Udsigten til guldfeber i verdenshavenes dyb er nået et skridt nærmere virkeligheden og det vil åbne en kontroversiel ny “frontier” i kampen om det fremtidige havmiljø – men rigdommen af mineraler er al for fristende og toget ser ud til at være kørt.
The United Nations has published its first plan for managing the extraction of so-called “nodules” – small mineral-rich rocks – from the seabed, BBC online writes Saturday.
A technical study was carried out by the UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the body overseeing deep sea mining (http://www.isa.org.jm/en/home). It says companies could apply for licences from as soon as 2016.
The idea of exploiting the gold, copper, manganese, cobalt and other metals of the ocean floor has been considered for decades but only recently became feasible with high commodity prices and new technology.
Conservation experts have long warned that mining the seabed will be highly destructive and could have disastrous long-term consequences for marine life.
The ISA study itself recognizes that mining will cause “inevitable environmental damage”.
But the report comes amid what a spokesman describes as “an unprecedented surge” of interest from state-owned and private mining companies.
The number of licences issued to prospect for minerals now stands at 17 with another seven due to be granted and more are likely to follow. They cover vast areas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ISA was set up to encourage and manage seabed mining for the wider benefit of humanity – with a share of any profits going to developing countries.
Now the ISA is taking the significant step of moving from simply handling bids for mineral exploration to considering how to license the first real mining operations and how to share the proceeds (indtægterne).
An assessment of the eastern Pacific – a five million sq km area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – concluded that more than 27 billion tonnes of nodules could be lying on the sand, BBC notes.
A map shows the spread of licensed areas across the zone – see
http://www.isa.org.jm/files/images/maps/CCZ-Sep2012-Official.jpg
