Is Deep-Sea Mining the New “Green Frontier”? A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of Arguments on the Climate Crisis and Deep-Sea Mining in the Pacific

With its abundance of minerals identified as essential for the green transition, the ocean floor is regarded by Deep-Sea Mining (DSM) proponents as the new “green frontier” of resource extraction. This framing of DSM is particularly significant for the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), which are positioned at the geographic center of DSM pursuits. Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this paper explores how climate change is represented in two competing discourses on DSM: that of a prominent DSM corporation, The Metals Company (TMC), and a cluster of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Drawing on the just transition literature, the paper demonstrates how socio-environmental concerns surrounding DSM are being increasingly co-opted by industrial interests, complicating distinctions between corporate and environmental communication, as they come to be expressed in annual reports, press releases, websites, and brochures of advocates and detractors alike. At the same time, the corpus-linguistic analysis reveals key differences in how these actors imagine solutions to the climate crisis, the role they assign to mining, and the risks and opportunities they see DSM as presenting to the PICs. The paper thus exposes how struggles over DSM illuminate the unequal power relations and justice claims shaping who will bear the socio-environmental costs of the “green” transition.