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Mining's next frontier is proving tricky to navigate. Last week a British company became the latest firm to announce its intention to mine the seabed. However, it is still unclear how deep-sea mining will affect the oceans.
[ More ]The London-based affiliate of Lockheed Martin UK announced that it is to explore the harvest of nodules in the Pacific Ocean, 1,500 kilometres southwest of Mexico.
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China has been cosying up to Arctic countries as part of its effort to secure "permanent observer" status on the Arctic Council, an eight-country political body that decides regional policy. Norway was initially sniffy at the approaches because of the Nobel row, but appears to have changed its tune before a formal decision in May.
[ More ]David Cameron has pledged to put Britain at the forefront of a new international seabed mining industry, which he claimed could be worth £40bn to the UK economy over the next 30 years. But the prime minister has chosen an American defence company – Lockheed Martin – to spearhead the drive to collect from the depths of the ocean the copper, nickel and rare earth minerals used in mobile phones and solar panels.
[ More ]A new and controversial frontier in mining is opening up as a British firm joins a growing rush to exploit minerals in the depths of the oceans.
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The author argues that while there has been cooperation on extracting the Arctic’s oil, gas and mineral deposits, and exploiting its fisheries, "there has been little effort to develop legal mechanisms to prevent or adjudicate conflict. The potential for such conflict is high, even though tensions are now low."
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Higher temperatures and a longer growing season mean some of Earth's chilliest regions are looking increasingly green, researchers say. Today, the plant life at northern latitudes often looks like the vegetation researchers would have observed up to 430 miles (700 kilometers) farther south in 1982, according to a new study.
[ More ]A senior U.S. lawmaker meeting with Philippine officials said Tuesday that China should agree to face the Philippines before a U.N. arbitration tribunal to avoid a possible crisis over their long-raging territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
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Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) today said China and the Philippines should settle a dispute via a measure enshrined in the Law of the Sea treaty, a treaty that his Senate colleagues killed last year.
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A newly launched asteroid miner is looking to the history of deep sea mining as it attempts to navigate laws governing exploitation of space. "If you look at parallels, like deep sea mining, that went forward without a global treaty. The companies that wanted to do deep sea mining shook hands: 'We won't interfere with you if you don't interfere with us', that was the general approach going forward," said David Gump, Deep Space's chief executive officer.
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