Norway plunges into uncharted waters with deep sea mining.

Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne and a very good morning to you.

Norway has become the first country in the world

to open up part of its seabed for mining despite warnings of the possible

environmental impact. The government gave the green light for companies to

apply to extract precious minerals like

COBOLT and lithium. The BBC's Molly Perella reports.

The materials are key for producing green technologies including batteries,

but environmentalists say mining them from the sea floor could have a catastrophic impact

on marine life in the area and contribute to climate change.

Despite that, Norway's parliament approved the bill with 80 votes in favour and 20 against. The plan will see a large area of Norwegian waters bigger than the UK opened up for mining.

But Norway says it won't issue any licenses until further environmental studies are carried out.

There is currently no timetable for when the project could begin.

Molly Parella there.

Now we looked at this issue last summer and I spoke to Andrea Sbyland Ericsson, then Norway's Minister for Energy and Petroleum,

since October he's actually been the country's Environment Minister and he told me this move could be an essential step to developing a green economy.

We're still quite a distance of actually being able to extract these resources, but we know the world

will need a lot of minerals going forward in the green shift.

We know that the current value chains are challenging, controlled by a few non-Western states.

So this is a great potential that we want to look into.

We did have the European Academy's Science Advisory Council

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