By Nic Maclellan
Pacific leaders have joined a major oceans summit hosted by the French government in the port city of Brest, addressing climate change, illegal fishing, ocean acidification and plastics pollution. However, beyond the summit’s focus on sustainability, host nation France is also pressing ahead with research programs on seabed minerals and offshore exploration for hydrocarbons and rare earths, opening the way for future deep sea mining.
From 9-11 February, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Henry Puna, Pacific Community (SPC) Director General Stuart Minchin and the Presidents of Palau and French Polynesia addressed the “One Ocean” summit. Papua New Guinea Prime Minister, James Marape, cancelled his attendance, after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in Beijing, en route to France, where he hoped to discuss French investment in PNG’s LNG industry.
Addressing the summit in his role as Pacific Oceans Commissioner, Henry Puna highlighted the Forum’s 2021 ‘Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the face of Climate Change-related Sea-level rise.’ He noted that “any action in your own waters can have transboundary impacts on other countries and on our global commons. This is particularly true with marine pollution, including radioactive discharge.”
French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch pledged to create a network of marine protected areas of at least 500,000 km² within the exclusive economic zone claimed by France (a tenth of the vast EEZ that extends more than 5 million km² around French Polynesia’s five archipelagos).
At the summit, the European Union (EU) announced formation of a “High Ambition Coalition on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction” (BBNJ) to finalise an agreement on the sustainable use of the high seas; BBNJ negotiations are soon to resume after COVID restrictions scuttled talks in 2020-21. Another major focus of the summit was to end plastic pollution of the oceans, promoting the reuse and recycling of plastics. Pacific nations like Vanuatu have already moved ahead on this issue, with bans on single use plastics.
The summit also called for research and investment in other sectors, such as renewable offshore energy, reef protection and blue biotechnologies.
The final communiqué, the Brest Commitments for the Oceans, pledges joint action to halt the degradation of the oceans, “to preserve biodiversity, stop over-exploitation of marine resources, fight pollution and mitigate climate change.”
Seabed mining
The summit, however, had a reduced focus on controversial debates over deep sea mining (DSM). This battle is currently being played out in the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is rushing to adopt commercial mining regulations to enable applications from countries and companies for mining permits in the international seabed area.
There are significant differences amongst Forum member states over the issue. Fiji has pushed for a regional DSM moratorium, while church and civil society groups are campaigning for a total ban, concerned over environmental hazards and potential damage to fisheries and biodiversity. In contrast, Nauru, Cook Islands and other nations are forging ahead with plans in collaboration with transnational corporations. France, like other major powers in the region, is joining this rush on the new frontier of the deep ocean.
Despite the focus on environmental sustainability at this month’s One Ocean summit, France is gearing up a major research program focussed on economic, strategic and commercial interests.
For more than a decade, successive French governments have expanded government programs and institutions focussed on deep sea mining. In January 2011, the French government established the Comité pour les Métaux Stratégiques – a committee on seabed and strategic minerals. In June that year, the government also established the Comité interministériel de la Mer (CIMER), a ministerial committee for the oceans, chaired by the Prime Minister.
In December 2013, CIMER launched an inter-ministerial research program on accessing deep seabed minerals, involving French government ministries along with universities, private companies and government research centres. The focus on strategic minerals and the oceans is complemented by renewed interest from French corporations such as Technip, which have invested in research on seabed mining.
In January 2021, CIMER adopted a “National Strategy for the Exploration and Exploitation of Mineral Resources in the Deep Seabed.” In May, French Prime Minister Jean Castex proposed an action plan to implement this strategy over the next three years, including a priority to “valorise the resources of the deep seabed in connection with France’s industrial potential.”
Last September, the French government hosted the 2021 IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille. However environmental organisations were horrified that the host nation refused to join 81 other governments and government agencies to support a resolution calling for a moratorium on deep seabed mining, until rigorous safeguards are in place.
France’s refusal to act comes as President Emmanuel Macron looks to new frontiers in European industrial policy, in the face of rising Chinese power and US-China competition. On 12 October, Macron announced a 30 billion euro “France 2030” program, including two billion euros for research programs on outer space and the deep ocean: “To prepare France for 2030, research must be accelerated. If we now start the work in depth, we can have wild dreams about the sea by 2030. We must go much further and stronger.”
Macron stressed that this research agenda was focussed on “exploration”, not “exploitation” of deep ocean resources, but also underlined the potential for “access to rare and strategic metals” (under French law, strategic metals remain under the control of the French State rather than the local governments of French Polynesia, New Caledonia and other overseas dependencies).
The vast Pacific is central to this research agenda. France has long subsidised an array of government and private research organisations that have extensive programs across the region in the social, natural and environmental sciences. These include the Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (French Research Institute for Ocean Exploitation); the mining research institute Bureau de recherche géologique et minière (BRGM); and the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), which is located next to the SPC headquarters in Noumea.
Collaboration with EU
Over the last decade, the French National Assembly and Senate have held a series of inquiries on oceans policy and the role of France’s Pacific dependencies in expanding economic and strategic opportunities.
With overseas dependencies in every ocean of the world, France is eager to engage with the Pacific Islands Forum’s “Blue Pacific” agenda. A 2014 report from the French Senate noted: “The exercise of our sovereignty over these vast stretches, and the international competition we face, are certainly a difficult cost to bear in this period of crisis. But this is an investment for the future, an historic opportunity for growth and expansion. France, with its overseas territories on the front rank, must seize this opportunity and bet on the blue economy.”
A key element of France’s oceans policy is to integrate activities and policy with the European Union (EU). Between January and June this year, France holds the presidency of the EU Council, which rotates between the 27 EU-member states. Successive French governments have played a key part in forging the ‘EU Strategy for Co-operation in the Indo-Pacific’, which was adopted in September 2021.
Addressing this month’s One Ocean summit, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said: “The question of the seas and oceans is at the heart of 21st century European geopolitics that we, the EU-27, must invent, in order to defend our interests, as well as promote our models of law, humanism and progress in a world on the brink of brutalisation.”
This France-EU collaboration is clearly evident in our region. Through the SPC and other regional agencies, the EU and France are pushing into the Blue Pacific, with a focus on resources in maritime areas under French control – the 7 million km² EEZ around its three Pacific dependencies and Clipperton Atoll. For example, France was a major contributor to the EU-funded regional project coordinated by SPC-SOPAC on legal frameworks for deep-sea mining in the Pacific. France’s former Ambassador to Fiji, Sujiro Seam, now serves as EU Head of Delegation for the Pacific.
Seabed mining in French Polynesia?
Teva Rohfritsch is Senator for French Polynesia in the French Senate in Paris, and a former Vice President and Minister of the Blue Economy in the Tapura Huiraatira government led by President Edouard Fritch. Last month, Rohfritsch was appointed rapporteur for a Senate fact finding mission on ‘The exploration, protection and exploitation of the seabed: what strategy for France?’
Welcoming the establishment of the mission, Rohfritsch said: “Thanks to its overseas territories, France has the second largest EEZ in the world, after that of the United States. On this question of the seabed, our country therefore has economic and strategic interests to preserve, but also standards, values and ethics to defend.”
Rohfritsch has long campaigned for the French state in Paris to expand co-ordination with the Pacific territories on ocean policy. Last October, he authored a major paper on the oceans, arguing: “With major geopolitical stakes at the heart of these coveted oceans, France must take its place – on the one hand, in terms of the management of marine natural resources, the last breadbaskets of the planet; on the other hand, on the challenges of protecting the oceans and preserving of the immense source of biodiversity that these territories cover.”
Rohfritsch noted: “With its EEZ of more than 11 million km², France has never been so large, even during the time of the Napoleonic Empire… If we count undersea claims, France can potentially increase its continental shelf by another 1.5 million km². Through this means it becomes, de facto, the largest sub-maritime nation in the world.”
Rohfritsch sees French research agencies playing a crucial role in determining the extend of seabed resources, without committing – yet – to mining: “In collaboration with IFREMER, French Polynesian authorities have chosen to adopt an extensive and non-intrusive exploration process. It is a two-step strategy that aims to improve our understanding of the resources and to allow the census of the marine heritage – so that, in the long term, we can make an informed decision on exploitation or protection.”
However this agenda is contested by independence movements in New Caledonia and French Polynesia, which are actively asserting indigenous rights over marine resources under international law.
Resolutions of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation have stressed “the inalienable rights of the people of French Polynesia to the ownership, control and disposal of their natural resources, including marine resources and undersea minerals”, while UN General Assembly resolution 67/126 states: “Any administering power that deprives the colonial people of Non Self-Governing Territories of the exercise of their legitimate rights over their natural resources … violates the solemn obligations it has assumed under the Charter of the United Nations.”
