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Tom Lawson | Occupy.com
The world's oceans are in a bad way, to put it mildly.
Decades of overfishing, industrial pollution, plastic waste and threats to
basic ecological stability posed by climate change all demonstrate how
"humanity is collectively mismanaging the ocean to the brink of
collapse," according to the World Wildlife Fund's Living Blue Planet Report released
in September.
Now another threat is emerging: deep sea mining.
Seabed minerals were discovered as far back as 1873. But
it's only within the last decade, as demand has grown for items such as
smartphones – and as the depletion of inland resources has pushed mining
exploration to further extremes – that technology has made the exaction of
copper, zinc, manganese, nickel, cobalt and gold from under the sea
possible.
Now, the world's first-ever commercial deep sea mining (DSM)
project is due to start in under two years time – and environmentalists and
scientists are worried.
“We currently have very poor understanding of deep sea
ecosystems, few protected areas, and management regimes that are
rudimentary at best,” said marine conservation biologist Rick Steiner.
“Thus, the potential for irreversible ecological damage due to DSM is high.
We need a ten-year continuous time series of research before we will have
even a vague understanding of the environmental impact.”
Some action is being taken in the face of these
uncertainties. In February, a team of researchers from 25 European
institutions began a three-year study on
the potential ecological effects of DSM. But it could be too little too
late.
Mining in the Pacific
The Solwara 1 deep sea mine, located 19 miles off Papua New
Guinea in the Pacific Ocean, is the first project in the world to be
granted a commercial DSM extraction license. The application for the joint
venture between Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals and the Papua New
Guina government was submitted in 2008. But due to an undisclosed equity
dispute, the 20-year extraction license didn't get approval until last
April.
Production is now expected to start in early 2018, and the
company plans to mine deposits of copper, zinc and gold worth hundreds of
millions of dollars.
Responding to concerns about ocean health,
Nautilus claims mining the seabed will have less of an impact
than terrestrial mining due to the smaller scale of its operation – with
DSM, minerals are found in concentrated nodules associated with volcanic
activity – and the fact that no roads or infrastructure would be required
to gain access.
However, independent science-based reports released in 2009, 2011 and 2012 detail
deficiencies in the science and modelling used by Nautilus. The reports
claim that DSM could cause irreversible ecological damage to sites that
could contain hundreds of species previously unknown to science. It also
says the mining activity would introduce light and noise pollution in
pristine areas, and could produce sediment plumes introducing toxic metals
into the food chain – harming tuna, dolphins and potentially humans.
Opposition is Growing
The latest challenge to Solwara 1 has come from
the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, which published a report in September
entitled Accountability Zero that
was endorsed by economists, scientists and NGOs including Greenpeace
Australia and Earthworks. The group analyzed the results of
an environmental impact report conducted by the American
consultancy firm Earth Economics, and commissioned by Nautilus, which
compared the potential impacts of Solwara 1 to existing land-based copper
mining. Accountability Zero claims the report failed to account for the
unique social, cultural and economic values of oceans.
And it's not just oceanographers and NGOs that are
concerned.
“Never before in Papua New Guinea’s history has a
development proposal galvanized such wide-ranging opposition,” said Dr.
Helen Rosenbaum, coordinator of the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, "from
students and church leaders – in 2013 the Pacific Conference of Churches
passed a resolution to stop all forms of experimental seabed mining in the
Pacific – to NGOs, academics, and national and provincial
parliamentarians.”
Setting a Precedent
Solwara 1 is currently the only DSM project with a
commercial operating license, but many others are waiting to follow in its
footsteps.
The number of companies seeking to mine in international waters
has tripled in the last four years, and the U.S., UK, Russia, China,
Japan, Brazil, Germany and South Korea all have exploration projects
underway. Most of these are in the Pacific, while others are in the
Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Separate projects have also
been proposed in the national waters of Fiji, the Cook Islands, Tonga and
New Zealand.
The process regulating DSM is distinct. Permits to explore
for minerals are issued by governments within their territorial waters –
200 nautical miles from shore – or by the International Seabed
Authority (ISA) in international waters.
Formed in 1994, the ISA was established by the UN to
regulate international waters, described as “common heritage of mankind”
and not subject to direct claims by sovereign states. But a major criticism
of the ISA has been the issuance of exploration permits without having
first approved environmental standards.
Despite issuing mining permits since its inception, it
wasn't until July that the ISA finally brought together representatives
from its 170 member states to began drafting a framework on environmental
standards and regulations, which is expected to be finalized late this year
at the earliest.
In the lead-up to July's meeting, a policy paper published in Science
called for the ISA to cease issuing permits until environmental controls
are in place. Written by researchers from the Center for Ocean
Solutions and co-authors from leading global institutions, the report
proposes a strategy for balancing commercial extraction with protection for
seabed habitats.
But despite the paper's warnings, the ISA went ahead and
authorized the latest Pacific exploration contract to China Minmetals.
Altogether, the ISA has issued 27 permits for mineral exploration covering
around 1.2 million square miles of seabed. All but eight have been issued
within the last four years.
Building International Support
With the surge in exploration permits has come a gradual but
growing international movement against DSM.
At the 2012 Rio+20 conference in Brazil, a Fiji-based women's NGO
marched with an anti-DSM message, and in 2013 the
Namibian government issued a moratorium on
all deep sea exploration within its waters until a long-term impact
assessment is made. International campaign groups
including Greenpeace and the Yes to Life, No to
Mining movement have issue statements against DSM.
In the U.S., the Center for Biological Diversity is going
further and taking legal action. In May, the organization launched a lawsuitagainst
the government over its approval of the first-ever large-scale DSM
exploration project between Hawaii and Mexico, claiming it lacked the
required environmental assessment.
New Zealand is another country where anti-DSM campaigning
has been strong due to the government’s 2004 Foreshore and Seabed
legislation, which created a series of prospecting permits for companies
seeking to exploit the iron sand reserves in the west coast
seabed.
As a result, the community-based action group Kiwis
Against Seabed Mining (KASM) was established in 2005 to
protest DSM, and its biggest victory to date came against Trans
Tasman Resources in December of last year. TTR wanted to mine 50 million
tons of iron sand from the seabed, but was rejected by the country's
Environment Protection Authority.
The company planned to appeal, but withdrew following an
overwhelming response from people opposed to the proposal, including 5,000
submissions from local citizens. The victory showed that DSM projects could
be overcome. But in New Zealand and elsewhere, many see the public and
civil society response still lacking.
“To date seabed mining has been very much under the radar
but it absolutely warrants a lot more attention,” said Phil McCabe,
chairman of KASM. “Greenpeace has stated that seabed mining has the
potential to have the largest areal impact on the planet of any human
activity – it’s akin to deforestation on a massive scale, and we need to
turn people on to [what it is].”
An Avaaz petition calling for a
moratorium on seabed mining prior to the ISA's July meeting failed to reach
its target, falling 7,000 signatures short of its 80,000 signature goal.
But it demonstrated how close the anti-DSM movement could be to galvanizing
widespread awareness and support. The question is: with so many mining
proposals already underway and a lack of legislation protecting the deep
sea, will the opposition come too late?
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