or an Arctic Allegory of Deep-Sea Mining
What an imaginary copper mine at Perkattkun (Wrangel Island, Arctic Ocean)
can teach us about the limits of technological control, scientific knowledge,
and human responsibility.
Fig. 1. An artist’s view
of the remotely operated open-pit mine.
Imagine the mine
Imagine an open-pit copper mine in the Arctic. Excavators traverse frozen
ground, trucks carry ore, and drilling machines cut the landscape open. The
mine is surrounded by a vast expanse of snow and ice, home to animals adapted
to this environment. Now add an unusual condition: the entire operation is
controlled from helicopters hovering above a thick layer of clouds. The
machinery works below, but the operators cannot directly see the landscape they
are transforming. The
operators receive only the information their instruments and communication links provide. Engineers know where their machines are and what they
are doing. Yet they
lack a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the environment to foresee
the consequences of mining for the life it supports.
Would we authorise such a mine? Under what conditions? And who would be
responsible if the environmental consequences became apparent only decades
later? The scene is imaginary. The mammoth in the accompanying illustration
reminds us of that. Yet the picture offers an allegory for an industrial
activity under serious consideration: deep-sea mining (DSM), mining at the
bottom of the ocean several thousand meters below the surface.
The ocean's invisible mining frontier
Several kilometres beneath the ocean surface lie mineral deposits
containing copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and other metals. Some occur as
polymetallic nodules scattered across abyssal plains. Others form mineral-rich
crusts on seamounts or massive sulphide deposits associated with hydrothermal
systems. These resources attract interest because modern societies require
substantial quantities of metals, including for renewable energy systems and
electrification. The best-known DSM proposals involve collecting polymetallic
nodules from abyssal plains, especially in the Pacific Ocean. Large remotely
operated vehicles would traverse the seabed, collect nodules, and transport
them through pipes to the surface, where ships collect and process the ore.
Strictly speaking, collecting nodules is not the same as excavating an
open-pit copper mine. Nor are all forms of DSM technologically identical.
Nevertheless, the Arctic allegory captures a defining relationship: industrial machinery operates far
from its controllers, who can observe only part of an environment whose
processes remain incompletely understood.
The ocean serves as the thick, opaque layer separating the mining machinery
and the remote controller. The support vessels replace the helicopters. Cameras
and acoustic sensors provide essential observations. The challenges are not
merely technological. They concern what can be known before intervention, what
may be learned only afterwards, and whether some of that learning would come
too late.
When industrial time meets geological and ecological time
The Arctic allegory becomes more consequential when we consider time.
Industrial operations are typically planned over years or decades. Machinery is
renewed, production adjusted, and economic profitability periodically
reassessed. Deep-sea ecosystems operate on very different timescales. Best
(terrestrial) mining practices follow a mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimise,
remediate, and offset), and DSM should learn from it; however, this may be
unachievable in the deep ocean today.
Because polymetallic nodules form over millions of years, mining them is
like a hit-and-run operation. The nodules provide hard surfaces that some
organisms depend on. Their removal therefore entails more than extracting a
mineral resource: it also removes part of a habitat that cannot be restored
within ordinary human planning horizons. The surrounding sediments support communities
adapted to life in the cold, dark, high-pressure deep sea, where food is
scarce.
Mining vehicles directly disturb these communities, while sediment plumes
can affect areas beyond the extraction tracks. These concerns are supported by
observations: biological effects remained detectable decades after an
experimental disturbance. Sediment-dwelling fauna shows reduced abundance
within mining tracks.
Findings show that environmental disturbance on the seafloor may persist
long after the machinery has departed. Hence, technological capacity to
intervene differs from ecological capacity to recover, and human capacity to
remediate and offset.
The mine is more than its machinery
The Arctic illustration draws our attention to excavators, helicopters, and
trucks. Yet an actual mining operation involves much more. Beyond the machines reigns an
institutional arrangement: financing and engineering make extraction possible,
public authorities set its terms, and particular actors receive the benefits. This broader
arrangement matters especially in DSM. Its artefactual dimension extends from extraction and monitoring
technology to the ships that support it and the contractual and regulatory
structures that govern its use. Its social dimension concerns the relationships
among commercial operators, public authorities and researchers, including how
affected communities and citizens enter decisions. Finally, its conceptual
dimension concerns how economic expectations and scientific interpretations
interact with ethical and legal principles in arguments for or against mining. These dimensions
are not independent. They are intertwined. A change in extraction technology
may alter environmental consequences. New scientific observations may challenge
previous assumptions. Political decisions can determine which risks are
acceptable and whose concerns receive attention.
DSM is therefore not merely an engineering project. It is a socio-techno-ecological
intervention in which technologies reshape material processes, while
institutions and normative commitments shape how those technologies are
deployed. The visible mining machinery is only one part of the operation. The
conceptual frameworks that make it possible are another.
Who authorises mining beneath the clouds?
In seabed areas beyond national jurisdiction, the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea establishes a consequential principle: the Area and its
resources constitute the common heritage of humankind.
The International Seabed Authority is entrusted with organising and
controlling mineral-related activities in these areas, including obligations to
protect the environment and ensure equitable sharing of benefits. However, the
principle of common heritage does not settle whether a particular mining
operation should proceed. It raises further questions. Can mineral extraction
be considered beneficial when its commercial returns are relatively immediate,
but ecological losses may persist for generations? How should benefits and
risks be distributed among countries and populations? How should the interests
of future generations inform present decisions? And what standing should be
given to living communities that cannot represent themselves politically?
These are
questions of geoethics: how humans ought to interact with the Earth in light of
scientific knowledge, with attention to agency and responsibility as well as
inclusion and rights. They also invite reflection on political agency,
moral justification, and long-term responsibility. Drawing on political
anthropology/philosophy, we may ask who can participate in collective
judgement, how decisions can be justified to others, and what responsibility
present generations bear for distant consequences. Scientific expertise is
indispensable for addressing these questions. But expertise alone cannot
determine which ecological losses are justified by economic benefits or which
risks society ought to accept. The decision to mine is therefore not simply a
technical conclusion. It is a political and ethical judgement informed by
science.
From planetary habitability to tellurian compatibility
A broader issue is at stake. Human societies depend on planetary conditions
that support complex life. These conditions constitute planetary habitability.
They have varied throughout Earth's history, and different planetary habitat
configurations have supported different forms of life and human dwelling.
Today, maintaining the Earth System conditions inherited from the late Holocene
provides an important reference for sustaining contemporary complex life.
Nevertheless, planetary habitability is not a blueprint for organising human
societies. It does not determine how people should share resources, exercise
power, or govern technological interventions.
This limitation is evident in DSM. An individual mining operation may have
negligible measurable effects on planetary habitability while causing severe,
potentially irreversible ecological losses in a particular location. A planet
may remain broadly habitable even when distinctive ecosystems are destroyed.
Yet accumulating such losses across regions and generations may ultimately
undermine the conditions for complex life.
Planetary habitability establishes a condition to be maintained. It does
not, by itself, establish which human activities, institutions, or governing
norms are justified. This distinction motivates the concept of tellurian
compatibility.
The term telluric refers to Earth's biotic and abiotic features and
processes. Tellurian refers to how people live on Earth through their social
practices and artefacts, which are intertwined with those features and
processes. Before people construct a mine, establish a regulatory authority, or
choose a mineral-supply strategy, they formulate ideas about what is desirable,
permissible, or necessary. Such ideas combine knowledge of the Earth with
ethical and political judgements. They constitute a geo-normative frame:
epistemic-moral combinations that guide human interactions with the planet.
Tellurian compatibility provides a criterion for examining these frameworks.
Its purpose is deliberately limited. It asks whether the foreseeable
enactment of a normative frame, especially if generalised across the planetary
habitat, would threaten three conditions:
- The life-supporting conditions of the Earth and the dwelling of human and other-than-human life.
- Justified social claims, including considerations of justice, participation, and the distribution of benefits and harms.
- The possibility of correcting decisions and changing practices when their consequences become unacceptable.
This is an exclusionary criterion. It seeks to identify normative frames
whose foreseeable consequences would be sufficiently destructive or
unaccountable to warrant rejection. It does not rank all possible frameworks or
prescribe an ideal society. Nor does it directly assess mining machines or
particular practices. Their consequences provide evidence for judging the normative
frames under which they would operate. The distinction matters. A principle
that permits irreversible harm without adequate knowledge or meaningful
possibilities of correction might fail the screening. Another principle might
withstand it without thereby becoming the uniquely best basis for governance.
Tellurian compatibility thus establishes a lower boundary for acceptable normative
frames while leaving substantial room for political choice and cultural
plurality.
Which norms are guiding the helicopters?
Return to the imaginary Arctic mine. Suppose its operators argue that
copper is urgently needed, that technology makes extraction feasible, and that
the region is sufficiently remote to justify proceeding. Their reasoning rests
on several assumptions. Mineral supply takes priority. Technical capacity is
treated as a reason for intervention. Environmental uncertainty is tolerated.
The burden of demonstrating harm may fall on those questioning the operation.
Now consider a different argument. The mineral deposit may be valuable, but
extraction requires prior ecological investigation and public justification. Any operation would then need
independent monitoring under enforceable limits. Those affected must
have opportunities to contest decisions, and operations must remain subject to
revision or suspension. Neither argument is merely technical. Each articulates
a different combination of norms. Similar combinations appear in discussions of
DSM.
The freedom of the seas, combined with urgent demand for critical minerals,
may encourage extraction by those with the necessary technological and
financial capacity. Without countervailing obligations, this combination risks
privileging powerful actors and weakening opportunities for public scrutiny.
The common heritage of humankind, combined with precaution and restrictions
on serious environmental harm, offers a different orientation. It recognises
collective interests and provides a basis for institutional oversight. Nevertheless,
these principles must be translated into effective procedures that address
knowledge gaps and unequal power, while recognising obligations to future generations.
Likewise, a social licence to operate may strengthen participation by
directly affected communities without necessarily protecting deep-sea
ecosystems or adequately representing the interests of distant populations and
future generations.
These examples illustrate why individual principles cannot be assessed in
isolation. Their combinations matter, as do the social arrangements and
technologies through which they would be enacted. Tellurian compatibility does
not settle their relative merits by assigning numerical scores. It asks whether
putting that
combination into practice would foreseeably damage ecosystems, exclude people
from decisions or leave institutions unable to correct harmful outcomes. This assessment is necessarily contestable.
Its purpose is to make an intervention's normative foundations visible and
open to reasoned scrutiny.
The responsibility to know, contest, revise and refrain
The helicopters in the illustration are equipped with communication
systems. But what happens if the instruments fail to detect a significant
disturbance? What happens when observations contradict the predictions used to
justify mining? These questions highlight a central requirement of responsible
intervention: the capacity to correct course. For DSM, four capacities matter most.
- To know means establishing credible ecological baselines from reproducible observations,
making the evidence available for scrutiny, and remaining explicit about
substantial uncertainties.
- To contest means allowing independent researchers, affected communities, states, and other legitimate participants to challenge the evidence, assumptions, and justifications underlying a decision.
- To revise means making a decision's empirical and normative grounds open to challenge by all those with legitimate standing, from independent researchers and affected communities to states.
- To refrain means retaining the practical and institutional possibility of postponing, suspending, or not undertaking an intervention.
These capacities are interdependent. Scientific monitoring matters little
if its findings cannot inform decisions. Public participation becomes largely
symbolic if participants cannot challenge an operation's premises. Regulations
lose effectiveness if they cannot be revised or enforced. The capacity to
refrain matters especially when disturbances may be irreversible.
Once a seabed habitat is removed, stopping extraction cannot recreate what
was lost. Furthermore, responsibilities are not equally distributed. Responsibility lies particularly
with those who decide whether mining proceeds, provide the means for it or
control its operations, rather than with distant consumers or future
generations. The capacity to intervene therefore entails a corresponding
responsibility to justify the intervention and to maintain possibilities for
correction. Importantly, refraining is not simply inaction. Refraining can instead be a
deliberate exercise of agency, particularly where uncertainty remains
substantial or expected harm cannot be adequately prevented or justified.
This does not mean that tellurian compatibility automatically requires a
universal prohibition on DSM. It means that a normative frame that
systematically prevents knowing, contesting, revising, or refraining is likely
to fail the compatibility screening.
Is the mine necessary?
One argument for DSM is the growing demand for critical minerals. This
demand is real, and terrestrial mining also causes substantial environmental
and social harms. However, acknowledging mineral demand does not make it
necessary to exploit every technically accessible deposit. The choice is not simply between
deep-sea and terrestrial mining. Greater recycling and material efficiency
could reduce the need for new extraction, while substitution and demand
management could further change it; more responsible terrestrial mining
practices would also affect the comparison Recycling, material
efficiency, technological substitution, demand management, and improvements in
terrestrial mining all shape the range of possible choices. None provides a
cost-free solution, and recycling alone cannot immediately meet all mineral
demand. There is also a distributive question. Restricting DSM may shift
pressure onto communities affected by land-based extraction. Conversely,
expanding extraction into the deep ocean may create new ecological losses
without resolving unjust resource consumption or existing inequalities.
Evaluating these alternatives requires scientific evidence, economic analysis,
and deliberation about justified social claims.
Here, a further distinction matters. Screening normative frames for
tellurian compatibility is not the same as choosing among the concrete policies
and institutions that might implement acceptable frameworks. The screening
seeks to exclude normatively unacceptable directions. Only afterwards can societies compare feasible
ways to meet mineral needs while protecting the environment, develop
appropriate technologies, and design institutions to govern them. This second task can be understood as a form
of concrete-utopian design: considering institutionally achievable futures
rather than imagining ideal societies detached from existing capabilities and
constraints. Such design accepts planetary habitability as a condition,
excludes normative frames judged malignant through tellurian-compatibility
screening, and seeks workable arrangements that remain justified and open to
correction. The result need not be a single universal institutional model.
Different societies may develop different arrangements, provided they preserve
the relevant conditions for responsible planetary dwelling.
A civic responsibility beyond the clouds
Fig. 2 Models for
defining and institutionalising planetary boundaries as limits to planetary
habitability.
What follows from the Arctic allegory? The most important lesson concerns
the relationship between knowledge, power, and responsibility. DSM employs
technologies that can intervene in environments whose ecological dynamics
are only partially understood. This asymmetry between the capacity to act and
the capacity to foresee consequences renders governing norms particularly
consequential. Responsible governance requires more than environmental impact
assessments or technical operating standards. It requires testing whether the underlying normative
frame respects ecological constraints, allocates agency and responsibility
justly, and rests on reproducible knowledge and institutions capable of
implementation. Such examination cannot establish a single
best arrangement for every circumstance. Scientific knowledge constrains what
may reasonably be proposed but cannot, on its own, settle legitimacy. Similarly,
political agreement and economic feasibility cannot erase irreversible
ecological losses. The public task is therefore twofold: exclude normative frames whose foreseeable consequences are unacceptable, and build
institutions capable of enacting the remaining frameworks responsibly.
The International Seabed Authority and relevant national institutions
provide existing frameworks in which these questions can be addressed. Their
capacities, legitimacy, and susceptibility to competing interests must remain
open to scrutiny, especially when competing interests shape their decisions.
This approach also reshapes how we might understand the imagined Arctic mine.
The problem is not simply that the helicopters operate above the clouds. Technological
remoteness is unavoidable in many human activities, including oceanography,
space exploration, and environmental monitoring. The deeper problem is remote intervention
without sufficient knowledge, especially when decision-making power is
concentrated and institutions cannot correct mistakes. The deeper problem
arises when remoteness is accompanied by insufficient knowledge, concentrated
decision-making power, or an inability to correct decisions. The allegory
consequently extends beyond DSM. It concerns a recurring predicament of
technologically advanced societies: possessing the means to transform parts of
the Earth before adequately understanding the consequences and agreeing on the
norms that should govern those transformations.
Geoethics offers resources for addressing this predicament. Tellurian
compatibility poses a more specific task: scrutinising the normative frames
that precede and guide technological intervention. A concrete utopia for
planetary dwelling would not eliminate uncertainty or disagreement. It would establish institutions where
public deliberation and reasoned justification shape decisions, and where
evidence of their consequences makes collective correction possible. The Arctic
mine reminds us why these capacities matter. The helicopters may operate above
the clouds. Human responsibility cannot remain there.
The revision makes one consequential shift in the argument's conclusion:
the primary object of scrutiny is no longer whether DSM itself is acceptable,
but whether the normative frames authorising or constraining it withstand the
tellurian-compatibility test. Judgements about extraction proposals would then require scientific
evidence to be assessed through institutional scrutiny and political
deliberation.
Scholarly references for further reading
Interpretive
boundary. “Tellurian compatibility” is the manuscript’s proposed criterion, not
a pre-existing scholarly term established by these publications. References
support, contest, or operationally inform its components. Bibliographic details
derive from Undermind™ records,
Arvanitidis, N., et al. (2017). White Paper on Responsible Mining. International Association for Promoting Geoethics. http://www.geoethics.org/wp-responsible-mining; Bunge, M. (1979). A systems concept of society: Beyond individualism and holism. Theory and Decision, 13–30. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126329; Celermajer, D., et al. (2020). Multispecies justice: theories, challenges, and a research agenda for environmental politics. Environmental Politics, 119–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1827608; Christiansen, S., et al. (2022). Evaluating the quality of environmental baselines for deep seabed mining. Frontiers in Marine Science. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.898711; Craik, N., et al.. (2025). The International Seabed Authority, the Problem of Disregard and the Case for Administrative Accountability. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 267–289. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020589325101012; Gupta, J., et al. (2023). Earth system justice needed to identify and live within Earth system boundaries. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01064-1; Hitchin, B., et al. (2023). Thresholds in deep-seabed mining: A primer for their development. Marine Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2023.105505;Levin, L. A., et al. (2016). Defining
“serious harm” to the marine environment in the context of deep-seabed mining.
Marine Policy, 245–259.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2016.09.032; Jaeckel, A., et al. (2017). Conserving the common heritage of humankind – Options for the
deep-seabed mining regime. Marine Policy, 150–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.01.019; Jones, D. O. B., et al. (2025). Long-term impact and biological recovery in a deep-sea mining track. Nature, 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08921-3; Metaxas, A., et al. (2024). Comparing environmental impacts of deep‐seabed and land‐based mining: A defensible framework. Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17334; Naudé, W. (2025). An Economist’s Ode to the Forests and the Sea. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5814308; Peppoloni, S., & Di Capua, G. (2026). Geoethics: The Role of Geoscientists in Shaping a Responsible Future. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-032524-123956; Pickering, J., & Persson, Å. (2019). Democratising planetary boundaries: experts, social values and deliberative risk evaluation in Earth system governance. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1661233; Rockström, J., et al. (2024). The planetary
commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the
Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301531121; Seto, K. C., et al. (2016). Carbon Lock-In: Types, Causes, and Policy Implications. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 425–452. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085934; Valverde, A. (2020). Utopismo e antiutopismo,
em Bloch e Jonas. Revista de Filosofia Aurora.
https://doi.org/10.7213/1980-5934.32.057.ds05;
