Transcript
Proponents of seabed mining have the Pacific firmly in their sights, yet the industry has yet to find its feet.
Holding it back is the great range of unknowns about the potential environmental impacts of mining for metals contained in nodules on the seafloor.
One of the report's authors, marine biologist Dr Steven Katona, says these metals are required to produce batteries for electric vehicles to help the world's transition to a zero-carbon economy.
"Make no mistake...there will be damage to the environment down there. It's absolutely clear, You cannot remove 85 percent of the nodules from an area that large (500 km sq) without having substantial damage."
But Dr Katona says impacts on wildlife, fauna and humans from sourcing these metals in the seabed would mostly be less than those caused by land-ore mining.
His report says that producing metals from nodules has "the potential to generate almost zero solid waste and no toxic tailings".
Certain species would recover over time..
"The area that will not be mined is much larger than the area that will be mined. So there will be time for that re-colonisation. About fifteen percent of the nodules will be left in place deliberately. Those that are not buried in sediment will be available for colonisation. So that whole process will go on."
But these views about the long-term impacts of seabed mining aren't shared by all scientists.
Elsewhere there are stark warnings in a report released last month by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign 'Predicting the impacts of mining of deep sea polymetallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean', drawing on more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific and other articles
Dr Helen Rosenbaum is the Campaign's spokesperson:
"Their conclusion is that the impacts of mining deep sea nodules in the Pacific ocean would be extensive, severe and last for generations, causing essentially irreversible species loss and ecosystem degradation. They also conclude that the jury is totally out on the economic benefits of this."
DeepGreen is pushing its climate change-fighting credentials in the challenge of meeting the world's resource needs.
The company's head of Strategy and Business Development Erika Ilves talks of a transition to a resource efficiency that seabed mining would play a central role in.
"If we get this transition right, the virgin metal mining id definitely an industry that's pencilled in as a major source of metals. But for the interim period where we need to build our initial one billion or hopefully fewer cars, so that we can keep recycling, for that period we really need to be careful and compress as much as we can the environmental and social impacts of sourcing virgin metals."
But as the discussion around seabed mining in the region swells again, the dire need for more Pacific participation and ownership is as glaring as ever.
Dr Stuart Kininmonth, Senior Lecturer at the School of Marine Studies, University of the South Pacific says while there are no courses on the deepsea marine environment specifically, studies in marine geology, management of the high seas and other related areas are on offer.
"So we really encourage anyone really to explore some of those options, in order to essentially have a Pacific grounding in the control of these types of processes, that it's not an external pressure. But it's a joint issue that needs to be handled delicately, but with knowledge and security in areas that are unknown, and there are lots of these in this field."
Meanwhile, Dr Helen Rosenbaum says before plunging ahead to allow seabed mining, Pacific Island countries should consider the experience of Papua New Guinea which lost out by investing in the failed Solwara mining project led by Nautilus Minerals which was the forerunner of DeepGreen.
