Must we risk destroying the ocean to save the planet?

It is highly debatable whether deep-sea minerals are needed to enable the renewable-energy transition and decarbonise the global economy. Instead of rushing to mine them, the world must first protect the biodiversity of the high seas and show that seabed mining can yield long-term net benefits for sustainable development

Rising sea temperatures are already destructive causing bleached coral at Mission Beach Reefs; do we need to ruin the seabed too? Picture: Bette Willis/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Today’s growing world population and a privileged minority’s rapidly rising living standards are driving resource consumption and waste production at a rate requiring the capacities of 1.7 Earths and fuels alarming levels of global warming. 

And the ocean is increasingly suffering the consequences — not only the well-known large-scale bleaching of tropical corals caused by rising temperatures, but also the less visible risks of ocean-water acidification and temporal and spatial discrepancies in productivity patterns due to species-specific adaptability.