Context:

India to apply for licences to explore deep-sea minerals in the Pacific Ocean.

More on the news

• The UN-backed International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued 31 deep-sea exploration licences, including two for India in the Indian Ocean, but is yet to allow mining because regulations haven’t been made yet.
• The 36-member ISA council is meeting in Jamaica this month to negotiate the latest draft of mining regulations.
• China, Russia, and some Pacific Island nations have already secured exploration licences for the Pacific Ocean.
• Some 27 countries have called for a moratorium or suspension of all ocean mining-related activities, but some Pacific nations including Nauru and Cook Islands favour deep-sea mining.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA)

• It is an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the same UNCLOS agreement.
• Headquarters: Kingston, Jamaica
• ISA is responsible for overseeing all mineral-resource activities in the Area, as defined by UNCLOS, for the collective benefit of humanity. 

Why the Pacific Ocean?

• India plans to focus on the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast plain between Hawaii and Mexico known to hold large volumes of polymetallic nodules.
  It is a region spanning 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) across the central Pacific Ocean, at depths of ~4,000 - 5,500 meters (12,000 - 18,000 feet).

What are Polymetallic nodules?

• They also called manganese nodules, are rock concretions formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core.
• These nodules contain minerals used in electric vehicles and solar panels including manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt.
• They were discovered at the end of the 19th century in the Kara Sea, in the Arctic Ocean off Siberia (1868).

Significance of Polymetallic nodules

• Mining of polymetallic nodules has been spurred by the need for critical metals to support growing high-technology applications and the development of a green-energy economy.
• Polymetallic nodules, alongside iron-manganese crusts and deep-sea muds are all potential future marine sources of rare earth elements.