Pacific island seabed mineral frontiers

Exploration licensing, governance, and commercial development decisions for polymetallic nodule deposits in Pacific island EEZs — primarily Cook Islands, but encompassing Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru-sponsored ISA contracts, and other Pacific Small Island Developing States. These jurisdictions collectively hold some of the world's largest documented polymetallic nodule resources (cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese) on the abyssal plain at 4,500–5,300 m depth. The cluster tracks licensing instruments, moratorium decisions, and ISA-area governance that will determine whether and on what terms these frontier deposits enter global critical-mineral supply chains. Distinct from the Western industrial-policy stack (which covers OECD sovereign seabed authorisations such as Norway's Stortinget vote) and from the EM resource nationalism cluster (which tracks export-ban and upstream-capture instruments by producing-country governments).