Die große Debatte um den Tiefsee-Bergbau
Umweltschützer positionieren sich gegen die Ausbeutung unter den Ozeanen.
While gold has seen a generally positive trend in recent years, the outbreak of the global pandemic has made the importance of gold bars as a hedge even clearer - and accelerated price developments. In the first half of 2020, the price of gold rose 17%, followed by another 10% increase for the month of July, outperforming all major assets. The spot gold price reached a new all-time high on July 28 and reached $ 1,940.9 an ounce on the LBMA gold price PM, surpassing $ 1,981.3 in one day. This exceeded the previous record $ 1,895.0 PM price on September 5, 2011 and the intraday high of $ 1,921.2 the following day during Asian trading hours. The global response to the pandemic has also fueled record-breaking inflows into gold-backed ETFs and brought total holdings to 743 tons in the first half of 2020, more than in any other year. According to the World Gold Council (WGC), gold's record surge was driven by a combination of high uncertainty, very low interest rates and positive price dynamics - all of which are factors that support investment demand. The Council believes that the Covid-19 pandemic could bring about structural shifts in asset allocation, and although the recent price spike coupled with extremely weak consumer demand (-6% in H1 2020) has resulted in higher volatility in the gold price in the short term There are strong fundamental reasons in favor of investing in gold over the longer term. The pandemic is far from over, the Council believes, and more importantly, its impact on the global economy remains to be determined. There are signs that some countries such as China, South Korea, Germany and other European nations have started to turn. At the global level, however, the initial hopes for a quick recovery are as good as gone. Instead, market participants are preparing for a bumpy ride and a longer way to relax, the Council speculates. Central banks have also aggressively lowered interest rates, often in combination with quantitative easing and other non-traditional policies. Governments around the world have also adopted massive bailouts to support their local economy. According to the WGC, these initiatives have raised concerns that it is easy money, not fundamentals, that is fueling the stock market rally and that all the extra money being pumped into the system could lead to very high inflation, or at least currency devaluation. To put things in perspective, the gold price more than doubled from around $ 900 in early 2008 to a high that was reached more than three years later in the wake of the global financial crisis. In contrast, it has grown less than 30% since the Covid 19 pandemic began. In addition, the inflation-adjusted gold price is currently approximately $ 200 below 2011 levels and well below its record level of January 21, 1980, the record-breaking equivalent of approximately $ 2,800 in current monetary value. The recent stage of gold bull run in 2020 has come quickly, according to the WGC, with the WGC indicating that it took about four months for gold to rise from $ 1,650 to $ 1,800 an ounce, but less than four weeks to 1,950 $ to climb. While this upward trend was largely due to a strong depreciation of the dollar, the WGC notes that the extent of the change is highlighted by the 14-day relative strength index of gold, which peaked at 88 on July 27. The Council says that this is usually seen as a sign that the market could be overbought. Eine seltene Gelegenheit Die Mineralreserven am Meeresboden enthalten schätzungsweise 94.000 Tonnen Kobalt in verschiedenen Regionen - etwa das Sechsfache der derzeitigen landgestützten Reserven. Wenn eine verantwortungsvolle Ausbeutung möglich ist, haben diese neuen Mineralquellen das Potenzial, den kohlenstoffarmen Übergang dramatisch zu katalysieren. Wenn sie unverantwortlich genutzt werden, riskieren wir negative und lang anhaltende Auswirkungen auf die Arten, Lebensräume und Ökosysteme, die uns der Ozean schenkt. Eine Entscheidung darüber, ob und wie wir weiter voranschreiten sollen, steht uns bevor. Um sicherzustellen, dass wir uns der Herausforderung dieser Entscheidung stellen und eine kluge Entscheidung treffen, müssen alle Interessengruppen, einschließlich der Unternehmen, die dieses vom Meer abgebaute Material nutzen wollen, diese aufkommende Debatte aufmerksam verfolgen und sich umfassend mit ihr befassen. Die Entscheidungen, die heute über den Tiefseebergbau getroffen werden, werden wahrscheinlich dauerhafte Auswirkungen auf die Materialversorgungsketten, die globale Mineralienwirtschaft, die Wirtschaft einiger Länder, das Ökosystem der Ozeane und unsere Fähigkeit zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels haben, wenn wir in die Zukunft blicken.