NOrwegen is one of the first countries in the world to open up to the controversial commercial mining of mineral resources in the deep sea. A majority in Parliament in Oslo gave the green light on Tuesday to open an Arctic area on the Norwegian continental shelf for exploration and extraction of minerals from the seabed. The area is around 281,000 square kilometers, which corresponds to around four fifths of the area of Germany. Activists and environmental organizations protested against the decision in front of parliament.
The Norwegian minority government of Social Democrat Jonas Gahr Støre agreed in December with two opposition parties – the conservative Høyre Party and the right-wing populist Progress Party – to open up deep-sea mining. The oil and gas nation Norway is said to have large deposits of minerals on the seabed, which are needed, for example, for wind turbines or batteries for electric cars. They are seen as important for the climate change and also as strategically important so that the EU and its partners can provide themselves with them in times of international tensions.
The government in Oslo is also hoping for new income. Critics and environmentalists, on the other hand, warn that the commercial mining of raw materials on the bottom of international seas poses risks to the ecosystems there that cannot yet be foreseen. Discussions on how to deal with deep-sea mining ended in the summer without any binding decisions. At the meeting of the Council of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the 36 member states only agreed on the goal of adopting a set of rules in 2025.
Many countries have not yet taken a clear position on deep-sea mining. The Pacific state of Nauru announced some time ago that it wanted to mine manganese nodules on the seabed at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters with the Canadian company The Metals Company (TMC). Such ancient associations contain raw materials such as manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel, which could be used to produce batteries for electric cars.
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