Norway becomes first country to back controversial deep sea mining

Dan Marks, research fellow at UK-based defence and security thinktank RUSI, said European policymakers "face a conundrum when it comes to critical minerals". He described an "imperative" to expand supply to support the energy transition and compete with producers linked with China. But there is also a "desire to avoid saving the climate at the expense of the environment", he said. He warned European regulators would have to strike a balance between setting protecting the natural world and setting standards so high that the practice became unviable and was therefore "offshored to countries with weaker protections".