FIJI LEADS IN DRAWING PACIFIC BLUE LINE

Pacific island countries should take their cue from Fiji when it comes to making decisive decisions about deep seabed mining. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama had called for a 10year moratorium on seabed mining in 2019. It would last through to 2030.

The moratorium would pave the way for a decade of scientific research that allows us to better understand the impact of human activity on our oceans.

Yesterday, Minister for Fisheries Semi Koroilavesau reiterated the country’s stance, “No application, no consideration” for companies considering exploration in Fiji’s exclusive economic zone.”

There was some interest in 2019, but the answer was a definite “No”.

Fiji also plans to move to a 100 per cent sustainably-managed exclusive economic zone, with 30 per cent earmarked as a marine protected area.

This week in Nadi, a consortium of the non-governmental organisations launched the Deep Sea Mining: Not Needed; Not Wanted; Not Consented position. The collective includes the Pacific Conferences of Churches (PCC), Pacific Islands Association of NGOs (PIANGO), Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), WWF Pacific, and the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG). PIANGO executive director Emeline Ilolahia said they had received more than 200 endorsements to take their position.

“The call is to draw a Blue Line between those that seek to protect the blue heart of our planet and those that seek to profit through the destruction of our ocean floor, under the false narrative of renewable green technology,” she said. The ocean is considered the blue heart of our planet - providing 70 per cent of oxygen, absorbing CO2 (carbon dioxide), its currents are essential to regulating life.

It is home to unique and rich biodiversity and habitats that provide livelihoods and ensures food security for the majority of the world’s coastal people.

Yet, despite its significance to life itself, our oceans and seas are under threat from manmade activities such as overfishing, pollution, destruction of biodiversity and climate crises, and emerging threats such as deep-sea mining if allowed to take place.

“Human impact on our environment in the name of development is driving an ecological system collapse, resulting in socio-economic and political instability across the world. We are at crossroads,” she said.

PANG co-ordinator Maureen Penjueli added that the ocean is the living blue heart of our planet.

“It is our common heritage, but also our common responsibility. We are its guardians. We recognise its significance and its essence as the basis of our Pacific identity and wellbeing. We are the ocean. In its preservation, we are preserved,” she said.

For millennia, our ancestors have held this mantle of stewardship, embedding the wisdom of their resource management and conservation practices into their culture and traditions.

DEEP SEA MINING

The forum heard that deep sea mining is the latest, in a long list of destructive industries, to be thrust into our sacred ocean.

“It is a new, perilous frontier extractive industry being falsely promoted as a proven answer to our economic needs. While its promised benefits remain speculative, its pursuit is insidious,” Ms Penjueli said. “Even at an experimental stage, deep-sea mining (DSM) is already proving harmful to Pacific communities, their livelihoods, cultural practices, and their well-being.

“We call for a total ban on deep sea mining within our territorial waters and in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Mindful of the nuclear legacy in the Pacific and determined to not see it repeated. Our ocean must never again be used as the ‘testing grounds’ for dangerous pursuits that serve the interests of powerful states, institutions, and industry.”

The forum also noted that powerful states, promoting their multinational companies, have been working with some Pacific Island governments enticing them with the promise of wealth. This is despite technologies for extracting minerals on the ocean floor remaining untested in terms of environmental safety.

SCIENTISTS INCREASINGLY WARN OF:

The devastating and irreversible damage to ecosystems and habitats;

The resulting biodiversity loss including many known endemic species, and others yet to be identified that will be affected and that most likely will never recover;

The risk of giant sediment plumes traveling beyond the mining sites smothering and potentially destroying all life forms on the sea floor;

The danger of wastewater plumes, including potential toxins lethal to marine life, discharged from the mothership, impacting ocean ecosystems at various depths with attendant risk to our already threatened fisheries;

The risk of toxins entering our food chain via contaminated fisheries;

Potentially devastating oil spills from vessels occurring. As for some Pacific governments who were keen to pursue deep sea mining, Ms Penjueli said they would have to ask themselves, to what extent were they willing to destroy the ocean’s life support system during a time of climate, and planetary emergency and in what is commonly known as the age of extinction.