Niwa will help a deep-sea mining company mitigate potential damage caused by its planned mining of the seabed in the Pacific Ocean.
The Crown Research Institute will help assess and manage the environmental impacts of the Metals Company’s planned mining in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, an area of international seas east of Kiribati.
The emerging industry has divided the Pacific countries. Nauru and Kiribati have sponsored mining projects and the Cook Islands approved three exploration permits in February.
Four countries – Palau, Samoa, Fiji and Federated States of Micronesia – have formed an alliance of countries that want a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
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New Zealand participates in negotiations to draft laws for deep-sea mining at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), and cannot allow such mining to take place if the negotiations do not lead to “effective” environmental protection.
Earlier this week, The Metals Company announced on the Nasdaq grant that Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Niwa would assist it with an environmental management plan for mining operations in the Clarion Clipperton Zone.
The work would provide “the scientific basis of … a state-of-the-art predictive system” that would reduce the impact of mining “as much as possible,” the company said.
Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga have all sponsored the Metals Company’s proposed mining of metal-rich nodules at the bottom of the ocean.
Marten van Dijl/Supplied
Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior for the Maersk Launcher, a vessel chartered by DeepGreen, one of the leading companies in deep-sea mine exploration.
A Niwa spokeswoman confirmed that the agency was helping the mining company. She didn’t directly answer questions about why Niwa was helping the mining company, whether it was being paid, or whether government agencies had supported the decision.
the guard has reported that the Metals Company paid the Australian agency and Niwa $1.5 million.
“Niwa provides independent, objective, world-class environmental research with globally renowned experts. Niwa’s science and advice will then inform policy and decision-making,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
Eugenie Sage, spokeswoman for the Oceans Green Party, said there was growing research showing that noise from mining on the seafloor affected marine mammals and created harmful sediment plumes.
“We don’t want mining to start on the seabed because the oceans are under tremendous pressure from absorbing 90% of the heat from global warming, from increasing ocean acidification from carbon dioxide, from overfishing, by plastic pollution. additional pressure from mining on the seabed.
“And it’s continuing that really exploitative approach to the oceans, rather than looking at how we can recover these precious metals from electronic waste, tons of which go to landfill every year.”
She wondered if NIWA was involved in government negotiations with the International Seabed Authority. This would amount to a “conflict of interest,” she said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the ministry had not spoken to NIWA about its decision to assist the mining company, as NIWA was operationally independent from the government.
The spokesman said NIWA was not part of the New Zealand delegation to the ISA negotiations. A NIWA expert, Malcolm Clark, served on the ISA’s Legal and Technical Committee.
The government’s position was that, in international waters, “deep sea mining should not take place unless we can ensure effective protection of the marine environment,” the spokesman said.
“If the ongoing negotiations at the ISA do not lead to effective protection of the marine environment, New Zealand will call for no deep-sea mining.”
The offices of Secretary of State Nanaia Mahuta and Secretary of State Ayesha Verrall, responsible for Crown Research Institutes, did not respond to a request for comment.