PACIFIC ISLANDERS OPPOSE DEEP SEA MINING BECAUSE THEY KNOW THE OCEAN IS INTERCONNECTED
Mining companies push deep sea mining as clean, green and climate friendly.
From a conversation with filmmaker and ocean expert Julia Barnes, maker of the award winning documentary Sea of Life. For the entire interview, please click on the link.
HART HAGAN: Where is the mining being proposed? The Pacific Ocean? Can you say more about that? And are the people of the Pacific islands in favor of deep sea mining?
JULIA BARNES: The area that they're planning on mining is called the Clarion-Clipperton zone. So that is located between Mexico and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Pacific Islanders have been very vocal in their opposition to this. There are a lot of Civil Society groups, NGOs and organizations that are popping up with Pacific Islanders saying they don't want this, and calling for a global ban.
The Pacific Blue Line statement is a good example of that. They're calling for a ban on deep sea mining. They don't want it to happen because they are so connected to the ocean. Of course, they all pretty much live on the ocean and are very dependent on it. They also have a history going back thousands of years and understand the interconnectivity of the ocean.
They know that what happens in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is not going to stay in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. It's going to affect everybody who's connected by this ocean. It's going to affect the fish who migrated through that area and maybe eventually end up at these Pacific Islands.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Papua New Guinea was one of the first areas that was being targeted for deep sea mining. There was a company called Nautilus that was planning on doing some mining of hydrothermal vents around Papua New Guinea. They did some test mining and the Islanders noticed that the water turned murky and weird fish were washing up on shore that they had never seen before.
They saw firsthand how destructive this could be for the ocean. So they were very strongly opposed to that project. The company, Nautilus, eventually went bankrupt. That issue went away for a while, although recently the mining permits of Nautilus have been acquired by another company. So we might see the need for opposition to that project all over again.
That's why there's a lot of fear of deep sea mining--and rightfully so--from Pacific Islanders.
HART HAGAN: What materials Are they looking for? And how do those materials supposedly fit into a transition to renewable energy?
JULIA BARNES: The main metals that they're hoping to extract from polymetallic nodules are nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese. These are elements that are used in batteries, potentially for electric vehicles or batteries that are used for energy storage with solar panels or wind turbines or any other thing that is considered green energy.
GREENWASHING
Companies have been very clever in promoting what they're doing as a climate solution, that this is going to be a green form of mining and all sorts of greenwashing.
But these metals could equally be used in cell phones or laptop batteries or other consumer gadgets. There's no guarantee that it's going to be used for those things. They're going to sell them to whoever they can sell them to. The military-industrial complex is another likely buyer for these products.
To me it doesn't matter whether the ocean is being mined for a laptop or cell phone battery or a battery for an electric vehicle. None of this is good for the planet and if the ocean is having to be sacrificed in the name of green technology then I think, we can hardly consider that technology to be green at that point.
HART HAGAN: You mean we can't just take industry at their word.
JULIA BARNES: Definitely not. I think we've learned that time and time again. I made a movie called Bright Green Lies. So much of what has been promoted as good for the planet just simply isn't and there's a lot of money to be made in selling things and calling them solutions when in reality, it's adding to the harm that is facing the natural world.
We have to understand that this mining of the deep ocean is happening on top of everything else that's going on. It's happening on top of all of these other threats that the ocean is facing. It’s also happening on top of all of the destructive mining that is going.
FALSE CHOICE: PITTING THE OCEANS AGAINST THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST
The deep sea mining industry likes to pit themselves against mining the Amazon rainforest, and say, “We're so much better. We don't have the human rights abuses. We're not going to wipe out beautiful old forests and destroy them.”
It's really a false dichotomy. It would be absolutely ridiculous to think that there would be any less mining on land if they go out and mine the deep ocean because the demand for these metals is essentially infinite. It's an expansion of mining. It's not one thing versus another. It's an expansion into a whole new environment that is incredibly fragile.