Saturday 24 August 2024 | Written by Te Ipukarea Society | Published in Environment, National
Last month, the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority sought community feedback on the Draft Seabed Minerals (Minerals Harvesting and Other Mining) Regulations 2024.
This was the second draft of these regulations we have reviewed, having given our first lot of comments back in 2020. Despite the considerable effort on our part to comment, we never received any feedback on which, if any, of our suggestions were incorporated into this second draft.
Despite this, Te Ipukarea Society have submitted comments on this second draft of the Regulations through the SBMA online submission portal.
This required going through the 81-page document, as well as cross referencing other legislation referred to in the regulations to see the context. This again required considerable commitment of time on the part of the Society. We assume that very few, if any, other submissions were received from the community, though possibly some of the mining companies may have submitted comments.
Te Ipukarea Society provided a covering letter to summarise our main concerns with these second draft regulations. Our main point was that these regulations are premature.
The Cook Islands Government repeatedly states that it has made no decision to proceed with mining. If that is the case, then there is no need to finalise the regulations now. Indeed, there are pressing reasons not to.
The following list provides some of these but is by no means exhaustive.
The recent discovery of dark oxygen produced by nodules, well outside the realms of existing scientific knowledge, is a strong case in point. It is way too early to say what the implications for the marine ecosystem are, but it is safe to say that they are likely to be profound.
The discovery that nodules, at least from the Clarion Clipperton Zone, are radioactive and special care may need to be taken when handling them, is another reason for caution.
Potential impacts of mining to our migratory tuna fish stock and other marine species, so important for our economy, livelihoods and culture, have not been studied.
For all these reasons, Te Ipukarea Society urges the Cook Islands Government not to adopt the seabed minerals mining regulations at this stage, and unless and until the issues discussed above are resolved.
Comments
John Maxwell on 25/08/2024
Two words are now relevant to this topic. Dark oxygen. "Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor" published 22 July 2024 in Nature Geoscience.