Geographies of deep sea mining: A critical review

Commercial deep sea mining (DSM) stands at a threshold as both national and global legal regimes seek to move beyond exploration of the seabed towards its exploitation. As an emerging political issue that takes place in complex geographies that are not always accounted for by science, deep-sea mining demands critical attention. It is against this background that this paper aims to highlight work that foregrounds these different geographies and actors that together shape the politics of DSM. As it emerges as a political reality in the Anthropocene, it asks what geographies are implicated and why do they matter? It highlights scholarship that has explored both the human and more-than-human dimensions and relations of DSM and argues for a broad range of thinking that is appropriate to the complex deep-sea environments being targeted for extraction.