The April and May 2018 Chinese successful deep sea explorations in the South China Sea lead to novel future possibilities, including a rising uncertainty in the security and resource sectors for all actors, states and companies alike, involving a complete redrawing of the influence map, of the capabilities needed and relatedly of the strategies and policies to develop and implement.
Tag Archives: seabed
The Deep-Sea Resources Brief
Human societies currently face dwindling resources and rising competition for them in the contemporary “resources order.” Thus, besides and in accordance with other ways to handle this challenge, new types and sources of resources are increasingly valuable and can make a strategic difference for polities, as well as for humanity as a whole. Meanwhile, if we are to ever learn from our worrying present, we must also, continuously, make sure that the extraction and use of those new potential resources will not have any unfavourable impact on the planet and its ecosystem, including this biodiversity to which we belong.* As has now been known since the end of the nineteenth century (Ifremer, les Nodules, 2012), mineral resources lie on the …
