Deep-sea mining and geopolitics: Can Pacific nations maintain control as global powers race for seabed minerals?
- Admin
- 14m
- 5 min read
By Mar-Vic Cagurangan and Jayvee Vallejera
The race to gain control over strategic seabed minerals is now entangled with power projections from Washington and Beijing, both setting their sights on critical elements that power clean energy, electronics and military technologies.
Following President Donald Trump's executive order to explore deep-sea mining and outpace China’s progress in the $20 trillion industry, U.S. businesses have attracted millions in investment to harvest polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Federal waters around the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa have been marked for potential deep-sea mining leases.
While the Bureau of Energy and Ocean Management’s plans for U.S. territories are advancing, the Trump administration is targeting sites beyond domestic jurisdictions, establishing deep-sea mining deals with sovereign islands in the region. This year, Washington forged agreements with Nauru and Tonga and began exploring a similar deal with Papua New Guinea. China has existing agreements with Kiribati and the Cook Islands.
Seabed minerals have become geopolitically important, notes the nonprofit group Ocean Exploration Trust. The group says that energy transition is driving up demand for nickel, cobalt and manganese, citing the industry’s double projection over the next two decades.
The Pacific islands’ seabed resources are at stake, according to security experts who advise countries across the region to create a metaphorical “barrier reef” to guard against larger nations seeking to exploit underwater resources.
Marco de Jong, a Pacific historian and lecturer at Auckland University of Technology Law School, said that while the island region has become central to geopolitical tensions, its governments are not in control. The islands remain shackled by neocolonial dependency and are seen as a staging ground for military planning.
He argued that the rupturing of the global order, driven by intensifying U.S.-China rivalry, underscores the need for greater coordination among Pacific island nations and for the region to serve “as a strong moral voice.”
Emerging areas such as deep-sea mining and autonomous maritime technologies, including sea drones, have fundamentally changed the Pacific’s strategic relevance, he said.
Using seabed mining as an example, De Jong noted that sponsoring states such as Tonga, Nauru and Kiribati have often been played against each other and now risk being undercut altogether.
While Pacific nations’ collective position and moral authority on seabed mining may already have been weakened, he argued that a coordinated regional response could still resist Washington’s actions
“The overwhelming Pacific interest is now in withholding consent and setting the terms of access,” he said at the Micronesia Security Dialogue hosted in May by the Guam-based think tank Pacific Center for Island Security.
The Trump administration is seeking to accelerate its goal of "unleashing" America’s potential to explore offshore mineral resources around the waters of its Pacific territories amid growing regional divisions over deep-sea mining.
The U.S. signed agreements with 10 other nations expanding what it calls "critical mineral diplomacy." Its goal is to catch up and surpass China, which dominates the global production of critical minerals.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries, Beijing controlled more than 90 percent of the production of key electronic components, such as gallium and magnesium.
While no commercial-scale deep-sea mining operations currently exist, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga have secured exploration contracts in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which spans millions of square kilometers in the Pacific Ocean. They are among 13 other international entities with similar contracts.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The Pacific island nations are at a critical juncture," Pacific Blue Line Collective, a network of civil society organizations, said before the opening of the Pacific Islands Forum Talanoa on Deep Sea Minerals in February. "Our collective response to the proposed expansion of deep-sea mining in the Pacific region will significantly shape the future of our ocean and our communities."
During the Pacific Small Island Developing States Regional Workshop at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in Fiji last month, a Fijian official lamented the lack of a unified regional position on deep-sea mining.
Eight Pacific nations—Palau, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa and Papua New Guinea—have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until scientific study is done to understand the emerging industry’s impact on the marine ecosystems.
Besides the lack of a unified voice, Filimoni Vosarogo, Fiji’s minister of lands and mineral resources, noted that Pacific nations have limited technical capacity and face disadvantages in complex legal and commercial negotiations.
The Fiji Sun reported that the May forum in Suva launched two major toolkits designed to guide governments approached by mining companies seeking sponsorship for exploration in international waters and to support the development of national legal, policy and regulatory frameworks.
Quoting Vosarogo, the Fiji Sun said toolkits “were critical in closing knowledge gaps, helping Pacific countries better understand their roles and responsibilities and strengthening their ability to engage with mining companies from an informed and strategic position.”
Leticia Carvalho, secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority, noted the Pacific island region’s significance to the body’s process of developing rules for mining and shaping the regime, considering the polarizing nature of the emerging industry.
"That is why I am here for capacity building, training, bringing my team to support these countries to better understand how they can make decisions internally and how they can sit at the table with others to find consensus in the multilateral space,” the RNZ Pacific Waves podcast quoted Carvalho as saying.
"This training was particularly formulated to get government officials more enlightened about the responsibilities and how to make deals with contractors and investors."
At the Micronesia Security Dialogue, De Jong suggested that Micronesia could take a leadership role at the sub-regional level through organizations such as the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner or the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program.
“With more coordination, mutual reinforcement strategies and withholding consent, emerging domains present opportunities for new types of governance mechanisms that are capable of leveraging strategic relevance or establishing preemptive norms to strengthen collective agency and safeguard sovereignty,” he said.
Noting the region’s growing prominence in global strategic discussions, Robert Underwood, chairman of the Pacific Center for Island Security and former Guam delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, said the Micronesia Security Outlook encourages deeper discussion of issues such as militarization and seabed mining while exploring ways island communities can work together.
The Guam think tank has established the Micronesia Security Monitor, a digital mapping tool that tracks military activity and broader geopolitical developments in the Western Pacific.
Leiland Bettis, one of the center’s founding members, said the monitor is an open-source platform that also tracks fishing and research vessels and is designed to help policymakers better understand regional developments.
“Activities going on across the region tend to be seen as individual pieces, not part of a whole,” Bettis said.
He said the monitor helps connect those developments by showing how military activities in Palau, Tinian and Guam are interconnected.
Caption:
Pacific People
Palau hosted the Climate and Oceans Support Program in the Pacific Phase 3 annual session from May 18- to 22 2026, bringing together Pacific Island countries, regional organizations and technical partners to strengthen climate and ocean services across the region. Photo courtesy of SPC
Polymetallic nodules