MPs call for UK pause on deep-sea mining to protect biodiversity Analysis by The Financial Times

The UK’s desire to plough ahead with “reckless” deep-sea mining in international waters for battery metals threatens the sea’s ability to act as a carbon sink and risks causing “irreversible damage” to biodiversity, a cross-party group of parliamentarians has warned the prime minister.

Former environment minister Lord Zac Goldsmith and Green party MP Caroline Lucas are among at least 22 members of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and Scottish National parties calling on Rishi Sunak to back a moratorium on mining in international waters, The Financial Times reports.

“The risks to deep-sea ecosystems are too great for it to be permitted to start,” said the letter sent on Wednesday, the third day of negotiations on the future of the budding industry at the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica.

The UK government sponsors two exploration contracts across 133,539 square kilometres in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico for small lumps that sit on the seafloor and contain nickel, copper and cobalt. It has invested £6mn through the Natural Environment Research Council, according to the Natural History Museum, in a four-year research project involving trips to the area by scientists.

It describes its support for the industry as “precautionary and conditional” on a set of guidelines for the industry being decided at the ISA. But unlike France and Germany, who also sponsor exploration contracts in the Pacific, the UK has stopped short of backing a pause.

Former government net zero tsar Chris Skidmore, a Tory MP who signed the letter, said the Jamaica negotiations represented a “crossroads” in the development of green industries reliant on battery metals such as nickel and cobalt that can be harvested from the seabed.

Failure to back a moratorium threatened “the UK’s leadership on establishing net zero”, which could affect the Conservatives’ popularity at the next election, Skidmore said. “Net zero is here to stay, it’s not a woke eco-project . . . It is absolutely integral to winning future economic arguments and demonstrating you can be a party of government.”

Continuing to back deep-sea mining could also open the UK government to legal challenge by activists because it would go against the precautionary principle enshrined in the Environment Act, the post-Brexit legal basis for environmental protection, Skidmore added.

Scientists have warned that too little is known about the animals and plants thousands of metres deep on the seabed to proceed.

A peer-reviewed paper in Nature earlier this week warned that fishing stocks in the Pacific could be damaged by noise, light and metallic particle pollution caused by deep-sea mining, prompting seafood groups including the Global Tuna Alliance to call for a pause.

But claims that the industry could cause large-scale carbon emissions or damage biodiversity more than land-based mining remain contested.

Jon Copley, a professor of ocean exploration at the University of Southampton, and a member of the team of UK scientists studying the possible impacts of deep-sea mining, said he was “less worried” than activists about the carbon and biodiversity impact. Plains where polymetallic nodules are found are “much more sparse” in marine life and in carbon-rich sedimentation than other deep-sea habitats, he said.

The Metals Company, a Canadian group that hopes to start commercial seabed mining by 2025, highlights research estimating that the global warming potential of extracting, transporting and processing seabed metals is up to 90 per cent lower than mining for equivalent metals on land.

The Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.