By Netani Rika
With the COVID-19 Pandemic maintaining its crippling grip on the Pacific, legislators have struggled to find alternative sources of income to buoy national economies.
On the rocky outcrop of Nauru in the Central Pacific, the situation is dire.
The second nation in the region to gain independence, the once mineral-rich republic has fallen on hard times due to a lethal combination of extravagance, poor financial management and corruption.
In 1970, Nauru earned a staggering $AUD120million (US$88.4million) annually while spending $AUD30million. Each year it would put roughly $AUD80million into trust.
Now its phosphate supplies are long exhausted, and much of Nauru’s real estate investment portfolio worth more than $AUD1billion – including hotels in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and the United States – has been sold.
Heavily reliant on Australia, Nauru has hosted detention camps for asylum seekers in order to create revenue and employment.
Now that arrangement to ‘process’ of refugees and asylum seekers is nearing an end, and Nauru has been forced to seek alternative income for its 10,000-odd population.
Last month, President Lionel Aingimea agreed to a deal with The Minerals Company – formerly Deep Green Metals – which will lead to a $USD75million ocean exploration project to find sources of battery metals for electrical vehicles. TMC is up against a deadline of 2024 when it hopes to begin production of 25% of the world’s electric vehicle batteries.
Underway in waters off Nauru, the research involves 57 people – 37 of them mineral researchers – aboard the vessel, Maersk Launcher. “Environmental Expedition 5B, which focuses on characterizing the pelagic or open sea component of the marine environment in its NORI-D contract area, is conducting research on site in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean,’’ TMC announced in a media release last month.
“The research campaign is the first of five science expeditions planned for this year as part of an ongoing, multi-year seafloor-to-surface research program — the most rigorous and integrated deep-sea study to date.”
The current expedition involves institutions including the University of Hawaii, Texas A&M University and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). Researchers will study water temperatures, depths, pressure, sediment on the ocean floor and nodules from which they hope to harvest mineral rich deposits to use in battery manufacture.
Other organisations involved in the current study include Pelagic Research Services, LLC, Gravity Marine, and UTEC Services.
The Metals Company Environment Manager Dr Michael Clarke described the project as challenging. “We’re motivated by the potential of our research to expand society’s understanding of the deep sea and analyse the impact of TMC’s proposed operations.”
TMC is not new to the Pacific. In its previous life as Deep Green Metals, the company carried out exploratory work in Papua New Guinea on the ill-fated Solwara 1 project.
Licensed by the United Nations’ International Seabed Authority, Canada’s Nautilus and Deep Green searched for polymetallic nodules the size of potatoes. These are the sources of minerals which the company hoped to harvest using machines similar to vacuum cleaners.
In 2007, Nautilus failed, and PNG lost $USD120million in investment. Nautilus CEO, David Heydon, formed DeepGreen Metals which has now been subsumed by The Metals Company which continues research in Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga.
The International Seabed Authority has issued 30 international exploration licences, 25 of them in the Pacific and 18 in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone being explored by TMC.
Last month President Aingimea wrote to the Authority asking it “to complete the adoption of rules, regulations, and procedures required to facilitate the approval of plans of work for exploitation in the area within two years.”
However a coalition of civil society organisations in the Pacific has called for caution. “We appeal to you to reconsider,” the coalition said in a recent letter to President Aingimea.
“While we recognise that such a decision to trigger the two-year rule is a sovereign decision, although required by contract with a private company, we believe the decision will generate a set of events that will incur reputational damage to the Nauru’s standing in the global community and in the long term prove not to have been in the best interest of Nauru and her people.”
Despite this opposition, Nauru went ahead under UNCLOS Part XI and issued a licence ahead of the international mining codes and environmental regulations negotiations being concluded.
Pacific churches and environmental groups are part of the coalition which has objected to mining on the basis of insufficient scientific data on the sustainability of the oceans if mining takes place.
“We appeal to you, not to be the Pacific Island state that goes down in history as the one that jump-started the issuance of an exploitation license by prematurely forcing through mining regulations during a pandemic and against growing public concerns regarding DSM,” the CSOs appealed to Aingimea. “It is our view that it would be in Nauru’s best long-term interest to allow for thorough consultations and negotiations on the international mining regulations to be concluded prior to any licensing of exploitation of DSM in the AREA. The mining regulations, negotiated and agreed to by the global community, should afford protection to Nauru as a Sponsoring State in the longer term.”
For now, Kiribati, Tonga and the Cook Islands will watch the Nauru situation unfold as they also hope to exploit their mineral-rich oceans.
