Blue seas thinking: A comparative approach to understanding deep-sea mining politics in the UK and Japan

深海采矿(DSM)已成为全球资源开采的下一个主要前沿。面对具有挑战性的经济机遇以及政治和生态不确定性的组合，一系列迅速增长的战略正在被动员起来，旨在为一个被框定为未来可持续和安全资源供应解决方案的行业塑造发展道路。这一点最好的例证莫过于英国和日本政府正在做出的不同努力，它们正将各自的国家定位为处于电力需求侧管理活动出现的门槛。例如，日本于2017年完成了世界上第一次从冲绳海岸附近5000英尺深的海底提取锌、金和其他金属的工作。与此同时，英国是为数不多的制定具体需求侧管理立法的国家之一，其修订后的深海采矿法案于2014年获得通过。然而，尽管研究需求侧管理对环境的潜在影响的工作越来越多，但仍然未能分析其政治和社会后果，部分原因是历史上人们对深海本身缺乏重大的社会或政治层面的认识。帝斯曼被认为缺乏对人类的影响，这使得它在往往狭隘地聚焦于拟议采矿活动的环境影响的辩论中被边缘化。此外，由于将社会和政治思想从他们的讨论中边缘化，目前大多数关于需求侧管理的研究可能会延续将政治视为本质上主要是人类的东西的传统。在此背景下，一个由英国和日本学者组成的专家网络建议将世界上第一个和独特的日本DSM提取经验与英国学术工作引领的这一主题的理论进展联系起来。通过一系列研讨会、公开演讲、议会举证和公开展览，它旨在相互加强日本和英国的社会科学对深海的处理。这将导致出版研究和政策出版物，为英国议会环境审计委员会的“可持续海洋”调查提供投入，并为早期职业研究人员提供重大培训机会，使其在关于需求侧管理的辩论中突出社会科学。它也将是准备研究设计的基础，以应对DSM在出现时提出的未来研究挑战。

Deep-sea mining (DSM) has emerged globally as the next major frontier of resource extraction. Faced with the challenging combination of economic opportunity and political and ecological uncertainty, a burgeoning range of strategies are being mobilised that aim to shape development pathways for an industry framed as a solution for a sustainable and secure resource supply in the future. This is nowhere better exemplified by than the distinct efforts being made by the UK and Japan governments, who are positioning their respective countries to be at the threshold of DSM activity as it emerges. Japan, for example, completed the world's first extraction of zinc, gold and other metals from the 5000 feet deep seabed near the coast of Okinawa in 2017. The UK meanwhile, is one of the limited number of countries to have established specific DSM legislation, with its amended Deep Sea Ming Act passed in 2014. However, for all the ever-increasing body of work examining the potential environmental impacts of DSM, there remains an ongoing failure to analyse its political and social consequences.This is partly because the deep-sea itself has historically been understood to lack significant social or political dimensions. DSM's supposed lack of human impact has seen it marginalised from debates that have tended to focus narrowly on the environmental impacts of proposed mining activity. Moreover, in marginalising social and political thought from their discussion, most current studies of DSM threaten to continue the tradition of treating politics as something predominantly human in nature. Against this background, an expert network of UK and Japanese scholars propose to connect the world-first and unique, Japanese experience of DSM extraction, with the theoretical advances on the topic being led by academic work in the UK. Through a series of workshops, public presentations, parliamentary evidence giving and public exhibitions, it aims to mutually strengthen social science's treatment of the deep-ocean in both Japan and UK. This will lead to research and policy publications, input to the 'Sustainable Seas' enquiry at the UK Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee as well as significant training opportunities for early career researchers foregrounding social science in the debate on DSM. It will also be foundational for preparing a research design to tackle future research challenges presented by DSM as it emerges.