Deep Sea Mining

This brief is based on a literature review conducted by Axel Hallgren at Linköping University that maps ongoing deep sea mining (DSM) research, scientific debates and controversies and synthesizes major narratives in the field. The brief will first contextualize DSM, pinpoint a few significant challenges, and continue with a short description of the targeted mineral resources. The discussion that follows hone in on a few governance challenges that emanate from the aspirations to achieve an equitable distribution of mining revenues and the lack of scientific knowledge, and the inherently unmanageable task to draft a legitimate regulatory system for the governance of the global and currently uncharted deep sea bed in merely a few years. The brief rounds off by highlighting a few avenues for topical social scientific research.