# Ethics to Intersect Civic Participation and Formal Guidance
## 3 Marine Complex-Adaptive Social-Ecological Systems
### Second Example: Seabed Mining
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{56.9 pt} p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Feature** & **Description** & **Comment** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Maturity} & \multirow{4}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Mining of minerals at the seabed is not a \\ developed industrial activity, yet. \\ \end{tabular} } & Currently, investigations are ongoing on “how to mine minerals at the seabed in a viable manner?” These investigations involve research into operational conditions, technological developments, test-deployments and claiming of mining sites. \\ \multirow{4}{*}{Frameworks} & \multirow{4}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} The legal, regulatory and commercial \\ means to operate a mining site at the seabed \\ are being developed and tested. \\ \end{tabular} } & These activities may involve international authorities (as the Sea-Bed Authority), national (governmental) regulators, private consortia and civil society. \\ \multirow{4}{*}{Environment} & \multirow{4}{*}{\
\begin{tabular}{c} The environmental conditions at the seabed, \\ in the water column and at the sea surface \\ pose technological challenges for the operations of the mining equipment. \\ For any interested or concerned party, \\ \end{tabular} } & Access the locations of seabed mining sites will be challenging for the mining operators, regulators or surveillance bodies and third parties. Parts of the sites will be effectively inaccessible for human intervention. \\ \multirow{4}{*}{Control} & \multirow{4}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} The legal, regulatory and commercial \\ means to operate a mining site, it \\ are being developed and tested. \\ \end{tabular} } & Monitoring, control and surveillance of impacts on third party commercial activities, on distant environments, and of neighbouring realms of different legal or regulatory jurisdiction will be hugely challenging. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Challenges to mining operations at the seabed. Contrasting with its complexity, the knowledge of how to govern \"seabed mining\" is limited and its codification is nascent at best. In knowledge combined with values and interests lays the foundation for what agents understand (and agree) to be appropriate practices. Limited understanding because of fragmented knowledge, different interests and values are key-drivers of systemic \"wicked games\" (of agents) in which technical experts tend to underestimate the risks [10]. When one considers the natural, technological, commercial and governmental subsystems of the SES \"seabed mining\" (and the intersections of the subsystems), then a systemic complex-adaptive behaviour is very likely. Subsequently, the question arises \"what are the means to address it?\" A viable option seems to be improving initially the governability with the aim to address the behaviour of complex-adaptive systems. Improvements imply, for example, to strengthen the critical engagement and interplay of the different values, interests and knowledge of the various agents in complex-adaptive SES. To that end, terrestrial mining offers some experiences how to consider governability and to improve governance. Under the circumstances applicable to seabed mining, approaches borrowed from terrestrial mining practices would practice civic participation, refer to formal guidance (mining codes), and consider the lifetime of the mine from exploration through its operation to its closure [66]. Such practices treat the societal contexts of mining by advocating a participatory approach to regulation, governance and operational decision-making [67; 68; 69; 70; 71; 72; 73; 74; 75]. Thus, good terrestrial mining practices take governance issues into primary focus. Often, these practices are labelled as a \"social license to operate\". Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility  
Experiences with responsible marine mining or application of participatory governance to deep sea mining are still to come. Terrestrial case studies may indicate what such experiences may imply.