In-depth results from a recent and controversial poll will be shared at todays Deep Ocean Symposium, hosted jointly by Te Puna Vai Marama and Te Ipukarea Society and held at USP.

Te Puna Vai Marama, also known as the Cook Islands Centre for Research, conducted an opinion poll online last month to gauge how members of the local community feel about deep-sea mining.

Cook Islands News reported that the poll, which was designed by international polling firm Ipsos, revealed 66 per cent of respondents opposed deep-sea mining. The Seabed Minerals Authority called the poll flawed, criticising its methodology. 

At today’s research symposium, senior research fellow Merita Tuariʻi will share unpublished poll results and explain the methods by which researchers have analysed them.

“We have already released information about the demographics, the proportions of those who support and oppose seabed mining and what arguments were most and least convincing to participants,” Tuariʻi says. “In my talk I will focus more on the results that were statistically significant, for example, a significant amount of women indicated they opposed seabed mining, while a significant amount of those who support mining were men, and older ages.”

Other notable poll results include the number of respondents who agreed that seabed mining will negatively affect the deep ocean and the animals living there, as well as the number of respondents who agreed that seabed mining could lessen the Cook Islands government’s financial dependence on other countries and external institutions.

“It is clear that Cook Islanders care about our country, and want to see it depend less on others, and mining might support that,” Tuariʻi says of this result. “This is about a sense of national pride.”

Additional findings gleaned through the poll include the number of respondents who care about the environment and don’t fully understand whether and how mining would impact its health. Some results, Tuariʻi says, were unexpected.

“There were some statistics we did not expect too, for example, the argument that the deep sea has cultural and spiritual significance had a lot of support from those who support deep sea mining,” she says. “This appears quite contrary, but maybe it is not. We don’t know. These kinds of areas need to be investigated more through social science.”

The Deep Ocean Symposium features a cast of researchers in addition to Tuariʻi, which includes Professor Andrew Sweetman, whose work ignited a worldwide discussion about the oxygen being produced in the deep sea. Also featured in the lineup of speakers is Dr. Pascale Hatcher, whose career has focussed on researching land-based mining in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Hatcher, a political scientist with the University of Canterbury, is interested in how global debates over deep-sea mining often overshadow local discussions and decisions related to mining.

“I’m interested in how and why mining, which is often promoted in the name of poverty reduction and development, often fails to deliver on these promises,” Hatcher wrote in an email. “This is because mining governance is often the product of a complex array of multi-scalar political and economic interests that fail to prioritise what in my opinion should be at the heart of decisions around mining: ‘Mining to what end? By whom and for whom? With what implications for future generations?’” 

The Deep Ocean Symposium begins today at 8:30am. The symposium is free to all Cook Islanders. –TPVM