Britain has kept Chagos largely untouched for decades. With mineral rich seabeds nearby and Mauritius under financial strain, critics fear that could soon change.
With negotiations continuing over the future of the Chagos Archipelago, owned and administered by the United Kingdom and claimed by Mauritius, the public debate has focused overwhelmingly on sovereignty, diplomacy, and the future of the American military presence. Yet one crucial dimension risks being sidelined entirely, the emerging struggle beneath the waves.
Behind the legal arguments and carefully worded communiqués lies a far larger strategic reality, one that could carry immense long term consequences if Britain proceeds with a handover. It is the defining resource contest of the twenty first century, the accelerating global scramble for deep sea minerals in the Indian Ocean, and Chagos sits perilously close to its centre.
What was once regarded as a remote Cold War outpost is rapidly being recast as something far more consequential, a gateway to one of the planet’s most coveted new frontiers.
The omission of this is in all the dialogue is extraordinary.
For decades Chagos was valued above all for its geography and for hosting the strategically vital Anglo American military facility on Diego Garcia. Today, it also sits adjacent to one of the planet’s most promising undersea mineral provinces. The seabed of the Central Indian Ocean Basin contains polymetallic nodules rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese, precisely the metals required for electric vehicles, grid scale batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, and advanced electronics.
In an era defined by competition over energy transition supply chains, that fact alone should give British policymakers pause.
Is walking away from a maritime zone comparable in scale to France not only strategically reckless but also a surrender of future leverage at the very moment oceans are becoming the next great economic frontier? With mineral demand projected to surge dramatically over the coming decade, the idea that Chagos is merely a relic of Cold War geopolitics is no longer credible.
The Ocean Floor Has Become a Prize and Right now it is Still British Owned
Deep sea mining is not science fiction. Governments and state backed companies across the world are pouring billions into the technology required to operate at depths of four to six kilometres. Belgium, Germany, and Japan have tested harvesting systems. China and India have built fleets of research vessels and robotic collectors.
Mining in international waters is regulated by the International Seabed Authority, which has issued dozens of exploration licences even though it has yet to finalise a binding mining code. Environmental groups warn of irreversible damage to fragile ecosystems and of sediment plumes spreading far beyond extraction sites, while others argue that seabed mining might eventually reduce pressure on destructive land based extraction. The science remains unsettled, but the geopolitical interest is not.
Crucially, Chagos sits perilously close, and may even overlie, a vast mineral rich region of the Indian Ocean where a fierce global contest is already unfolding.
Mauritius Is Positioning for the Boom
Mauritius has already carried out seabed surveys in its Exclusive Economic Zone, drafted legislation to govern potential extraction, and hosted international workshops aimed at attracting investors to the sector. It is also locked in a maritime boundary dispute with the Maldives over waters near Chagos, territory that will become far more valuable when commercial deposits are confirmed.
From Port Louis’s perspective, this makes sense. Fisheries, shipping routes, and the possibility of future mineral revenue strengthen the economic case for sovereignty. For Britain, however, that logic cuts in the opposite direction. If the waters could one day generate enormous wealth, why should London relinquish authority over them now, before the scale of the prize is even fully understood.
Supporters of transfer argue that environmental protections would continue under Mauritian rule. Really? Environment groups have already raised their doubts. It is thanks to the British that Chagos has remained comparatively undisturbed for decades under UK administration, aided by strict access controls and one of the largest marine protection regimes in the Indian Ocean. Handing control to a small, debt burdened state facing development pressures inevitably raises questions about how long such restraint would endure if mineral riches beckoned. Mauritius is also heavily indebted to China, which is actively seeking seabed metals and rare minerals.
China’s Shadow Looms Large
In fact, China is very open about this interest and any honest discussion of seabed minerals must confront China’s role. Beijing dominates global processing of several battery related metals and has invested heavily in ocean floor exploration through its state run China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association. Mauritius, meanwhile, has taken on substantial Chinese backed loans for infrastructure projects, fuelling debate about Beijing’s influence over its future economic choices.
Is there proof that China plans to bankroll Mauritian mining near Chagos. No. But geopolitics rarely turns on signed contracts alone. Deep sea mining costs billions, far beyond the means of most small island states. China has the capital, the technology, and the strategic incentive to secure new supply chains.
Other partners, including India, Japan, and even European firms, are also active in the sector, yet Beijing’s record of restricting exports of strategic materials during diplomatic disputes has sharpened Western anxieties. The prospect that control over mineral rich waters in the central Indian Ocean could one day intersect with Chinese finance and Chinese processing capacity is not conspiracy, it is a foreseeable strategic risk.
A Future Britain May Regret
Several facts are not in dispute. Chagos lies in a mineral rich zone. Deep sea mining is rising in geopolitical importance. Mauritius is preparing regulatory frameworks. China and India are expanding their reach across the Indian Ocean. Environmental uncertainties remain profound. No commercial mining has yet begun near Chagos, but that is precisely the point. The British have not allowed it. The British territory is pristine. Decisions about sovereignty are being taken before the value of the surrounding seabed is known.
This is what makes Britain’s posture look so complacent.
To transfer control now is to assume that the waters around Chagos will never become economically decisive, or that future custodians will protect them in precisely the same way Britain has, or that rival powers will not exploit any opening created by a change in governance. Those are optimistic assumptions on which to build long term national strategy.
The Chagos question is no longer only about history. It is about the coming struggle over energy transition minerals, maritime dominance, and environmental stewardship in a rapidly militarising ocean.
Keir Starmer’s government may ultimately decide that legal and diplomatic imperatives outweigh every strategic consideration. That is a defensible position, if openly acknowledged. But it has not done so. And what is far harder to defend is acting as though the seabed beneath those remote atolls is irrelevant.
In an age when the world’s great powers are descending ever deeper into the oceans in search of the metals that will power the next century, giving up control of a vast, strategically placed, and potentially resource rich maritime domain looks less like enlightened statecraft and more like a gamble future Labour governments may bitterly regret.
Claire Bullivant
Read more here: https://www.fondaskreyol.org/article/indian-ocean-why-is-mauritius-looking-to-deep-sea-mining
Mining or drilling the seabed would severely degrade the scientific value of the Chagos as an ecological baseline and scientific ‘control site’, currently used in comparisons with managed seas elsewhere. It is not just the irreversible damage to the structure of the seabed that is of concern, but the changes to the exceptionally ‘natural’ ecosystem functioning – including potential oxygen production in seabed polymetallic nodules.
It would therefore be politically difficult for the UK to mine the Chagos region without considerable criticism from conservationists. However, some in the UK (and USA) governments could be hoping to benefit indirectly, through enabling other nations to mine – or through deals on supplies of ‘green’ technology produced with these elements.
Any exploitation, should it become inevitable, would best be done in a designed experimental system, so at least we can learn from the impacts. But given alternative sources of these elements, Chagos is the last place such mining should be considered.
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