Nigeria, July 7 -- Malawi, Kenya and Madagascar are the first African countries to take a stand on deep-sea mining (DSM). At the 11th Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa in June, they joined 40 nations from across the world in endorsing a precautionary pause on DSM in international waters, which cover 64 per cent of the Earth's ocean surface.

The international seabed area lies beyond any country's jurisdiction and is home to ecosystems, species, biodiversity support, nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration functions critical to Earth's climate balance.

While the ocean covers 70 per cent of the Earth's surface, less than 30 per cent of the seafloor has been mapped, and humans have explored less than 0.001 per cent of the deep ocean floor (...