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Leading tech & auto firms sign up to WWF's deep-sea mining moratorium

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BMW, Google, Samsung SDI and Volvo have become the first major companies to sign up to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) proposed moratorium on deep-sea mining, the organisation has announced.

The WWF has said that by signing up, the companies are committing that they will not source any minerals from the seabed, exclude those minerals from supply chains, and not invest in any deep-sea mining activities.

Deep-sea mining involves the extraction of minerals that are key in battery production, such as cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel, from small nodules strewn across the ocean floor at depths of between 4 to 6 kilometres. They are particularly abundant in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the North Pacific Ocean, which spans millions of kilometres between Mexico and Hawaii.

Also read: China breaks own Mariana Trench deep-dive record in a bid for Pacific resources 

“With much of the deep-sea ecosystem yet to be explored and understood, such activity would be recklessly short-sighted,” WWF said in a statement.

The WWF moratorium also calls for a ban on deep-sea mining until such time as the risk are better and more fully understood and all other alternatives are exhausted.

BMW has said that, at the moment, raw materials from deep-sea mining are "not an option" because there has not been enough scientific research assessing the environmental risks.

The WWF move comes at a time when a number of deep-sea mining companies are moving forward with preparations and research on seabed licence areas.

Also read: Trafigura to set up "controlled mining zones" in DRC, in cobalt deal

Some of the companies that already hold vast swathes of the ocean floor include GSR, DeepGreen and UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin's UK company. The companies are hoping to sell minerals from the deep sea to battery companies and automakers.

DeepGreen has said previously that mining on the seabed will be more sustainable than on land because it produces less waste, and the nodules that contain the minerals have higher concentrations of metals than those found on land.

Meanwhile, Norway has said it expects to issue licences for deep-sea mining in its waters by 2023, possibly making it one of the first countries to harvest metals from the seabed

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