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Raw materials in the deep sea
Photo: HO / AFP
The US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the Canadian company Deep Green and the Belgian company DEME are apparently securing access to valuable raw materials in the deep sea for which developing countries hold the licenses.
This emerges from an analysis by the environmental organization Greenpeace, which is to be published next Wednesday and which is available to SPIEGEL.
According to the report, states such as Nauru, Tonga or the Cook Islands are increasingly being influenced by local subsidiaries or joint ventures between companies.
Sometimes companies would have helped small states apply for research licenses.
For the first time, a representative from Deep Green held talks with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) instead of the government of Nauru.
The ISA is actually supposed to ensure that all states benefit equally from the as yet untapped raw materials.
The expansive practice of some corporations is evidently discussed controversially in the authority.
According to Greenpeace, the ISA has not done anything to prevent it.
Among other things, platinum, gold, silver and cobalt are stored in the deep sea
According to the report, the companies are also urging governments to promote the extraction of raw materials as quickly as possible in international negotiations - although the global environmental rules for deep-sea mining have not yet been negotiated.
Valuable ecosystems are therefore threatened.
The companies emphasize that they attach great importance to environmentally friendly funding.
The international environmental standards are already extremely high.
There could be no question of taking over developing countries.
On the contrary: the companies' technology would enable them to mine raw materials in the first place.
The ISA did not respond to a request for comment.
Platinum, gold, silver, cobalt, manganese, lithium and rare earths are stored in the deep sea.
The technology to recover them is making great strides.
Some of the resources are becoming increasingly important industrially, but can only be extracted in a few countries on the mainland.
The geostrategic importance of deep-sea mining is correspondingly high.
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