DEEP SEA MINING CAMPAIGN, KIWIS AGAINST SEABED MINING …

… MINING WATCH CANADA and SWAKOPMUND MATTERS on 5 November 2015

On the occasion of the The World Ocean Council’s “Sustainable Ocean Summit” (SOS) to be held in Singapore from 9 to 11 November 2015 the above four Groups issued a media release today.

The text follows below.

The new ventures to mine the sea bed will never be sustainable. Putting mining into the sea makes it more expensive, the benefits less certain, and the harm to the ocean far longer to manifest than for land mining. This kind of mining has not proven itself even on economic terms yet; under the guise of sustainability the added damage to the ocean environment by chasing after minerals or commodities just because they are there and of potential value will surely be down played at the conference.

SOS – The world’s Oceans facing an emergency and Singapore Summit set to worsen the crisis

SINGAPORE, 5 November 2015

Civil society organisations from across the globe are highly critical of an international oceans conference to be held in Singapore next week. Mis-named the Sustainable Ocean Summit, the conference is touted as providing a platform to advance industry-driven solutions to ocean sustainability challenges.

Indeed the world’s oceans are in a dire state largely due to industrial activity. Catastrophic extinctions are forecasted over the next two decades if pollution, resource extraction and climate change are not mitigated [1]. In apparent ignorance of this, the Summit’s program maps a way forward based on maintaining existing forms of ocean exploitation and facilitating new ones, such as seabed mining.

“What the world’s oceans need are community and government driven solutions to the crisis created by industrial capitalism”, says the Namibian based Swakopmund Matters. “Our national Government in Namibia respected the concerns of its citizens about the unknown risks of seabed mining and has established a moratorium on this industry. Where are the voices of civil society at this summit on ocean sustainability? ”

Swakopmund Matters continued, “As highlighted in the Pope’s recent Encyclical on the Environment [2], we pursue at the planet’s peril the relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment in the name of profits, excessive faith in technology, and political shortsightedness. This conference looks set to reinforce all of these destructive elements.”

Namibia is not the only country to lead the way with a precautionary approach to seabed mining. A moratorium has also been declared in Northern
Australia [3] and in New Zealand the Environmental Protection Authority set a global precedent by declining [4] the country’s first two seabed mining applications over the last eighteen months.

Kiwis Against Seabed Mining notes that “With 99% of public submissions opposed to the first sea bed mining application, it’s clear that there is no social licence for an industry that promises little but further degradation of the marine environment. It’s ironic that the acronym for the Summit is SOS as this does accurately describe the state industry has left our oceans in.”

The Deep Sea Mining Campaign states that “there is no place for the promotion of deep sea mining at a conference purporting to be about ocean sustainability. The world’s oceans are already under intense pressure. To discuss deep sea mining in the same breath as corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. This conference is not about the sustainability of our oceans but about securing industry access to marine resources. This is incredibly short sighted even from the narrow point of view of industry self interest: once marine ecosystems collapse so will industry profits as well as local, national and regional economies.”

According to MiningWatch Canada, “Changing operating environments from terrestrial to marine does not change the nature of the mining industry itself. Communities all around the world bear testimony to the ruthless devastation caused by mining in the name of profits. Now the same industry and the same investors with the same profit motives are seeking to plunder the oceans. This Summit’s attempt to dress this up in the language of sustainability will not enable the beast to change its spots.”
Swakopmund Matters 21 October 2015 (For Swakopmund Matters the environment of the Namibian coastline and its ocean matters)