Overview of Korean activities on seabed mineral resources and environmental impact assessments for mining

Abstract

In the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest on the development of seabed mineral resources (such as polymetallic nodules, ferro-manganese crusts, and massive sulfides) due to limited land resources and rapidly increasing industrial demands. Therefore, international seabed authority has been issued more than 18 exploration licenses to the contractors (private companies or nations) for the last 5 years. Currently, Korean government has four exploration licenses: two in the international waters (each one in CCZ and Indian Ridge) and two licenses in the national jurisdiction waters (EEZ) (each one in the EEZ of Fiji and Tonga). At the same time, there are also growing concerns on the environmental impacts by the seabed mining. Thus, the environmental regulations have been getting tightened and strict. All contractors have to conduct Environmental Impact Assessments which are pre-requisite before applying for the exploitation license. We have also been carried out environmental studies including environmental baseline studies in our exploration contracted regions to better manage, mitigate, or/and minimize the mining impact on marine environments. The results of these environmental studies have been published in peer-reviewed journal and most of environmental data obtained from the international waters have been provided to ISA.