Fault lines beneath the Blue Pacific: Deep-sea mining and the future of Pacific unity

Key findings

• Commercial deep-sea mining (DSM) could begin as early as 2027, driven by US–China competition over critical minerals. The Pacific Ocean will be the focus of these activities, with its seafloor holding vast quantities of the prized polymetallic nodules. But Pacific Island nations are divided: some see DSM as an economic necessity, while a growing coalition warns of irreversible damage to the ocean that sustains them.
• No global rulebook for DSM yet exists. The International Seabed Authority has spent more than a decade drafting one, still with no agreed standards, liability framework, or guaranteed benefit-sharing protections. This leaves the Pacific vulnerable to exploitation, with the United States’ decision to pursue commercial licensing outside the international system deepening the governance gap.
• Australia should take a clear position on DSM in the Pacific. That position does not need to be explicitly for or against DSM but should include investing in Pacific nations’ capacity to regulate seabed mining and championing a Pacific-led governance framework via the Pacific Islands Forum.

Executive summary

The emergence of a commercial deep-sea mining (DSM) industry is being driven by US–China competition over the critical minerals required for batteries, weapons systems, and clean energy infrastructure. Its focus is the Pacific Ocean, where polymetallic nodules — potato-sized rocks containing cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel — lie in vast quantities on the seafloor. Some Pacific Island nations have already begun engaging with Washington, Beijing, and various mining companies in anticipation of significant financial returns, while a growing moratorium coalition has called for a halt to DSM activities, citing irreversible harm to the ocean on which Pacific food security, culture, and livelihoods depend. The division threatens the collective voice that has historically given Pacific states influence beyond their size, with direct consequences for regional stability.

No binding international governance framework for commercial DSM in the international seabed beyond national jurisdiction currently exists. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) — the multilateral body established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to govern DSM activities — has been negotiating a mining code since 2014 without resolving fundamental questions on environmental standards, liability, or benefit-sharing. This has left Pacific states who engage in DSM negotiations without internationally agreed protections and dependent on individual agreements drafted by companies seeking to mine their ocean floor. The United States has deepened that governance gap by moving to issue commercial licences under domestic statute, outside the ISA system entirely, raising the prospect of commercial operations beginning before any internationally agreed rules are in place.

Australia is well placed to change these conditions as a member of both the Pacific Islands Forum and the ISA, and a longstanding ally of the United States without any present commercial interest in DSM. Australia also has a vested interest in preserving Pacific unity on this matter, yet no sitting minister has articulated a public position on DSM in the Pacific — a silence Canberra must now break. Australia should invest in Pacific seabed regulatory capacity and champion a Pacific-led regional governance framework via the Pacific Islands Forum, taking neither a pro- nor anti-mining stance but establishing conditions that empower Pacific decision-makers and promote unity in the region.

Introduction

The existential pressure of climate change bearing down on the Pacific has, until recently, had the effect of drawing its nations together. The threat of rising seas, intensifying storms, and erosion of the land and reefs on which Pacific life depends, forged a collective political voice that gave some of the world’s smallest states an influence in global forums disproportionate to their size.^* Shared vulnerability became part of the foundation of a regional identity: the Blue Pacific.^*

Deep-sea mining (DSM) is a different kind of pressure. It does not threaten every Pacific nation equally, and it does not invite a unified response. Instead, it confronts Pacific nations with a set of competing calculations — between collective identity and individual economic interests, between an environmental inheritance too valuable to risk and a financial lifeline too significant to decline. The tension has created a fault line in Pacific unity.

The DSM industry is driven by a contest between the world’s two largest economies over the minerals that modern batteries, weapons systems, and power grids require. The Pacific seabed holds some of these resources — specifically cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel in the form of polymetallic nodules nodules (Figure 1) — in extraordinary concentration. The nodules, scattered across the abyssal plains of the eastern Pacific, are now the object of a great power competition that places Pacific nations at the centre of the rapidly developing DSM industry. For states with narrow revenue bases and limited paths to large-scale capital injections, the lure is powerful: companies seeking sponsorship for DSM projects forecast returns to Pacific economies could, in some cases, exceed a nation’s annual GDP — projections that sit at odds with independent assessments of the industry’s viability.^*

The ocean that has long united Pacific Island nations is now dividing them, not because those countries disagree about its value, but because they disagree about what should be done with what lies beneath it. Commercial DSM is imminent and may begin as early as 2027,^* yet the rules to govern it beyond national jurisdictions (referred to as “the Area”) remain unwritten after more than a decade of negotiations.^* Australia, the Pacific’s largest development partner, has mostly abstained from the DSM debate. That abstention has a cost — to Pacific unity, to the credibility of Australia’s regional commitments, and to the governance of an ocean on which Australia and Pacific Island nations depend.

Critical minerals, great powers, and the Pacific

The current scramble to mine the deep ocean is, at its core, a story about the contest between the United States and China over the raw materials that power modern economies and militaries. The contest sharpened on 24 April 2025, when US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14285, titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources”, directing federal agencies to fast-track seabed mining permits, with the stated purpose of securing “reliable supplies of critical minerals independent of foreign adversary control”.^* Critical minerals — a political classification designated by governments and which changes over time — are metals and non-metallic substances deemed essential to a country’s national security, economic stability, and advanced manufacturing.

Typically, supply chains are heavily concentrated and alternatives are limited.^* Australia lists 31 such materials.^* The United States lists 60.^* The lists overlap but are not identical. Of note is that the batteries, wind turbines, power grids, and weapons systems on which the clean energy transition and modern defence forces depend cannot be built without a small group of metals that only China can currently supply. China classifies these differently again — as “strategic minerals” — a category that reflects its market dominance and the leverage this affords Beijing. China recently updated its list to include 36 minerals.^* No equivalent classification exists at the country or regional level across the Pacific Islands.

China’s position in critical mineral supply chains is one of dominance at both the extraction and processing stages. Analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2025 found that China controls the largest share of refining capacity for 19 of the 20 minerals it tracks, with an average market share of around 70 per cent.^* China’s control of the industry extends beyond its borders. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 74 per cent of the world’s mined cobalt, but 80 per cent of global cobalt is processed through Chinese facilities.^* Indonesia supplies around two-thirds of the world’s mined nickel,^* yet most of that production capacity is Chinese-financed. From mine to refined product, Beijing has built a position of structural advantage that leaves rivals dependent on Chinese supply chains for materials their economies and defence systems cannot function without.

That dependency is set to deepen as demand grows. Building the wind, solar, and battery storage capacity needed to keep global warming below two degrees will require about three billion tonnes of minerals and metals, according to a World Bank assessment.^* The shift from fossil fuels to clean energy is not a shift away from resource intensity — it is a shift towards a different and more concentrated set of resources. Building an electric car draws on roughly six times the mineral inputs of a comparable petrol vehicle.^* Replacing a gas-fired power station with onshore wind requires around nine times the mineral resources per unit of generating capacity.^* Under current government policies, the IEA projects that demand for lithium will grow threefold by 2040, nickel by 65 per cent, and cobalt by 30 per cent.^*

These projections carry some uncertainty. The IEA projects demand shortfalls for cobalt, copper, and manganese by 2035^* — but the scale of that gap may narrow. Battery chemistry is shifting in ways that reduce demand for some of the minerals most associated with DSM (cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel). Lithium iron phosphate batteries, which contain no cobalt or nickel, represented less than 10 per cent of the global electric vehicle market in 2020 but nearly half by 2024.^* Increasing battery efficiency means less raw material is needed per unit of energy storage, and a more circular economy, in which minerals are recovered and reused, adds a further counterweight to primary supply requirements.

A weakening civilian clean energy case for DSM would shift the driving force behind it more explicitly to the military. The surge in demand for critical minerals from defence industries — for everything from missile guidance systems to naval vessels — is additional to civilian demand, and largely unquantified.

For the United States, dependence on China for materials essential to electric vehicles, energy infrastructure, and advanced weapons systems is more than an economic vulnerability — it is a threat to national security. A disruption of critical mineral supply, deliberate or otherwise, would reverberate across defence procurement, the automotive industry, and the electricity grid simultaneously. The options for reducing that exposure via terrestrial supply alone are limited: the geology of critical mineral deposits is fixed, the infrastructure advantage China has built over decades cannot be replicated quickly, and the commercial partnerships Beijing has cultivated across the supply chain run deep.

President Trump’s April 2025 executive order revealed a key element of US strategy to escape China’s chokehold on critical minerals: mining the deep sea. The order instructed the departments of Defence and Energy to assess whether seabed-derived minerals could be stored in the national strategic reserve or secured through long-term government purchase agreements.^* By establishing a DSM industry, the United States is seeking both to secure its own China-free supply of the minerals associated with DSM, and to prevent China from establishing dominance over seabed mineral extraction as it has on land. Critically, the ambition extends beyond extraction. The recently signed United States–Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths is explicitly directed at building refining and processing capacity independent of China.^*

The seabed of the Pacific Ocean is where the prospective DSM industry is focused. Scattered across the abyssal plains of the eastern Pacific, at depths between 3,500 and 6,500 metres, lie polymetallic nodules — rough, potato-sized mineral formations that accumulate on the seafloor over millions of years.^* The highest concentration of deposits is found in the Clarion–Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a region of the international seabed beyond any state’s national jurisdiction, stretching between Hawaii and Mexico and wider than the continental United States (Figure 2).^* Conservative estimates put the total weight of nodules in the CCZ at 21.1 billion dry metric tonnes, containing approximately 270 million tonnes of nickel, 234 million tonnes of copper, 46 million tonnes of cobalt, and six billion tonnes of manganese. The first three are central to battery technology and electrification infrastructure; the last is critical for steel production.^* The CCZ’s cobalt content alone is three to five times known terrestrial reserves worldwide.^* However, these estimates do not reflect nodule composition variability across the CCZ, with the actual recoverable quantities of each mineral remaining uncertain.^*

For the Pacific Island nations caught in the middle of this great power battle for critical mineral supremacy, the economic proposition is difficult to refuse. In return for sponsoring mining companies active in the CCZ, Pacific nations are being promised significant revenue. For example, the revised sponsorship agreement Naoero signed with The Metals Company (TMC), the firm at the forefront of Pacific DSM operations, provides for payments of between US$265 million and US$515 million over the life of the arrangement^* — between 1.6 and 3.2 times the country’s entire annual economic output.^* For small island states with limited paths to expand their economies, the potential of such significant financial stimulus has proven seductive — Naoero, Tonga, Kiribati, and Cook Islands have each assumed the role of sponsor, though to date just for exploratory activities.^*

However, commercial DSM in the Pacific is on the horizon. The Metals Company’s chief executive, Gerard Barron, has publicly committed the company to beginning production in the fourth quarter of 2027 — a target reiterated across the company’s pre-feasibility study,^* quarterly investor communications,^* and most recent annual filing.^* President Trump’s April 2025 imperative has accelerated this race to the seafloor. The question is no longer whether DSM will happen in the Pacific but under what rules, at whose direction, and at whose expense.

Into the deep

Although no extractive DSM operation has ever run to completion, there are three types of seabed mineral deposit that are of commercial interest:

1. Seafloor massive sulphides, which form at hydrothermal vents and are rich in copper, gold, and zinc.
2. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, which accumulate on seamounts.
3. Polymetallic nodules — the rough, potato-sized formations of mineral oxides scattered across abyssal plains.^*

All three are targeted by ISA exploration contracts, but polymetallic nodule mining is the most commercially advanced, the most extensively studied, and the focus of operations proposed for Pacific waters in the near future.

Nodule extraction from the seafloor is conceptually simple, though mechanically challenging given the enormous pressure of the deep sea. A large combine harvester-like collector vehicle — up to 15 metres wide — drives across the seafloor at depths between 3,500 and 6,500 metres, vacuuming up nodules and the surface layer of sediment in which they sit. The collected material is then pumped up to a surface production vessel via a pipe. Onboard, water and sediment are separated from the nodules, the ore is transferred to a transport vessel for shipment to a land-based refinery, and the separated water and fine sediment discharged back into the ocean in the midwater column (1,200 to 2,000 metres) (Figure 3).^* Significant concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of almost every step in this process.

The mining industry frames the environmental risks as manageable. The Metals Company has argued that its environmental assessment of one claim area — NORI-D, sponsored by Naoero — is the most extensive ever undertaken for a mining project, drawing on a decade of survey expeditions, 76,000 biological records, and more than 69,000 geochemical data points.^* However, the scientific community is not convinced the impacts of DSM can be managed. Independent scientists warn that significant and irreversible harm is probable.^*

Scientists estimate that the abyssal plains of the CCZ harbour thousands of animal species, though fewer than 450 have been formally described.^* In the deep sea of the CCZ, an estimated 90 per cent of species taxonomy is undescribed.^* Polymetallic nodules are the only hard substrate on the otherwise sediment-covered abyssal plains, forming the sole anchor point for the sponges, corals, worms, and crustacea that are critical to the ecosystem.^* Nodule mining has the potential to cause cascading biodiversity losses beyond nodule-based creatures. The seafloor also recovers at such a slow rate that any damage would be effectively permanent. In 2023, researchers revisited the site of a 1979 DSM experiment in the CCZ and found the tracks made by the mining vehicle were still visible on the seafloor.^* Megafauna density in the disturbed area was still reduced compared to the surrounding seafloor.^* The nodules themselves form over millions of years and will not regenerate on human timescales.^*

The potential environmental impacts of DSM are not limited to the seafloor. Scientific modelling of commercial-scale midwater discharge predicts that the resulting sediment plume from a single production vessel could permeate between 1,500 and 15,000 cubic kilometres of ocean water each year — a volume that, depending on prevailing currents, may extend far beyond the immediate mining site, carrying sediment and heavy metals into food chains that sustain Pacific fisheries.^* Commercial mining would also introduce continuous industrial noise into an environment that is naturally near silent, and artificial light into an ecosystem adapted to permanent darkness. Additionally, deep-sea sediments store carbon for millions of years when undisturbed; estimates suggest DSM collector vehicles will disturb stored carbon at several orders of magnitude greater than the natural sequestration rate.^* Moreover, the outer surface of polymetallic nodules carries radioactive isotopes at activity levels up to 1,000 times the international safety exemption limits for naturally occurring radioactive materials — a hazard barely acknowledged in DSM governance debates.^*

Much about the impact of DSM on the seafloor habitat, broader ocean, and the global climate remains unknown, but the evidence so far points to potentially irreversible devastation. This risk has justified the ISA’s delays in finalising commercial mining guidelines while it awaits further evidence on DSM’s impacts and how to manage them. But stalling is no longer an option: China is pursuing commercial extraction through the ISA’s own multilateral channels, while the United States seeks to bypass the ISA altogether.

The fractured international governance landscape

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which entered into force in 1994, is the foundational legal instrument governing human activity across the world’s oceans.^* Among its most consequential provisions is the designation of the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction, such as the CCZ, as the “common heritage of mankind”.^* Under this principle, the mineral resources of the deep seabed belong to humanity collectively; no state may claim sovereignty over them. Any exploitation must be conducted for the benefit of all nations, with particular provision for developing states that lack the capital or technology to access the resources directly.

Embedded within the UNCLOS framework is a “reserved areas” mechanism designed to prevent wealthy states and corporations from monopolising seabed resources. Whenever an applicant submits a plan of work for an exploration area, they are required to designate an equivalent area that will only be accessible to developing nations or “The Enterprise” — UNCLOS’s intended commercial arm.^* These “reserved areas” are designed to protect and facilitate Pacific Island nations’ existing rights of access, as UNCLOS signatories, to some of the most commercially significant blocks in the CCZ.

To give institutional form to the “common heritage of mankind” principle, UNCLOS established the International Seabed Authority (ISA) — a UN body now with 172 members (171 states and the European Union) tasked with regulating all mineral activity beyond national jurisdiction.^* The ISA issues exploration contracts, collects and distributes royalties, and is mandated to develop a deep-sea mining code — the binding framework that must be in place before any DSM can legally proceed. The lack of an ISA-sanctioned code has historically been a roadblock preventing commencement of commercial DSM.

The ISA began work on the code in 2014 and is yet to finish.^* After more than a decade of talks, fundamental questions remain unresolved: how environmental harm is defined and assessed; what royalty regimes and liability frameworks apply; and how compliance is enforced. There is a clear tension between mounting commercial pressure for a finished DSM code, and the complex environmental, legal, and governance questions that remain. The ISA’s secretary-general, Leticia Carvalho, has pushed for adoption of a finalised code by the end of 2026^* — a timeline observers describe as “highly unlikely”.^* Pressure has been building since 2021 when Naoero, frustrated by the already drawn-out process of constructing the mining code, invoked a UNCLOS provision known as the “two-year rule”.^* This provision formally required the ISA to consider exploitation applications even without a formal mining code if one did not exist within two years. The deadline came and went in July 2023, though no plan of work application was ever filed and a substantive resolution of how the two-year rule would be applied was deferred.^*

The perpetual delays reflect ideological fracture among member states. As of writing, more than 40 states support either a ban, moratorium, or precautionary pause on DSM, a coalition that has grown steadily since 2021 and includes France, Germany, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and a significant bloc of Pacific Island nations.^* Those pressing for commercial extraction — led by China and Russia, with pressure from sponsored contractors — are equally determined. Notably, Australia sits in neither camp, appearing satisfied to be passive in the debate while maintaining a terrestrial focus for its mining industry.

The United States also does not fit in either camp, but for a different reason. It never ratified UNCLOS and so sits at the ISA only as an observer — no vote and no ability to hold exploration contracts under the multilateral system. Washington participated in the final UNCLOS negotiations but, in July 1982, announced it would not sign the Convention. Its principal objections were: mandatory transfer of private technology; a decision-making structure that the US administration considered did not fairly reflect the financial contributions and interests of major industrialised states; treaty amendments taking effect without US approval; and no guaranteed access for qualified deep-sea miners.^* President Trump’s April 2025 executive order relies on older domestic law: the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.^* President Carter had signed the Act as an interim measure, pending a law-of-the-sea treaty that the United States would ultimately reject. This statute authorises the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA; a US federal agency) to issue seabed mining licences under US law for areas of the international seabed.^* In contrast to the ISA, the NOAA may grant both exploration and commercial licences.^* As of July 2026, the NOAA had received five applications,^* including one from The Metals Company, which NOAA deemed “substantially compliant” — the initial gatekeeping stage before full regulatory review.^*

In response to President Trump’s executive order, the ISA secretary-general released a statement highlighting the disconnect between the order and UNCLOS — in particular, its direct challenge to the principle that the seabed beyond national jurisdiction is the “common heritage of humankind”.^* Member states broadly reaffirmed the ISA’s exclusive jurisdiction — a legal objection that had little practical effect as the United States forged on unilaterally, and mining companies continued to seek licences via both tracks.

The consequences of the ISA’s eroding authority are acute for Pacific Island sponsoring states. Naoero and Tonga in particular now find themselves caught between two competing legal regimes — both hold sponsorship agreements with TMC, which has simultaneously pursued US domestic permits. In May 2026, TMC subsidiaries sponsored by Naoero^* and Tonga^* filed parallel cases against the ISA in the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). They allege the ISA denied them due process and non-discrimination during a compliance inquiry prompted by TMC’s pursuit of approval through the US route. These are the first proceedings brought directly by private contractors against the ISA, and their resolution will have ramifications for the institution’s credibility as the controlling force over DSM in “the Area”. 

Without a completed mining code, Pacific Island nations have no internationally agreed environmental standards to invoke, no established liability regime to rely upon, and no binding benefit-sharing framework beyond what their individual sponsorship agreements provide. Moreover, those agreements were drafted by the mining companies themselves, structured to limit sponsoring states’ future regulatory flexibility, and enforceable through international commercial arbitration outside Pacific jurisdictions.^* The ISA’s protracted negotiations over the mining code initially delayed commercial DSM, but have now opened a governance gap that is accelerating the timeline and exposing Pacific Island nations to exploitation.

A Pacific divided

The Blue Pacific identity was formally endorsed by Pacific Islands Forum leaders at their 2017 meeting in Samoa as the catalyst for deeper Pacific regionalism. This identity characterises Pacific nations not as small island states but as large ocean states, with Pacific peoples bound together by their shared relationship with the sea.^* The following year, the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security built on that foundation, with Pacific leaders stating: “we affirm our stewardship of the Blue Pacific and aspire to strengthen and enhance our capacity to pursue our collective security interests given our responsibility to sustain our Pacific peoples and our resources”.^* That unified identity has further strengthened the capacity of some of the world’s smallest and most economically marginal nations to exert outsized influence in global forums on climate change, ocean governance, and environmental conservation. It has functioned as a political multiplier — pooling the diplomatic weight of states that, individually, would struggle to be heard.

DSM threatens this Pacific unity and has already caused division in the Pacific Islands Forum (Figure 4).^* As of mid-2026, the formal DSM moratorium coalition includes Palau, Fiji, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands,^* with Solomon Islands announcing a domestic moratorium, but yet to formally join the international coalition.^* US territories Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands have jointly called for a moratorium on US DSM activities in their region.^* Against them sit Naoero, Tonga, and Cook Islands — all current ISA sponsoring states, all having entered into exploration-phase arrangements with mining companies in anticipation of future commercial production, and all framing DSM as an economic necessity.^* Kiribati, whose ISA contract with TMC was terminated at the end of 2024, is now exploring an alternative arrangement with Beijing.^*

The pro-mining states have articulated their position plainly. Naoero President David Adeang, during his address to the UN General Assembly in September 2024, framed DSM as essential to decarbonising the planet, stating “[DSM] is not just an economic opportunity; it is an environmental imperative”.^* Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has described the nodules on his country’s seabed as “golden apples” with the potential to transform Cook Islands’ economy.^* These positions are not reckless; they reflect the fiscal reality of nations with narrow revenue bases, high vulnerability to climate shocks, and limited paths to the kind of capital injection being promised by DSM proponents.

Anti-mining states are equally direct. French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson declared DSM would only proceed “over my dead body”.^* Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr has stated “the stakes are too high to get it [DSM] wrong”, warning “once destroyed, it [the ocean] may never recover”.^* In June 2026, Vanuatu launched a Global Scientific Assessment of Deep-Sea Ecosystems in partnership with the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative — a direct rebuttal of the pro-mining argument that opposition to DSM is scientifically uninformed, and an attempt to build the evidentiary foundation that moratorium advocates argue must precede any commercial activity.^*

President Whipps framed the issue in terms of intergenerational obligation to the ocean.^* For these nations — whose international standing rests largely on their role as ocean stewards — endorsing DSM would represent an existential contradiction: facilitating potentially irreversible damage to the very ocean on which their identity, food security, and international voice depend. Across the region, resistance is also grounded in something the governance debate rarely accommodates: the Pacific theological and cosmological tradition that treats the ocean not as a resource to be managed but as a morally inhabited world to which Pacific peoples are already indebted.^*

Division is not only between governments, but also present domestically within pro-mining states. In Tonga, the Civil Society Forum’s director has proposed petitioning King Tupou VI directly after the government repeatedly declined to engage with community concerns.^* Legal analysis of Tonga’s sponsorship agreement with Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML; a subsidiary of TMC) makes clear that it was structured to limit the government’s future regulatory flexibility, meaning Tonga’s communities have no reliable domestic mechanism through which to contest DSM.^* In Cook Islands, the civil society organisation Te Ipukarea Society has raised concerns that government-organised consultation events have been promotional rather than participatory.^*

There is also a serious question about whether pro-mining states are receiving the financial reward they were promised — or ever will. Under UNCLOS, royalties from seabed exploitation flow to the ISA first, not to sponsoring states directly. The ISA’s benefit-sharing rules for developing states have not been finalised. A proposed draft payment regime under negotiation sits at 2 per cent of the value of production for the first four years, rising to 6 per cent thereafter. Because the royalty is calculated on revenue, rather than profit, the ISA’s share of mining returns declines as a proportion of profits the more profitable the operation becomes — an arrangement that peer-reviewed analysis describes as “regressive”, favouring mining companies over the international community.^* Sponsoring states receive income only through bilateral sponsorship-agreement payments and domestic corporate income tax, a dynamic that has been criticised as promoting a “race to the bottom” on corporate tax rates among competing sponsor states.^* Modelling puts corporate income tax returns to sponsoring states at approximately US$6.25 million per year in optimistic scenarios, with royalties of between US$42,000 and US$1.1 million per year — figures described as “insignificant for all but the smallest economies”.^* These figures stand in contrast to the projections issued by mining companies themselves — between US$265 million and US$515 million over the life of the arrangement between TMC and Naoero.^* The financial calculus is further complicated by demand uncertainty — a shift in battery chemistry or a slowdown in mineral prices could erode the economic upside for sponsoring states, while any environmental damage from mining operations would be effectively permanent regardless of the ultimate economic viability of the industry.

The Pacific has seen promises of financial gain fall through in this sector before. Under UNCLOS, coastal states may license seabed mining within their own exclusive economic zones, without reference to the ISA.^* The Solwara 1 project in Papua New Guinea (PNG) — the holder of the world’s first domestic seabed mining licence, granted by the PNG government in 2011 — ended with the company bankrupt, no ore ever produced, and the PNG government having lost the approximately US$120 million it had committed without completed feasibility studies or independent treasury advice.^* The gap between promise and practice is a structural feature of arrangements designed to secure sponsorship, rather than share value.

The absence of subsequent significant domestic DSM projects globally since Solwara 1 may indicate technological and economic feasibility challenges that commercial DSM has yet to overcome — obstacles that the lack of an ISA mining code cannot explain, since domestic projects do not depend on that code. However, in the Pacific, this landscape is changing. In July 2026, NOAA dispatched a research vessel to map Cook Islands’ national waters under Executive Order 14285,^* while the new US Ambassador to New Zealand identified Cook Islands, and its cobalt, as his top diplomatic priority.^*

The Pacific has already demonstrated that collective resource governance produces fundamentally different outcomes than individual negotiation. The nine members (eight Pacific states and the New Zealand territory of Tokelau) of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA)^* pooled their control over roughly half the global skipjack tuna supply^* and used it to rewrite the terms of access for distant-water fishing fleets. Annual returns to member states now stand at more than US$500 million — in 2010, they were US$60 million.^* Collective bargaining generated leverage that allowed Pacific states to negotiate a much more favourable deal than was possible when each state pursued its own. A comparable framework for seabed minerals could, in principle, give Pacific states power to dictate how DSM is carried out in their waters.^* In February 2025, the Pacific Islands Forum took a tentative step towards such a model, convening the first Deep Sea Minerals High-Level Talanoa in Suva.^* The meeting, which was undertaken in a closed format, led to in-principle agreement among ministers to strengthen science, data, and traditional knowledge as the foundation for DSM governance. The meeting summary was endorsed by Pacific Islands Forum leaders in September 2025^* but does not represent any binding commitments.

Without a coordinated regional response, the likely near-term trajectory is continued fragmentation — a pattern of bilateral arrangements between individual Pacific states and the great powers, each negotiated separately, each locking in terms that reflect the asymmetry between small island economies and the world’s most powerful governments. The Blue Pacific identity was built on the ocean as a shared inheritance; DSM is turning it into a contested asset.

Australia’s missing voice

No sitting Australian prime minister, foreign minister, or Pacific Islands minister has articulated a public position on deep-sea mining governance in the Pacific. The closest any cabinet-level voice has come is Resources Minister Madeleine King, who stated in September 2025 that there is “not as much research as one would hope”, also noting the lack of internationally agreed regulations.^* Minister King did not endorse a moratorium, a precautionary pause, or any specific governance framework. Former Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s 2023 comments remain the de facto federal position: Australia is “concerned about the broad and unknown environmental impacts of deep-sea mining” and “does not believe deep-sea mining should take place unless strong environmental regulations are in place”.^* It is a position with an inherent tension: the environmental regulations Australia says must precede DSM do not exist, the ISA’s mining code remains unfinished, yet commercial operations appear imminent. A commitment to standards that have not been written as a condition for activity that is about to begin is less of a policy, and more of an abstention. But Australia cannot afford to abstain from this debate.

Australia’s passivity has defensible logic. Australia has no DSM operation of its own and no direct commercial interest in whether Pacific nations mine their seabeds. Australia’s Critical Mineral Strategy 2023–2030 is focused on terrestrial extraction and onshore processing — there is no mention of DSM, which is fitting as there is no domestic DSM sector for Australia to regulate or promote.^* Additionally, Pacific nations have consistently asserted their right to make their own resource decisions; an Australian intervention would risk being perceived as an affront to sovereignty, carrying real diplomatic cost.^* Australia’s extensive mining history compounds this sensitivity. Furthermore, Australia has deepened its critical minerals partnership with Washington via the United States–Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, signed in October 2025.^* This framework committed both governments to a combined US$2 billion initial investment to unlock a US$8.5 billion pipeline of critical mineral projects,^* and gave the Albanese government reason to avoid a public position on DSM that would complicate that relationship.

Australia’s posture is explicable but no longer justified. The cost of continued inaction now exceeds the cost of engagement, for compounding reasons.

First, the Pacific Ocean is the foundation of the economic and social life that Australia’s development partnerships are designed to sustain. Australia is by far the largest provider of development assistance to the Pacific, accounting for 37 per cent of all development finance to the region in 2024, totalling US$1.5 billion.^* That investment supports food security, climate resilience, health systems, and economic stability across the region. The Pacific tuna industry is worth approximately US$21 billion per annum,^* and no region in the world is more dependent on fisheries — a source of nutrition, employment, and government revenue for Pacific communities with few alternative income sources.^* Several elements of the DSM process impact tuna: sediment plumes from mining operations may contaminate water where tuna feed and migrate; heavy metals carried in the de-watering discharge may end up in tuna food chains; noise and light pollution may disrupt spawning behaviour in ecosystems that Pacific fisheries depend on.^* Crucially, the oceanic impacts of DSM will not discriminate between pro-mining and anti-mining nations — they will be regional. The Pacific Ocean is fundamental to Australia’s development investment in the region. Neutrality on an industry that may cause enduring damage to that ocean is not a tenable position.

Second, Australia’s strategic ambiguity compounds a governance gap that has been created by the ISA’s ongoing delay in finalising the deep-sea mining code. It is this gap that the US’s unilateral approach is seeking to fill, and it is a gap that actively disadvantages Pacific Island nations. With no binding environmental standards, no liability framework, and no enforcement mechanism, Pacific nations entering DSM arrangements have no internationally agreed floor of protection. Their only governance comes from individual sponsorship agreements — and these are drafted by the very companies seeking to mine. In some cases, they have been written to limit regulatory flexibility and to route disputes through offshore commercial arbitration, beyond the reach of Pacific jurisdictions.^* A weakened ISA, paradoxically, also benefits China.^* Beijing holds more ISA exploration contracts than any other state,^* has been the ISA’s largest financial contributor,^* and has built its international seabed strategy through multilateral channels that give it legitimacy. Yet operating through the ISA also binds China to the Authority’s rules. Erosion of the Authority’s power lets Beijing retain that hard-won legitimacy while escaping the constraints on its activities in the Area.

Additionally, Australia has a material security interest in what happens on the Pacific seabed. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in May 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles warned that the seabed is becoming a strategic domain, noting that nearly all of Australia’s international internet traffic flows through 15 subsea cables.^* Pacific Island nations are even more exposed, typically served by a single line. The risk of deliberate interference with subsea cable infrastructure is viewed as growing.^* Between 2020 and 2025, dozens of Chinese civilian research vessels conducted systematic seabed surveys across the Pacific and Indian oceans in patterns that naval experts confirm serve military as well as scientific purposes — generating data on underwater terrain and acoustic conditions that inform submarine operations.^* Former chief of Australia’s submarine force, Peter Scott, described the surveys as “potentially invaluable in preparation of the battlespace”.^* Critically, much of this survey work coincided with DSM exploration activities, which provide the institutional legitimacy and legal pretext for a sustained Chinese maritime presence in Pacific waters — tracking data from eight Chinese DSM exploration vessels between 2021 and 2026 found they spent just 6 per cent of their time in open water in or near areas reserved for Chinese DSM exploration.^* Australia’s abstention from the DSM debate inadvertently clears the way for a permanent Chinese maritime presence in the Pacific.

Finally, and most fundamentally, Pacific unity is the foundation of the stable neighbourhood Australia’s own security depends upon. For decades, that unity has given the Pacific a collective voice far greater than any individual state could command alone.^* It has also provided Australia with a largely like-minded, forum-based regional architecture through which it exercises influence and projects stability. A Pacific divided along DSM lines is a Pacific more vulnerable to external influence, more susceptible to bilateral arrangements that lock individual nations into asymmetric dependencies, and less capable of the collective action that has historically amplified Pacific agency. Division in the Pacific will lead to a less stable, less secure region.

“We need loud voices; we need strong partners”

A credible Australian position does not require opposing DSM or overriding the sovereign decisions of Pacific nations. It requires ensuring the conditions exist under which those decisions can be made freely, with adequate information, and with governance structures that protect the nations most exposed to the consequences.

In July 2026, Australia took a solid first step, releasing a joint statement with New Zealand and Canada at the ISA’s 31st session that reaffirmed support for UNCLOS, including the ISA’s exclusive mandate to regulate deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction.^* This may be read as a rebuke of Washington’s unilateral approach at a moment when the US–Australia critical minerals partnership is a strategic priority. But the ask is not that the United States abandon its domestic permitting track. It is that any commercial DSM operations, wherever licensed, meet internationally agreed environmental and governance standards. Reaffirming commitment to UNCLOS allows Australia to credibly position itself as a rules-based Pacific partner — a reputation that is important to its standing in the region. As Washington’s closest Pacific partner, Canberra may also raise privately that the unilateral track risks negatively impacting Pacific perceptions of the United States in the long term.

Australia should now invest directly in the regulatory infrastructure Pacific nations need to evaluate and govern DSM activity on their own terms. The gap between legal frameworks and functional oversight currently creates an opportunity for companies pursuing predatory DSM arrangements to exploit Pacific nations. Only five Pacific nations have a seabed regulatory authority, with only two, Cook Islands and Naoero, truly operational.^* Elsewhere, seabed minerals legislation exists without the institutions, trained personnel, or funding needed to enforce it — and in some cases, there is no framework at all.^* Closing this gap in Pacific seabed regulatory capacity should be a priority for Australia. This investment should be channelled through Pacific-owned regional bodies rather than bilateral programs serving Australian commercial or strategic interests, preserving the local ownership on which the framework’s legitimacy depends. Regulatory capacity that helps Pacific nations evaluate, negotiate, and enforce DSM arrangements on their own terms serves both pro-mining and moratorium states equally.

Additionally, Australia should use its position within the Pacific Islands Forum to champion a Pacific-led regional governance framework for DSM. This framework, which should include environmental standards, revenue terms, transparency obligations, and technology access information, can form the basis of a future treaty committing PIF members to a standard position from which individual states negotiate DSM deals in their own waters, or as ISA sponsoring states.^* The alternative is a region governed by the accumulation of individual bilateral deals struck between small island economies and the world’s most powerful governments.

These actions do not require Australia to exert authority or influence over Pacific nations. They require Australia to ensure that when DSM decisions are made, they are made with adequate information, within governance structures that function, and without the coercive asymmetry that characterises the bilateral deals currently being struck. Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr made the ask plainly: “We need loud voices, we need strong partners and that’s why Australia’s voice is so critical. As a large developed nation, I would encourage the Australian government to take a position.”^*

Australia’s next opportunity to use its voice will be at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau in September 2026, followed by the pre-COP31 event that will take place across Fiji and Tuvalu.^* Avoiding a position can no longer be viewed as a sign of respect for Pacific sovereignty — abstention is a decision to leave Pacific nations exposed to great power rivalry, and the erosion of the unity that has long been their greatest strength.

Conclusion

Deep-sea mining will not wait for the Pacific to reach consensus, for the ISA to finalise its mining code, or for Australia to decide whether the issue warrants a position. Commercial operations are targeted for 2027.^* The governance architecture that should precede them does not exist.^* The great power contest that is driving the industry forward will not slow to accommodate the concerns of small island states. These are the conditions under which Pacific nations are being asked to make decisions with permanent consequences.

The fracture running through the Pacific on DSM is not a failure of Pacific solidarity — it is a predictable consequence of asking nations to treat a contested resource question as though it were a shared environmental one. For pro-mining nations, the financial promise is seductive. For the anti-mining bloc, the environmental and cultural case for resistance is no less compelling. The problem is not that Pacific nations disagree; it is that they are being forced to negotiate individually against parties with vastly more resources, information, and legal capacity — and that the international framework designed to protect them has stalled.

Australia has the standing, the relationships, and the institutional presence to change those conditions. It is the Pacific’s largest development partner,^* a founding UNCLOS party,^* and a member of the Pacific Islands Forum. The ask — invest in Pacific regulatory capacity and champion a regional governance framework via the Forum — does not require Australia to take sides on whether DSM should proceed. It requires Australia to insist that any operations that proceed abide by rules that protect the nations most exposed to the consequences. In doing so, Australia would help safeguard the conditions in which Pacific solidarity, and the regional stability it underpins, can endure.

Acknowledgements

This research was produced as part of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Program, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Thank you to two anonymous reviewers and Lowy Institute colleagues Oliver Nobetau, Serena Sasingian, Sarah Thompson, and Robert Walker for helpful comments during drafting. Thanks to Clare Caldwell and Mihai Sora for editorial support throughout, and to Ian Bruce for creating the figures.