The government of Papua New Guinea has decided to go ahead with the world’s first deep sea mine despite protests from local advocacy groups. The company Nautilus Minerals has been granted a licence in January this year to extract gold and copper from the sea floor.
The Canadian company will be mining in the Bismark Sea about 50 km north of Rabaul. The environmental impact statement for the project was approved recently by the Paupua New Guinea government and the work on the mine will commence in the next couple of years.
However critics of the project say that the Pacific region should not be used as a testing ground for these new deep sea mining techniques. Maureen Penjueli from the Pacific Network on Globalization said that there had been no debate on if the deep sea mining was a good idea for the region. She also said that the Pacific Island countries have had an alternative development model of mining forced on them by outsiders.
Maureen Penjueli said that they simply didn’t think that the countries had the resources , the capacity or the experience to be managing and monitoring such a large project particularly in the area where they know very little about the impact of such a large project going ahead. Despite all the protests the project has taken yet another step closer to the development of the mine after the Papua New Guinea government awarded the lease.