A historical perspective on deep-sea mining for manganese nodules, 1965–2019

Abstract

Of late, there has been a rise in interest in deep-sea minerals such as manganese nodules. Commercial mining operations to extract such minerals may commence soon. However, deep-sea mining projects were already underway in the 1960s and in an advanced stage of development by the 1970s, only to be shelved again in the 1980s. This paper examines a half a century of history of deep-sea mining and discusses how changing political, legal, economic, and socio-cultural policy frameworks contributed to its rise, fall, and eventual rebirth. In doing so, it is shown that the path towards commercial mining is less straightforward or inevitable than it may seem to current proponents and critics of deep-sea mining. This paper also uses the case of manganese nodules to illustrate how mineral concentrations can gain, lose, and regain their status of a resource depending on social, political, legal, and economic factors. The “becoming” of resources is an open-ended, reversible and sometimes incomplete process.