Major financial institutions have publicly committed to staying out of the deep-sea mining industry. The money tells a different story. A recent DW investigation found that some of the world’s most prominent banks have invested at least $684 million (€581 million) in companies linked to the industry, among them Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse, Crédit Agricole, and BNP Paribas.
These banks have been enabled to keep investments flowing towards mining operations while still claiming to be removed from the industry and reaping the reputational benefits of sustainable investing. As DW researchers put it, these practices are “akin to refusing to finance an oil drilling site for climate reasons but still buying shares in the drilling company.” The companies maintain the legality of their positions through carefully worded exemptions buried in fine print, relying on a lack of public scrutiny to avoid accountability.
Tariq Fancy, former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at BlackRock, warns of the hidden costs that ESG can bring when it is prioritized over political reform and stronger regulation. “In many cases it’s cheaper and easier to market yourself as green rather than do the long tail work of actually improving your sustainability profile,” Fancy said.
Using data from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC), the investigation also found that countries that have called for a halt to deep-sea mining nonetheless have public pension funds invested in vehicles like the Triton IV private-equity fund, which finances mining operations or companies that service them. As of now, no pension funds have pledged to exclude deep-sea mining.
The Industry Behind the Investment
So what exactly are these institutions quietly financing? Initially, deep-sea mining was introduced as it promised to bring the critical minerals for the energy transition without the costs on land. But the costs still exist, and likely in greater numbers, they are simply buried thousands of meters below the ocean surface. As with most other environmental and resource conflicts, if we cannot see where the damage is being done, it is probably causing great distress to whatever ecosystem it was introduced to.
Exploratory deep-sea mining began in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 2022 that true commercial mining technology was tested. Therefore, scientists have only had a few years to investigate the changes that these practices bring to these mysterious ecosystems (less than 0.001% of the deep seabed has been observed by humans). While the full effects are still not known, it requires no specialist knowledge to conclude that scraping a large machine along the deep ocean floor to scoop up nodules containing minerals and stir up sediment is heavily disruptive to an ecosystem.
In terms of international governance, the United States stands alone in continuing to openly pursue deep-sea mining in international waters. The UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) is the world’s authority on deep-sea practices, and while the rest of the world’s governments are united to protect the deep-sea, the U.S. is not a member. This governance gap has given financial institutions the room to maneuver, and the cover to obscure their involvement.
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An Ecosystem We Have Barely Begun to Understand
An estimated 91% of ocean species have yet to be classified, meaning humanity is dismantling ecosystems it has barely begun to understand. Deep-sea microbes alone have already demonstrated unqiue scientific value, having contributed enzymes to SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests, cancer research trials, and numerous other medical applications still being uncovered. To accelerate the destruction of these habitats before their inhabitants are even catalogued is to subordinate scientific discovery and potentially life-saving medicine to short-term financial gain.
The institutions financing deep-sea mining from the shadows are banking on continued public unawareness. But the combination of inadequate international oversight, non-transparent investment structures, and an ecosystem of irreplaceable and largely unknown value makes this one of the most consequential environmental blind spots of our time. Major banks, pension funds, and private equity firms must be held to higher standards: full divestment from deep-sea mining, not just from its surface, but from every fund, share, and subsidiary. The ocean floor is not a resource to be quietly liquidated.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Illustration of a deep sea mining machine for the retrieval of minerals and deposits from the ocean floor found at depths of 200 metres up to 6,500 metres. Cover Photo Credit: © Jack Cowley / Greenpeace.
