.

The Trump administration’s subsequent initiation of a trade war with allies such as Canada may have closed that supply source.

The Oval Office debacle of a meeting with Zelensky in February this year, to discuss a yet to be signed agreement with Ukraine to bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia war on US terms, together with subsequent US tweaking of the draft agreement, could similarly jeopardise US ambitions of shoring up massive supplies of critical metals through a “trade” deal primarily aimed at exacting reparations for the cost to the US of Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Meanwhile, an escalation in the corporate-led drive to commence deep-sea mining has exposed a concerning challenge.

UNCLOS stipulates clearly that the high seas “shall be reserved for peaceful purposes” and that marine scientific research in the high seas “shall be carried out exclusively for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”

To these ends, UNCLOS prohibits any non-peaceful uses of the same area.

We argue that peaceful uses of the high seas require peaceful uses of its resources. In this regard, the March 28, 2025, announcement by TMC, the Vancouver-registered venture capital start-up mining company that has been leading the charge in the push to commence deep-sea mining in the Pacific, is deeply concerning.

TMC announced that the company’s US subsidiary, TMC USA LLC, had formally initiated a process to apply for exploration licences and commercial recovery permits under the US’s Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980.

Presumably, this means the company would bypass the ISA and not wait for the conclusion of international regulations for mining the deep seabed, nor for provisional approval by the ISA.

This brazen announcement of an intention to seek licences to exploit minerals under a US law that predates UNCLOS, a convention which the US has never signed or ratified, deliberately defies international law and challenges both the ISA as an inter-governmental regulatory body, and multilateralism more generally.

TMC’s decision, rationalised by the ongoing delays at ISA in completing complex mining regulations, masks an insidious plan by the company. That is, to supply the US Defense Ministry with critical metals, and to do so in the context of increasing tensions between the US and China, a burgeoning new arms race and periodic talk of war.

Any intended — in fact, planned — military end use of critical metals from the deep seabed surely violates the principle of exclusive peaceful use. TMC has been the most persistent and aggressive first-mover mining contractor, with a talent for providing shifty justifications for deep-sea mining.

The company’s initial argument that the abyssal plain, a vast region on the deep ocean floor, was a lifeless desert was demonstrated by marine scientists to be patently false.

Its subsequent, and initially more compelling, argument that the critical minerals on the seabed were needed for a global transition from fossil fuels to save the planet lost credence as rapid advances in battery technology diminished the need for critical metals.

Its more recent argument that seabed mining will cause far less environmental and social harm than land-based mining is also specious. Seabed mining will not end land-based mining but inflict on the planet yet another destructive extractive industry, the unknown impacts of which could be the ultimate tipping point on both the biodiversity and climate fronts.

TMC also argued that deep-sea mining offered a development boon to resource-poor small island states in the Pacific, such as the three from which it sought sponsorship to attain exploratory licences from ISA.

Based on modelling by the Commonwealth and more than enough evidence of the “paradox of plenty”, this claim is also contestable.

In any case, its intention to apply to the US is at variance with the contract that its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc has with Nauru, potentially placing Nauru in an invidious position: Does it collude in the US breach of international law, or does it throw away all its hoped-for financial benefits?

TMC’s pivot to secure an assured market, along with nodule refining facilities in the US for the critical minerals it is intent on extracting in the CCZ, may be read by some as politically strategic and commercially astute. It is very in line with TMC’s history of rogue behaviour.

It also places the US on the wrong side of international law. TMC began pitching to US policymakers in the Biden administration, arguing that it was imperative to acquire plentiful supplies of critical minerals from the deep seabed to meet US security and defence needs. It did so fully aware of the growing US-China rivalry and China’s known control of extensive land-based critical minerals and domination of the supply chains.

The company’s assurances about being able to supply the metals, and its exploratory discussions on the feasibility of nodule refining in the US, preceded the allocation of defence funding by Congress to assess the feasibility of domestic nodule refining capacity. News of the latter was welcomed by TMC CEO, Gerard Barron, who revealed at the same time that TMC’s US subsidiary actually had an outstanding application seeking a $9 million grant under the Pentagon’s Defense Production Act Title III 10 programme to undertake feasibility work on a “domestic refinery for nodule-derived intermediate products.”

The electoral victory of Trump was welcomed by Barron as “the best news for the deep-sea mining industry” and “the shot in the arm this industry has been waiting for.”

President Trump’s executive order on March 20 this year, invoking emergency powers to boost the ability of the US to produce critical minerals, indicated a fast-tracking of plans for nodule refining and an urgency in acquiring critical metals.

Trump’s statements were: “Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production. It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”

A proposed massive US arms build-up is very clearly on the horizon.

TMC’s deliberate courting of the US government to support the mining and refining of critical minerals from the deep seabed for US defence and security purposes, challenges the UNCLOS principle of reserving the use of the deep seabed exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Military end use of these critical minerals will include weapons systems manufacture, supporting arms buildup by the most powerful, nuclear-armed state, in the context of an escalating new Cold War.

This strikes at the very heart of the UNCLOS principle of exclusive use for peaceful purposes and may indeed be illegal.

Conclusion

The rogue plan of action announced by TMC to advance its determination to mine the seabed by seeking mining licences outside of the ambit of UNCLOS and ISA, requires the strongest condemnation by ISA member states, including New Zealand.

The Secretary General of ISA, Leticia Carvalho, has already expressed her deep concern, emphasising that the authority holds exclusive jurisdiction over all activities in the international seabed area.

She went further to state that any efforts such as those by TMC to take unilateral actions would “violate international law and undermine the fundamental principles of multilateralism, the peaceful use of oceans and the collective governance framework.”

Member states of the ISA, as argued by legal experts in the international moratorium campaign, must hold together and urgently get behind the call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining to save the ocean from a minerals resource grab for weapons manufacture and war-making.

It is indeed imperative that they not allow a corporate-enabled seizure of critical minerals from the deep seabed for purposes that conflict with the “peaceful uses” principle in UNCLOS.

Given the urgency of the issue, we call on member states of the ISA to consider blacklisting TMC, thereby sending an unequivocal message to any other contractors that may decide to follow suit.

We call on the governments of Nauru and Tonga to demonstrate their respect for international law, multilateralism and the ISA by considering cancelling their sponsorship of TMC.

As a Canadian company, TMC’s intention to pursue deep-sea mining outside of international law and international regulation, directly conflicts with Canada’s strong moratorium position on deep-sea mining. We call on Canada to deregister TMC.

The international deep-seabed is the common heritage of all humankind. It must be reserved for peaceful purposes.

 

 

Dr Claire Slatter (Fiji) is a retired academic who has worked at University of the South Pacific and Fiji National University. She is a co-founder and Executive Committee member of the global South network of scholar-activists, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), and a co-founder and Steering Committee member of the  Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG)PANG. 

Maureen Penjueli (Fiji) is an associate at the Fiji-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), a regional Non-Governmental Organisation that focuses on promoting the rights of Pacific Island peoples to be self-determined.  For three decades, she has worked in the not for profit sector with a primary focus on the Pacific region. Much of her work looks at the nexus of science, policy making and related rights of Indigenous peoples.

E-Tangata, 2025