Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned! 

Last week, we looked at the geopolitics of critical minerals (check out the episode here), who controls them, who needs them and why they’ve become so strategically important. This week, we move from geopolitics to extraction and into a more difficult question: where will these minerals actually come from and at what cost?

At depths of over 2,000 metres and more, vast deep sea mineral deposits are being positioned as the next supply frontier. The promise is obvious – new sources of the metals needed to power the energy transition. But the questions raised are harder to answer: how do you assess impact in an environment you’ve barely studied, what does responsible extraction mean at such depths and what happens if the damage isn’t reversible, or even visible? We simply don’t yet understand these ecosystems well enough to estimate the risks, let alone offset them.

These are not just technical questions. They are governance questions and right now, there is no clear agreement on how they should be answered. Negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the body regulating the mineral resources of the seabed beyond national jurisdiction – remain slow and fraught, reflecting deep divisions over whether this industry should move forward at all.

In this episode, Giulia speaks with Simon Holmström, senior deep sea mining policy officer at Seas At Risk, an association of over 30 environmental NGOs from across Europe. Their conversation examines the gap between technological ambition and scientific understanding and how that tension is shaping environmental risk assessment, industry claims and the evolving regulatory landscape.

Simon highlights the economic viability of deep sea mining, environmental uncertainty requiring precautionary measures, and the importance of sustainable practices in the face of growing demand for critical minerals.

Key takeaways:

• The deep ocean remains one of the least understood ecosystems

• The economic case for deep sea mining is far from proven

• Opposition is growing across civil society, and even parts of industry

• The regulatory path forward is still unresolved

Further reading:

• Deep sea mining facts and figures by Seas At Risk

• Seas At Risk’s report: Growing financier concern on deep sea mining

• Planet Tracker’s Mining for Trouble report

• Arguments in support of deep sea mining

• What is deep-sea mining – and why we need a global moratorium now

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