Mining the Pacific – future proofing or fool’s gold?

“They look like chocolate truffles, just don’t eat them,” jokes Jean Mason, the curator of the Cook Islands Library and Museum as she reaches right into a show cupboard and pulls out a black, knobbly rock.

The “rock” she is holding might properly decide the way forward for this Pacific nation.

It is what scientists name a polymetallic nodule, created over millennia as minerals accumulate on the seabed.

Packed stuffed with cobalt, nickel and manganese, these historic formations at the moment are worthwhile: the metals go into batteries that energy fashionable life, from electrical vehicles to cell phones.

They have grow to be a supply of friction within the low-lying Pacific Islands, that are among the many nations most susceptible to local weather change.

With rising sea ranges, the ocean – or Moana, because it’s referred to as in Māori and lots of different Polynesian languages – stays their best risk, however additionally it is their largest supplier.

They fish in it they usually reside off the vacationers drawn to their turquoise waters, however now the Cook Islands desires to dig deeper, as much as 6,000m (19,685 ft), the place the nodules lie.

It’s a pet undertaking for Prime Minister Mark Brown, who believes it’s going to reshape this nation of 15 volcanic islands within the southern Pacific.

The hope is that the revenue from these metals might result in extra prosperity than the islanders had ever imagined.

Except the promise of deep sea mining might carry an environmental value.

Proponents say that harvesting these nodules to be used in renewables will assist the world transition from fossil fuels. They additionally consider that it’s much less invasive than mining on land.

But critics argue a lot continues to be unknown concerning the affect of extracting what is without doubt one of the final untouched components of the planet. They say there ought to be a pause on deep sea mining till there may be extra analysis on its results on marine life and the oceanic ecosystem.

When Jean was rising up, she says, the nodules had been solely regarded as helpful for making knife blades.

“We had no idea that cell phones were going to come, and wind turbines and electric cars.”

Nodules are a household dialog right here and Jean is firmly in favour of mining them. Her husband is a lawyer for one of many firms given exploration licences by the federal government.

The library the place she works is stacked stuffed with vacation reads left or donated by vacationers – tourism is the nation’s largest earner, accounting for greater than 70% of its GDP.

It features a newspaper archive.

Jean shoves a photocopy of an article from the Cook Islands News into my hand. It’s from 1974 and the headline reads “100% concentration of manganese nodules”.

“My point is, we’ve been talking about this for 50-plus years – I think the moratorium time is over.”

The Pacific Ocean covers near a 3rd of the planet. And the nodules buried in it have been identified about for the reason that nineteenth Century.

But within the Nineteen Sixties, American geologist John L Mero revealed a e-book setting out the case that the seabed might present most of the world’s mineral wants.

It’s not a simple course of – nor an affordable one. But when costs of metals like nickel soared in 2008, it seemed extra interesting.

Then Covid hit. Tourists left and the cash dried up.

Together with the affect of local weather change – rising sea ranges and unpredictable climate patterns – the nation shortly realised it wanted one thing else to depend on.

The Cook Islands’ Seabeds Minerals Authority estimates there are 12 billion moist tonnes of polymetallic nodules of their waters.

Some individuals argue mining the seabed isn’t financially viable. With know-how transferring so quick, these metals might not even be in demand by the point it will get going.

But there are takers. And in 2022, the Cook Islands gave out three licences to firms to begin exploring the potential for deep-sea mining.

They’re now working with scientists in researching the environmental affect.

“Nothing we do in life is risk-free. So, if you want zero risk you need to go and sit in a little room with cotton wool around you,” says Hans Smit, who runs Moana Minerals, one of many companies that has an exploration licence.

“We have this lifestyle, this lifestyle has a price. If we don’t want mining and we don’t want to get all these metals, we need to stop doing just about everything we’re doing.”

Hans is from South Africa and moved right here to be a part of the group. To him, the deep-sea metals are an “incredible resource” that might profit the islanders.

While there is a rising name to delay deep-sea mining till rules by the International Seabed Authority are drawn up, this solely applies to worldwide waters.

The Cook Islands nonetheless have enormous reserves of their very own of their nationwide waters – their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – so, they’ll crack on regardless.

“We’re known as small-island developing states, but we like to call ourselves large ocean states,” says Rima Brown, a younger Cook Islander with a geography diploma who jokingly calls herself the poster baby for deep-sea mining.

Rima works for the Seabed Minerals Authority and far of her time is spent mapping the ocean mattress.

“While we’re only about 200 square kilometers in land mass, we have an exclusive economic zone of almost 2 million square kilometres,” she says.

That’s the equal of Mexico.

“It’s the only resource we’ve got,” Jean says.

“[Industrialised nations] destroy our atmosphere and then they’ve got a nerve to tell us, let’s leave your stuff in the seabed. How dare they tell us we can’t touch our resources?”

But it isn’t simply outsiders who’re against deep-sea mining within the Cook Islands.

Off the coast of Rarotonga, the biggest and most populous of the Cook Islands, a crowd of surfers, kayakers and swimmers collect round a big vaka, a standard Polynesian catamaran.

“Te Moana, Te Moana, Paruru ia ra, Paruru ia ra,” the individuals on board repeat – “Protect our ocean”, they’re chanting in Māori.

“We are asking for more time for robust independent research, more time for our people to be made better aware of what potential risk might look like,” says Alanah Matamaru Smith from the Te Ipukarea Society, an environmental organisation primarily based in Rarotonga.

“We’re seeing infrastructure being put up here on Rarotonga, accommodation for offshore mining companies to reside here, we’ve got draft mining regulations already in place. Actions are speaking a lot louder than words at the moment.”

Prime Minister Mark Brown, who’s driving this, additionally occurs to be the tourism minister and the seabed minerals minister. He’s made it clear he desires the Cook Islands to be a pacesetter within the business.

“It provides the opportunity for our kids to be able to study at any university in the world without having to incur a student loan,” says Brown, who has a imaginative and prescient of following the lead of Norway in establishing a sovereign wealth fund.

“It allows us to have the type of health care that our people have to go to New Zealand or Australia for. It allows our young people the opportunity to live fulfilling lives here in our country, without having to go to other countries to ply their trade in an industry that doesn’t exist here.”

To those that say a rustic threatened by local weather change dangers changing into a part of the issue, he argues he is looking for options.

“We know that for the last 20 years we haven’t been able to get the financing from the larger emitting countries, so we’ve got to look for ways to protect ourselves.”

But activist June Hosking is not satisfied.

She’s from one of many outer islands, Mauke, with a inhabitants of simply 300 individuals.

While the federal government has organised consultations with residents throughout the islands in addition to the massive diaspora in New Zealand, she says the potential downsides of the business are usually not being mentioned.

“People don’t like to rock the boat in the outer islands,” she says. “So, when we have these consultations, there’s only maybe three of us who would speak up.”

June says such is island life, many seek advice from the PM as simply Mark. She additionally says his spouse is married to her husband’s cousin.

But household connections do not cease her being seen as a little bit of a trouble-maker in asking questions.

“When locals say ‘Oh no, I stay neutral on [deep-sea mining]’, I say ‘you can’t drive very far in neutral’,” she laughs.

“There are times in your life when you need to actually make a stand for something – we are talking about our future here.”

Additional reporting by Lindle Markwell.

You can hearken to Katy Watson’s documentary from the Cook Islands on Assignment on the BBC World Service Radio.