Into the Abyss: Deep-sea Mining, Geo-politics and Global Development

尽管深海逐渐变得难以察觉，成为人类知识的边界，但开采深海的竞赛仍在继续。该项目将分析可持续深海采矿面临的新的政治挑战，同时考虑到相互冲突的社会利益、对深海床的感知和想象方式以及深海本身的物理特性。全球对黄金、铜、稀土金属和磷酸盐等具有重要经济和战略意义的资源的需求不断增加，再加上采矿技术的进步，这意味着深海首次成为资源开采的关键地点。该行业已经勘探了100多万平方公里的深海海床，预计在未来30年内仅英国就将价值400亿英镑。为此，围绕深海采矿业的经济和环境影响展开了辩论。因此，人们越来越多地从盈利和安全的角度考虑深海，而不是从所有权、道德和相互竞争的政治角度考虑。由于未能充分考虑深海的政治层面，目前的研究未能解释DSM治理是如何形成的。不同的利益攸关方是如何想象、想象和绘制深海采矿的？需求侧管理能否成为全球南方国际发展战略的一部分？深海的资源、性质和动力在政治问题的形成中发挥了什么作用？通过批判性的社会科学读物解决这些问题，该项目在理解相互竞争的全球、国家和地方地缘政治‘想象’--或理解深海的方式--及其对需求侧管理研究和政策的深刻的概念和实质性影响方面发挥了关键作用。它比较研究了全球南方两个积极但不同地参与需求侧管理前景的关键民族国家：巴布亚新几内亚(巴布亚新几内亚)，该国已将其经济潜力纳入国家发展计划；纳米比亚，在将需求侧管理纳入任何国家发展战略之前，已宣布暂停所有需求侧管理活动。更根本的是，认真对待深海本身的物理特性会如何改变我们对资源开采的政治和政策的思考方式？从概念上讲，这将是第一个将当代在海洋和地下地理学方面的新兴工作联系起来，并考虑与海洋本身的物理性质接触如何改变我们对需求侧管理政治和政策的思考方式的第一个项目。它将通过与纳米比亚和巴布亚新几内亚的高级政府官员、受影响社区、全球活动家、律师和海洋学家进行访谈和重点小组的访谈和重点小组，产生新的定性数据，从而建立对深海地缘政治的新概念理解。它将与纳米比亚和巴布亚新几内亚受潜在需求侧管理影响的社区合作，制作新型的“参与性”地图，为需求侧管理提供替代的政治未来。它还将全面分析与电力需求侧管理法律条约和政治演讲有关的文本，以显示电力需求侧管理政治是如何在当代形成的，并影响它未来的形成。在许多其他活动中，这项研究将在全国范围内开展这项工作，方法是制作公共政策简报，供英国议会使用，并在全球范围内与国际海底管理局(深海的主要全球监管机构)合作，创建绘制和管理DSM的新的关键方法。无论是实物展览还是在线展览，都将展示想象深海的其他方式如何挑战和塑造监管深海开采的新兴政策议程。这些成果将为一系列当前和未来的用户提供宝贵的资源，从活动家到政策制定者，从研究人员到受DSM活动变化影响的社区。

Despite the fact that the deep-sea is by degrees, imperceptible and a boundary to human knowledge, the race to mine it is on. This project will analyse the emergent political challenges of sustainable deep-sea mining taking into account conflicting social interests, the ways in which the deep sea bed is sensed and imagined, and the physical properties of the deep ocean itself. Increasing global demand for economically and strategically important resources such as gold, copper, rare-earth metals and phosphates, coupled with advances in mining technology, has meant that the deep-sea has emerged for the first time as a key site of resource extraction. The industry, which already explores over 1 million sq.km of deep-sea bed, is expected to be worth £40 billion over the next 30 years to the UK alone. To this end, debates have opened up which have focused on the economic and environmental impacts of the deep-sea mining (DSM) industry. Thus the deep sea is increasingly considered in terms of profitability and safety rather than in terms of ownership, ethics and competing politics. In failing to sufficiently take into account the deep sea's political dimensions, current research misses out in explaining how DSM governance comes into being. How is deep-sea mining imagined, visualised and mapped by different stakeholders? Can DSM be part of international development strategies in the global South? What role do the resources, properties and dynamics of the deep-sea play in political issue formation? By addressing these questions through a critical social science reading of DSM, this project has a key role to play in understanding competing global, national and local geopolitical 'imaginaries' - or ways of understanding the deep-sea - and their profound conceptual and substantive implications for DSM research and policy. It offers a comparative study of the two key nation-states in the global South that are engaging actively, but differently, with the prospect of DSM: Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has embraced its economic potential in the country's development plan; and Namibia, which has issued a temporary moratorium on all DSM activity prior to its inclusion in any national development strategy. More radically, how might taking the physical properties of the deep sea itself seriously change the way we think about the politics and policies of resource extraction? Conceptually, it will be the first to bridge emergent contemporary work on both ocean and subsurface geographies and to consider how an engagement with the physical properties of the ocean itself changes the way we think about the politics and policies of DSM. It will build a new conceptual understanding of deep-sea geopolitics by generating new qualitative data through interviews and focus groups with senior government officials in Namibia and PNG, affected communities, global activists, lawyers and oceanographers. Working with communities affected by potential DSM in Namibia and PNG, it will produce new types of 'participatory' maps, that will offer alternative political futures for DSM. It will also comprehensively analyse texts relating to DSM legal treaties and political speeches in order to show how DSM politics is contemporarily made and to influence how it is shaped in the future. Among many other activities, the research will do this at a national scale by producing public policy briefings for UK parliamentary use and globally by working with the International Seabed Authority (the key global regulator of the deep-sea) to create new, critical ways of mapping and governing DSM. Both a physical and online exhibition will show the ways in which alternative ways of imagining the deep-sea can challenge and shape the emergent policy agendas that regulate the mining of it. These outcomes will provide an invaluable resource for a range of current and future users from activists to policy makers, researchers to communities affected by the changing landscapes of DSM activity.