Jadhav reported in 2016 that the ocean and its resources are increasingly seen as indispensable in addressing multiple challenges the planet is facing in decades to come. By 2050 enough food, jobs, energy, raw materials and economic growth will be required to sustain a world population of nine billion people,” Vardhan said. “But it (ocean) is already under stress from over exploitation, pollution, declining bio-diversity and climate change. Hence realizing the full potential of the ocean will demand responsible, sustainable approaches to its economic development. This applies both to the established and the many emerging ocean-based activities.” “Therefore, I urge you all to see urgency in our situation. We must move fast to grab India’s legitimate share in the emerging ocean-based industries, which also include sea bed mining for metals and minerals, marine aquaculture, marine biotechnology, ocean-related tourism and leisure activities and most importantly, ocean monitoring, control and surveillance.”
Reported by the state press agency, Vardhan’s words flow from and simultaneously reinforce a dominant discourse of development in India and globally, which reads approximately as follows. The engine of economic growth requires resources. Resources will increasingly be in short supply as more and more people demand economic security. The flag has already dropped on a race for resources and India, its institutions, its scientists, its politics, must make sure the nation does not lose out. In this discourse, the ocean becomes a seascape from which resources are primarily extracted to support a national agenda of economic growth.
Within India and without, officials, policymakers, activists, scholars, courts, international institutions and increasingly citizens have also noted that this brand of economic growth— predicated on consuming natural resources — has too often degraded ecologies, exacerbated inequality and failed to deliver on holistic development. Vardhan’s call for additional ocean resource consumption does contain a nod to the potential for the race for ocean minerals to be unsustainable and irresponsible. But this is ultimately trumped by the “urgency” of the logic and discourse: India needs development. Development requires resources. India must act quickly to procure resources.
This paper attempts to engage and interrogate this development narrative within the specific context of India’s ocean resources and plans for mineral extraction. This exercise has both positive and normative goals. On the one hand, the paper describes the development, environmental, regulatory and political economic issues around these natural resources. Beyond describing the status quo, this paper hopes to provide a way for readers to critically assess the values, dangers and discourse of the current ocean mineral extraction trend.
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
