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