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。面对经济机遇、政治和生态不确定性的挑战组合，正在动员一系列迅速发展的战略，旨在为行业塑造发展道路，作为未来可持续和安全资源供应的解决方案。没有比英国和日本政府所做的独特努力更好的例子了，他们将各自的国家定位在DSM活动出现的门槛上。例如，日本在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、黄金和其他金属。与此同时，英国是少数几个制定了具体DSM立法的国家之一，2014年通过了修订后的《深海采矿法》。然而，尽管对DSM潜在环境影响的研究越来越多，但在分析其政治和社会后果方面仍然存在持续的失败。这在一定程度上是因为深海本身历来被认为缺乏重要的社会或政治层面。DSM被认为没有人为影响，这使得它在辩论中被边缘化，辩论往往只关注拟议采矿活动对环境的影响。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DSM的研究都有可能继续将政治视为主要是人类性质的东西的传统。在此背景下，一个由英国和日本学者组成的专家网络提议将日本在DSM提取方面的世界首创和独特经验与英国学术工作主导的该主题的理论进展联系起来。通过一系列的研讨会，公开演讲，议会证据提供和公共展览，它旨在相互加强日本和英国对深海的社会科学处理。这将导致研究和政策出版物，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要的培训机会，使社会科学在关于DSM的辩论中脱颖而出。它也将成为准备研究设计的基础，以应对DSM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.