深海矿产资源勘查开发进展、挑战与前景

Development Progress, Challenge and Prospect of Mineral Resources Exploration and Exploitation in Deep Sea

人类对深海矿产资源的探索始于20世纪70年代。近50年来,受深海海底技术进步、原材料价格上涨和价格大幅波动造成的原材料供应风险上升等一系列重要因素推动,世界多国对深海矿产资源的勘查开发进度明显加快,签订的勘查开发合同不断增加。深海富集的矿产资源多是现代高科技、绿色技术或新兴技术必不可少的原材料,相较于陆地矿床,品位高、易采选、采矿环境扰动小。但深海采矿也面临挑战,如资源探明程度不够、国际法律框架缺失、勘查开采技术仍存难题、受矿产品价格和资本成本制约等。但无论如何,深海采矿将是本世纪人类满足自身发展需求的战略之举,已成为各国资源竞争的前沿热点领域。对此,需要加强深海矿产勘查开发研究及技术储备,强化政策引导、监管与服务,铺就一条"产学研用"的深海采矿创新之路。

Mineral exploration in deep sea began in 1970s. In the past 50 years, driven by a series of important factors, such as the advancement of technologies in the field of deep sea, increasing prices of raw materials and increasing supply risk of raw materials caused by significant price fluctuation, many countries have significantly accelerated their paces in mineral exploration and exploitation in deep sea, with a growing number of signed exploration or mining contracts. Most of mineral resources in deep sea are essential for the modem high technologies, green technologies or emerging technologies. These resources have an advantage of high grade, easy exploitation and little disturbance on mining environment, compared with deposits on land. However, deep-sea mining is still facing great challenges, such as short of geological survey and mineral exploration, lack of international legal framework, still difficult in exploration and mining technologies and constrained by the price and capital cost of mining products, etc. In any case, deep-sea mining will be a strategic method to meet the requirements of human development in this century and has become a hot spot in the field of resource competition. In this regard, it is necessary to strengthen the research on mineral exploration and exploitation and technical reserves in deep sea, deepen policy guidance, supervision and service and create an innovation road of ＂Industrial-Academic-Research-Application＂ mining in deep sea.