While this news is good for the marine environment, it is important to look at the long term picture and realize that as the economy recovers, investors will again begin looking at funding this speculative, extractive industry.

As a result, the communities, establishing themselves as the Bismarck Solomon Seas Indigenous Peoples Council, have issued a statement opposing any deep sea mining until community concerns are heard and addressed.

Oceans and Communities stands with the communities in their opposition to deep sea mining efforts in the last refuges of the ocean.

Send an email today to Nautilus Minerals, which is spearheading the effort to mine in the territorial waters of PNG.

The full statement follows and is signed by some 70 individuals representing tribes and associations.

KARKUM NATIONAL SEA BED MINING FORUM STATEMENT
June 25-27th, 2008
We, indigenous people of the Bismarck-Solomon Sea declare our rights to Free Prior Informed Consent over anything potentially impacting our land or sea resources, and that this right arises from our customary law and is outlined in the UN Declaration on Indigenous People.

The Goals and Directives of our National Constitution commit the Nation to ensuring the equal opportunity of all citizens to participate in and benefit from the development of our country;
And the conservation of our national resources and environment to be used for the collective of us all and replenished for the benefit of future generations.

We declare and reaffirm our customary rights and connections to the Bismarck and Solomon Seas including economic, cultural, social, political and religious rights. Our livelihood and culture is based around these oceans, and it is an inseparable part of our culture, identity and way of life. Our lives are interconnected with the cycles of the sea, it is our calendar and we are dependent on it for our survival.

We met in Karkum village to discuss our concerns over seabed mining in our seas.

The protection of the ocean and coastal areas of the Bismarck and Solomon Seas is of the utmost importance to all of us and our future generations, and we will never compromise in protection of our seas.

The seabed mining currently proposed and already under exploration lease for our seas-the first of its kind in history-is of serious concern to us.

There has been a lack of any meaningful consultation of the indigenous people of the Bismarck Solomon;s sea regarding the effects of this mining activity.

There are no current laws to manage this activity and the current draft proposals for a PNG sea bed mining policy and an oceans mining act have not been made available to us.

There has been a lack of adequate research to understand the sea bed environment, the currents, the ecology and its true value. The impacts and changes to the environment from this activity cannot be accurately predicted.

Using our own traditional knowledge of the complexity, richness, and sensitivity of this marine environment, and calling on the international precautionary principle, we believe there could be serious long term and potentially irreversible impacts by this activity.

Concerned by the fact that exploration is occurring without proper regulation, monitoring or consultation across the entire region.

Concerned that there has been a failure to set aside areas to protect them from the impacts of these activities, and that sanctuaries for threatened species, and habitat and spawning and migration areas for our rich fishery resources have not been created.

We are aware that the socio-economic and environmental costs of mining in PNG are often greater than the benefits. While company conducting the seabed mining operation-Nautilus-has no track record from which we can judge its environmental and social responsibility, we are very concerned by the poor performance of other mining companies in other areas in PNG.

It is the people of the Bismarck Solomon Seas who bear the risks and impacts of these activities while others would reap the benefits of these activities.

We suggest to the government and companies involved that they should concentrate on properly managing existing mines before they propose or permit new areas to be developed. Instead we ask our government and others to focus on constructive alternatives of low impact sustainable industries.

We don’t want our health, livelihood and resources to be subjected to a large scale experiment.

The burden of proof to show that these activities are safe must rest upon the companies and government.

Given all these things above, we do not consent to the sea bed mining activities in our waters and seas.

We ask that the government and industry recognise and engage our newly established Bismarck Solomon Seas Indigenous Peoples Council in any and all matters regarding the Bismarck Solomon Seas eco-region.

We therefore call on the government and companies involved to cease any and all operations until all our concerns above are addressed and resolved to our full satisfaction.

According to the article, a representative of the women from Kananam village, located in Madang Province, the village is no longer able to make ends meet by supplying fish to the town.

The women of the village are having sex in order to get the bycatch from a local canned fish company. The implication is that either the local fish supply is no longer as healthy as it once was or that competition from industrial vessels have forced out traditional fishers.

This sad situation demonstrates how dwindling fish supplies will force greater numbers of people into poverty and greater economic competition to feed their families.

It is critical to meet both human and ecological needs that we protect ocean resources from unsustainable use, especially from industrial fishing vessels that might be draining local food supplies.

Meanwhile , Nautilus has yet to publicly release an Environmental Impact study of the proposed deep sea mining operations. With operations planned to begin as early as 2010, Nautilus is not providing a lot of time for the public to analyze and respond to potential environmental impacts.

On June 15th, two tuna fishing-free zones will come into effect, one between Papua New Guinea and Palau, and another bordered by PNG, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Tuna vessels fishing within their exclusive economic zones will have to carry fisheries observers at all times. Fish aggregating devices or FADs, will be banned for the third quarter of each year.

With the Pacific providing half the tuna consumed globally, this is an important step.

However, there is growing concern over how these nations will enforce these rules in light of the illegal fishing occurring in the region as well as the lack of resources (vessels, cash, and staff) to enforce rules in such a large area.

A step in the right direction, but hopefully one that will be properly enforced.

On Sunday, a hundred of villagers, including 43 women, were arrested as they protested that the port project would take their farming lands without adequate compensation. The actions of the villagers forced the suspension of the construction and state police were called in.

To add your voice in opposition to the project, send an email today.

Oceans and Communities is supporting the effort to oppose the port project by helping organize a scientists’ statement calling for the protection of the sea turtles and for Tata to reconsider its placement of the port.

Orissa is home to the world’s largest nesting site of olive ridley sea turtles. Additional animals at risk includes rare species of snakes, crabs, and frogs.

To add your voice in defense of the turtles, the oceans and the coastal fishing communities, send an email today to the company building the port.

This raises the larger question of whether some things, such as the deep ocean, are best left alone, especially when scientific exploration opens the door to exploitation and potential devastation.

In response to news that River Neptune Minerals is seeking licenses to mine seafloor massive sulphide deposits off New Zealand:

Dr de Ronde of GNS Science in Wellington notes that these “very serious players” are benefiting, to a large degree, from data that New Zealand scientists have been collecting for about a decade.

The scientists were among the first to discover that deep underwater hydro-thermal vents were creating mineral-rich chimneys in vast fields.

The article further states:

Neptune acknowledges it is benefiting from the New Zealand government work, calling it “significant academic research”.

And this use of government research data has also benefited Nautilus which is active in Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

The article states:

Nautilus has become the world leader in undersea mining, exploiting SMS data collected by Australian government scientists in Papua New Guinea waters.

And that…

In Tonga last week 10 Nautilus staff joined the University of Hawaii exploration ship Kilo Moana, which Nautilus has chartered to survey the Valu Fa, 2000 metres below the surface.

Researchers and miners are making odd bedfellows. Publicly funded resources are being rented out or seized in the name of commercial exploration and potentially widespread destruction of ocean ecosystems through the use of unproven and largely experimental mining techniques.

Deep sea mining for minerals has never occurred before and we do not know the full range of environmental risks at this point.

I can understand some of the arguments that scientists will make about this relationship with miners:

• It allows scientists to develop a baseline for what is there.
• It allows the development of a framework for protection.

But those frameworks for protection are always political and lag far behind the economic juggernauts who want access to the resources without the constraints of regulations or standards. Will mining begin before there has been a protection framework that has been guided by all this scientific data being gathered? Is the scientific threshold for commercial exploration lower than the threshold for developing protective measures?

Additionally, publicly funded government research is being used to benefit private economic activity without any substantial recovery of those invested government funds beyond standard fees and applications.

It is imperative that science be used to guide policy development ahead of permitting commercial mining of the deep ocean. Otherwise, the role of deep sea scientists may be relegated to witnessing and documenting the decline of this incredible ocean wilderness.

Australian scientists have found that:

A healthy fish population could be the key to ensuring coral reefs survive the impacts of climate change, pollution, overfishing and other threats.

Pollution from runoff (including fertilizers from industrial biofuel projects) causes the increased growth of plants, such as kelp and algae, which can prevent the regrowth of coral when these plants overrun areas of dead coral.

Certain reef fish species, such as parrotfish and rabbitfish, play a key role as “lawnmowers” consuming the excess plant species and providing the space for coral to regenerate.

This information underscores the importance of marine protected areas that can allow fish populations to grow which would then have the ripple effect of enabling greater resiliency of coral reef systems to the increasing threats of both climate change and pollution.

Global shipping vessel traffic is on the increase. Worldwide new ports are being built and expanded.

Organizations such as Friends of the Earth are leading the charge to ban bunker fuel nationally, while Seaflow is calling for speed limits for large vessels in National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine Protected Areas. These actions are part of the solution.

But on a larger scale, we need to be smart about this increased shipping traffic. More large vessels will inevitably lead to more incidents whether in the San Francisco Bay Area or Korea or the Black Sea. Do we have the rules and regulations in place to address this increased traffic?

On a society-wide level, support the efforts of FOE and Seaflow to get some of these rules in place. On a personal level, you can take a stand against this increased traffic by buying locally sourced and locally made products.  Sounds a bit simple, but every little step moves us along in the right direction.