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Short abstract:

The reality of deep sea mining has evolved from an undesirable and impractical industry towards a hegemonic sense of a deterministic, objectified, and imminent irreversibility. We trace the role of organizations, individuals, science, and data in the fixation of this future to understand how future expectations become objectified as present facts.

Long abstract:

The deep sea beyond exclusive economic zones, referred to as ‘the Area’ in governance discourse, covers approximately 260 million km2, spans an estimated 72% of the global oceans or near 60% of the Earth’s solid surface, and contains an abundance of mineral deposits that hold rare earth elements. Deep sea mining was traditionally considered an unviable and impractical industry with many technological, financial, and regulatory challenges due to the complex governance regime and the extreme deep sea environment. This is in stark contrast with contemporary discourse, in which a hegemonic sense of imminent inevitability prevails. Mining companies, the principal governing body of the Area, and numerous States describe deep sea mining as irreversible and urgent. Stakeholders traditionally critical of deep sea mining increasingly adopt this frame by focusing on mitigation, responsible exploitation, and calls for precautionary pauses. Discourse is thus increasingly fixed on when, rather than if, a ‘deep sea gold rush’ ought to occur. We trace the role of organizations, individuals, science, and data in the diffusion of an increasingly objectified, deterministic, and irreversible future that casts deep sea mining as inevitable since the peak of disinterest in 1994 up to now. This can ultimately help to understand how space-specific (global) commons can become hegemonically fixed as inevitable sites of extraction and sacrifice at the expense of alternative futures.