Three ISA Contracts, 366 Million Tonnes of Nodules, and the Case Against Mining Them

The news

Writing in The Hindu, marine biologist P. Ragavan argues that the central question at India’s deep-sea frontier is not how deep the country can go or how much it can mine, but whether everything that can be technologically exploited should necessarily be exploited. The article sets out the scale of the existing footprint. India holds three International Seabed Authority exploration contracts covering approximately 95,000 square kilometres across the Central Indian Ocean Basin, the Central Indian Ridge and the Carlsberg Ridge, all within the international seabed area. Exploration under these contracts has identified an estimated 366 million tonnes of polymetallic nodules containing nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese, alongside extensive environmental and biodiversity studies. Under the Deep Ocean Mission, India is developing deep-sea mining technology and underwater robotics and building the MATSYA-6000 human submersible, while the National Institute of Ocean Technology has tested a mining machine at a depth of about 5,270 metres. Biodiversity surveys across 19 seamounts have studied around 1,300 deep-sea organisms, of which nearly 23 species have been reported as new to science. Ragavan treats these achievements as imposing a responsibility rather than conferring a licence, and warns against the assumption that if something can be exploited it should be. He accepts that deep-sea minerals may have legitimate strategic importance for India’s renewable-energy, electric-mobility and advanced-manufacturing ambitions, but insists that strategic importance cannot automatically become ecological permission and that necessity must be demonstrated, not presumed: before extraction India should ask whether the minerals are genuinely necessary at the proposed scale, whether alternatives exist, and whether demand can be reduced through recycling, efficiency, substitution and a circular economy. Exploration, he writes, can advance knowledge, biodiversity assessment, environmental baselines and technology without leading to exploitation, whereas mining would physically disturb the seabed, so adaptive management alone cannot guarantee ecological protection. Because India’s ISA activities remain at the exploration stage, he argues this is the right time to establish a high ecological threshold, replacing the question “How can we mine with minimum damage?” with “Do we need to mine at all?” He locates the argument within Mission LiFE, Nature-based Solutions, the Sustainable Development Goals and the circular economy, and urges India to become a global leader not only in deep-sea technology but in deep-sea ecological governance.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The seabed beyond national jurisdiction belongs to nobody, which is why it needed an authority. Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982 defines “the Area” as the seabed and ocean floor and its subsoil beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, and declares the Area and its resources the common heritage of mankind. No State may claim or exercise sovereignty over any part of it, and no State or person may appropriate any part of it. Activities in the Area are to be carried out for the benefit of mankind as a whole, with particular consideration for the interests of developing States. This is why an Indian contract in the Central Indian Ocean Basin is held from an international body and not asserted as a national right.
2. The ISA is both the licensor and the environmental regulator of the same activity. The International Seabed Authority was established under UNCLOS together with the 1994 Agreement relating to the implementation of Part XI, and is headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica. Its principal organs are the Assembly, the Council and the Secretariat, with the Enterprise as the organ intended to carry out activities in the Area directly. Article 145 obliges the Authority to ensure effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects of activities in the Area. Exploration regulations already exist for polymetallic nodules, polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts; the exploitation regulations, commonly called the Mining Code, have been under negotiation for years and are not yet adopted.
3. A contractor is sponsored by a State, and the sponsoring State carries obligations. Exploration contracts are granted to States Parties or to entities sponsored by a State Party, which is the route through which national agencies and companies reach the Area. In its 2011 advisory opinion the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea held that a sponsoring State owes an obligation of due diligence to ensure the contractor complies, including application of the precautionary approach and environmental impact assessment, rather than an absolute guarantee of result. India’s three contracts therefore make the Indian State, and not only its scientific agencies, answerable for what is done on that seabed.
4. The Deep Ocean Mission is the domestic vehicle, and Samudrayaan is its most visible component. The Deep Ocean Mission is run by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and implemented substantially through the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai. Its components span deep-sea mining technology and a manned submersible, ocean climate change advisory services, deep-sea biodiversity exploration and conservation, deep-ocean survey and exploration, energy and freshwater from the ocean, and an advanced marine station for ocean biology. Samudrayaan is the crewed submersible programme, with MATSYA-6000 designed to carry a three-member crew to a depth of about 6,000 metres. The Mission sits under the broader Blue Economy framework, and its stated purpose covers both resource assessment and ecosystem understanding.

Why UPSC loves this

1. The syllabus wording fits this almost exactly. GS3 carries “conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment” and GS3 also carries “awareness in the fields of IT, space, computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology”. A deep-sea mission that is simultaneously a robotics programme, a biodiversity survey and an extractive proposal sits in both, and GS2 supplies the international-institutions angle through UNCLOS and the ISA.
2. Critical minerals have become a recurring frame. Nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese are the inputs of batteries and electrification, and the examiner has repeatedly asked about import dependence in critical minerals and about strategic autonomy in supply chains. The value of this article is that it supplies the counter-argument to that frame — that demand reduction, recycling and substitution are policy options, not merely aspirations — and answers that carry both sides read better than those that carry one.
3. The commons is a favourite conceptual hook. Antarctica, outer space, the high seas and the deep seabed are the classic global commons, and UPSC has asked about governance of the commons in both Prelims and Mains. “Common heritage of mankind” is the phrase to know, and the deep seabed is the cleanest example of a regime built on it, because appropriation is expressly barred rather than merely discouraged.

Analysis

1. The strongest fact in the article is the one about new species, and it cuts against mining. Surveys of 19 seamounts examined around 1,300 organisms and found nearly 23 reported as new to science. That ratio is the argument. If a modest survey effort in a small part of one ocean basin yields that many previously undescribed organisms, the honest inference is that the baseline against which mining damage would be measured does not yet exist. Environmental impact assessment presupposes a known pre-impact state; in the deep sea, the pre-impact state is still being discovered while the extraction technology is already being tested at 5,270 metres. That inversion of sequence, and not any general sentiment about nature, is what makes the precautionary case here unusually strong.
2. “Adaptive management cannot guarantee protection” is a technical claim, not a rhetorical one. Adaptive management works where an intervention can be scaled back and the system recovers within a policy-relevant timeframe. Abyssal nodule fields accumulate over millions of years and the sediment plume from a mining run settles over a far wider area than the track itself. If recovery times exceed human institutional horizons, the feedback loop that adaptive management depends on never closes — the manager learns the outcome long after the decision can be reversed. The counter-view deserves a hearing: proponents argue that seabed mining displaces terrestrial mining with far heavier human and forest costs, and that argument is not frivolous. But it is an argument about comparative damage, which is exactly the frame Ragavan is refusing.
3. India is well placed to argue for restraint precisely because it is not a laggard. A country with no capability that urges caution is easily dismissed as rationalising its own backwardness. India holds three contracts, has surveyed 95,000 square kilometres, has built a submersible programme and has tested a miner at abyssal depth. That record buys the standing to argue for a high ecological threshold without the argument being read as protectionism or as an attempt to freeze others out. This is the diplomatic point the article implies but does not make: restraint is credible only from the capable.
4. The demand-side argument is the weakest link in practice, and should be stated as such. Recycling, efficiency, substitution and circularity are real levers, but they operate on a stock of metal already in use, and India’s stock of batteries and electrical infrastructure is small and growing fast. Circularity cannot supply a demand curve that is still climbing steeply; it becomes powerful only once deployment matures. An answer that repeats “circular economy” without noticing this timing problem is repeating a slogan. The defensible version is narrower: demand reduction changes the scale and the date at which extraction becomes necessary, which is enough to justify deferring an irreversible decision, and that is all the article needs it to do.
5. The institutional gap is that the Mining Code is being written by the body that issues contracts. The ISA licenses exploration, collects fees from contractors and is simultaneously the guardian of the marine environment under Article 145. Combining promotion and regulation in one institution is a design that Indian administrative experience has repeatedly found unsatisfactory, which is why pollution control boards, sectoral regulators and appellate tribunals were separated out. The absence of an adopted exploitation code is usually described as a delay; it is better read as an unresolved conflict of function, and India’s position on how that conflict should be settled is a more consequential intervention than anything it says about its own contracts.
6. Strategic necessity and ecological permission are genuinely separable, and the article is right to separate them. The claim that critical minerals are needed for electrification is true and the claim that they must therefore come from the seabed is a separate proposition requiring separate proof — about quantity, about alternative sources, about price and about timing. Collapsing the two is the commonest move in resource politics, and it is the move that makes every strategic sector immune to environmental scrutiny. The examinable formulation is Ragavan’s own: necessity must be demonstrated, not presumed.

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