The shifting geopolitics of deep-sea mining in the Pacific Islands region: An industry poised to merge?

As global competition for critical minerals intensifies, the world’s oceans are emerging as a new frontier in the race for strategic resources. Originally published by European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes’ (EADI) blog, Debating Development Research, ISS PhD alumnus Ben Radley and Imogen Eagles explore how deep-sea mining is becoming a focal point of geopolitical rivalry in the Pacific Islands, highlighting the tensions between resource security, environmental protection and the competing interests of states, industry and local communities.

The ocean’s seabed contains vast deposits of minerals deemed critical for green transition technologies, military defence systems and AI hardware, among other uses. According to some estimates, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone alone – an approximately 4.5 million square kilometre abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean – holds more copper, nickel and cobalt than all land-based deposits combined. With China’s recent tightening of export controls on several critical minerals creating global price shocks and disrupting Western supply chains, geopolitical contestation to access and exploit seabed minerals is heating up.

Governance of the seabed is divided between national and international waters. Countries retain full sovereignty over the right to explore and exploit natural resources in their Exclusive Economic Zones, which extend up to 200 nautical miles offshore. Beyond national jurisdiction, the seabed, ocean floor and subsoil – commonly referred to as ‘the Area’ – are governed by the UN International Seabed Authority (ISA). Established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the ISA has yet to introduce a mining code to allow commercial exploitation of seabed minerals in the Area.

This is due, alongside Global South concerns about how any economic benefit would be distributed among nations, to the extensive and potentially irreversible environmental and ecological damage the industry is widely expected to cause. Fragile seafloor habitats and the mineral substrates that underpin them would be physically destroyed, sediment plumes and toxic wastewater discharges would cause long-term biodiversity loss including possible extinctions, and key earth-system processes such as the carbon cycle would be disrupted. And there remains so little we know about the deep-sea. Just last week, scientists accidentally uncovered a deep-sea coral system the size of Vatican City, including 28 species they suspect are new to science. Responding to these concerns, at the time of writing, 43 countries have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining.

The US, however, is not among them. As a non-party to UNCLOS, the US is instead seeking to accelerate a pathway towards deep sea mining both domestically and in the Area. In April 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14285, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources. The Order declared that seabed minerals “are key to strengthening our economy, securing our energy future, and reducing dependence on foreign suppliers”, and called on government agencies to expedite the process to establish a deep sea mining industry as an urgent matter of national security.

As of mid-2026, several companies were pursuing US authorisation to explore and potentially extract minerals from international waters. Among these, Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC) was furthest ahead, with its application for an exploitation license deemed in full compliance and the permitting process expected to conclude in early 2027. China, meanwhile, holds the largest number of deep sea mining exploration contracts granted by the ISA, is a major financial contributor to the ISA, and reportedly operates the world’s largest oceanographic research fleet.

The Pacific Islands region, comprising a diverse set of states and territories – several of which are US-owned – lies at the centre of growing geopolitical contestation over deep-sea mineral deposits. Roughly three-quarters of the exploration licenses granted by the ISA are located in the Pacific. Most of these are in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, including those held by companies currently seeking US approval, where the quantity and quality of seabed minerals are widely recognised as unmatched globally. In addition, many Pacific Island Countries host significant deposits in their sovereign waters. The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority, for instance, estimates its Exclusive Economic Zones to contain 6.7 billion wet tonnes of mineral-rich nodules.

Figure 1. Pacific Islands Region showing the Exclusive Economic Zones of several Pacific Islands Countries and the main locations of nodule deposits

Alongside the Cook Islands, Nauru, Tonga and Kiribati have been among the strongest Pacific Islands Countries proponents of deep sea mining, seeing it as an opportunity for development and economic diversification. The Cook Islands has granted four exploration contracts to three companies in its Exclusive Economic Zones (two with US interests and one Belgian joint venture) and is the sponsoring state behind an exploration licence with the ISA in international waters.

Tonga and Nauru, meanwhile, are working with TMC through two ISA exploration licenses in the CCZ, where Tonga and TMC share a subsidiary in Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd and the Nauru government sponsors the TMC subsidiary, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. A recent investor presentation provided by US firm American Ocean Minerals, which holds ownership interests in the Cook Islands’ Exclusive Economic Zones, details how it plans to process deep-sea minerals mined in the Pacific on the US Gulf Coast via a transhipment port in American Samoa (Figure 2 below).

Figure 2. American Ocean Mineral’s DSM supply chain

Most Pacific Island Countries, however, are resistant. The ocean is central to cultural identity in the region and plays an important economic role through the tourism and fishing industries. As one public figure leading community resistance to DSM in Papua New Guinea put it, “the ocean is a part of the earth, what we call graun, and we are part of graun”. Consequently, most of the region’s countries and territories have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause on DSM, with Vanuatu, Palau and Fiji some of the industry’s staunchest opponents.

At a Pacific Small Island Developing States Regional workshop held in Fiji in May 2026, with representation from across the region, Pacific civil society groups called for transparency and inclusion to ensure all voices are heard. This would include those promoting a precautionary approach or a full moratorium. The US’s own Pacific Island territories are among these; the leaders of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are pushing for a moratorium, and American Samoa is deeply concerned about the US’ fast-tracking of DSM in their waters.

Yet there is a concern held by civil society observers in the region that moratorium positions represent more of a ‘wait and see’ attitude from regional governments, as opposed to a firm stance against the industry. While academics and commentators have long foretold the onset of deep sea mining globally and in the Pacific Islands region, there is a growing sense that intensifying US-China geopolitics combined with industry promotion by some Pacific Islands Countries might drive deep sea mining exploration to commercial exploitation before the decade is out.

About the authors:

Ben Radley is a Reader in International Development at the University of Bath. His research centres on the political economy of mining, energy and labour in the context of green transitions, with a regional focus on Central Africa and the Pacific Islands.

Imogen Eagles is studying for a BSc in International Development with Economics at the University of Bath. On her placement year as a research assistant in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, she has supported work on deep-sea mining, Syrian refugees and women’s career experiences in the UK.