The $20 trillion fight over who controls the seabed, Part 2

Honolulu,HAWAII — In order for their sovereignty to be recognized internationally, Indigenous Pacific peoples had to adopt the nation-state structure created by imperial powers, conform to geographic boundaries carved by their colonizers, and enter a global economic order that prizes extractive industries. Pacific peoples were effectively told, “You have to look like us in order for us to recognize you,” said Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, a political scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi from the Solomon Islands. 

Establishing a nation-state might seem like liberation, but in other ways it was a reentry into a Western political and economic order defined by colonial powers. “States function in particular ways,” Kabutaulaka said. “They do not always function on behalf of Indigenous peoples.”

Many Pacific island nations achieved their current political statuses in the wave of decolonization that marked the early years of the United Nations. Back then, Western powers were shifting their imperial strategies away from expansive empires and toward specific strategic strongholds. In the decades since, island governments have sought to compete in the global economy as they watch their residents out-migrate for jobs, schools, and medical care they can’t get back home. But that’s often involved embracing foreign investors and industries that have left a litany of environmental and social problems in their wake. 

“Independence is not decolonization,” Kabutaulaka said. “Inherently, the act of independence is an act of recolonizing.” 

Nauru is an example: Under German rule, phosphate was discovered and mined on the island at the beginning of the 20th century. By the end of WWI, more than 600,000 tons of the mineral were taken and sold to make commercial fertilizer in other countries, with the Indigenous people of Nauru receiving far less than 1 percent of its value. The mining continued for another 50 years after ownership of the island was passed to Britain, New Zealand, and then Australia. After independence in 1968, the country continued phosphate mining. Now, 80 percent of its territory has been stripped, its dusty, rocky inland area is now uninhabitable and unable to be farmed. 

The country has since shifted to selling fishing rights and detaining refugees and asylum seekers for Australia. One analysis for The Metals Company suggested mining could bring in $7.2 billion in royalties for both Nauru and the International Seabed Authority, with more than $30 billion in net revenue. 

In the Cook Islands, deep-sea revenue could be “transformational,” Prime Minister Mark Brown told reporters last year. A 2019 study suggested that deep-sea mining could be a multi-billion dollar industry within the Cook Islands alone, which is estimated to have the worldʻs largest collection of manganese nodules within its surrounding waters. The country is home to fewer than 17,000 people who earn a median annual income of just over $10,000 U.S. dollars. 

That kind of revenue would be alluring to most, but not to Teina Rongo, the first Cook Islander to get a doctorate in marine biology. “When I went abroad to study, seeing what’s happening in other parts of the Pacific, I started realizing the value of this way of life and what it brings to us,” he said. 

Rongo grew up fishing and farming and speaking his Māori language. But when he visited New Zealand, also known by the Māori name Aotearoa, and Hawaiʻi, he saw how easily Indigenous peoples can be marginalized in their own lands. It’s something he’s already seeing in his home in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands: More westernization has meant more reliance on unhealthy imported foods and more people getting sick and moving away to access medical care like dialysis. More development has meant the paving over of wetlands that once held taro fields, and more industrial fishing has led to fewer and fewer fish for local fishers.

Rongo sees his people’s choice as a binary one: There is no deep-sea mining that doesnʻt disturb the seafloor, or harm its inhabitants. And while many see the Cook Islands’ quest for more revenue as a given, Rongo isn’t one of them. 

“We don’t need to go in the same colonial pathway,” he said. “My concern is that if mining becomes a revenue generator for us, it’s just going to push us quicker in that direction. … And then we are going to lose who we are.”

Last summer, he flew to Honolulu with the Cook Islands’ delegation to a Pacific cultural festival. He and his fellow delegates later learned their journey was partially sponsored by the deep-sea mining industry. Over lunch in a mall in Waikiki, with luxury shops and a Tesla showroom, Rongo looked up at the towering buildings and said it felt like a warning of what Rarotonga could become if his people continued on a path to become a “developed” nation.

Imogen Ingram, another Cook Islands resident who helped Kahoʻohalahala petition the ISA to safeguard Indigenous heritage, is skeptical that mining will be as lucrative for her islands as many hope. Mining that far down in the ocean requires millions in upfront costs to pay for engineers and equipment. Companies like Tesla are creating electric vehicle batteries with little to no cobalt. The prices of metals have been volatile, with copper rising but manganese falling recently. 

Rashid Sumaila, a professor of ocean economics at the University of British Columbia, said deep-sea mining might lead to short-term profits for mining companies and some financial benefits for countries like the Cook Islands, but the long-term costs are significant in part because of the risks of environmental harm that could lead to expensive litigation. In 2019, a failed deep-sea mining venture in Papua New Guinea’s waters saddled the country’s government with a $120 million debt when the mining company it had invested in, Nautilus Minerals, went bankrupt. One of Nautilus’ former leading investors is now CEO of The Metals Company.

Under international law, Indigenous peoples have the right to free, prior, and informed consent for all projects within their territories. Their approval needs to be given freely before practices begin, and the people need to be fully aware of an activity’s implications.

But even if her Indigenous-led government consents to deep-sea mining, Ingram worries about whether the information her people are receiving about the industry is accurate, and whether the leaders’ perspectives truly reflect the views of the people. For years, mining companies have been supporting community events and lobbying the country’s leaders. Ingram hears a lot about what benefits the mining will bring, but she doesn’t think there’s enough discussion in her community about its risks. 

“Free, prior, and informed — it’s the ‘informed’ part that we’re not getting,” she said.

On a recent day in February, Rongo held up a handful of soft, springy seaweed to 30 schoolchildren surrounding him on a beach in the Cook Islands. “Boodlea,” Rongo said, stating the seaweed’s scientific name and explaining it can be used for fertilizer. It’s part of his work leading a nonprofit helping connect Indigenous youth to traditional ecological knowledge before it’s lost. 

“If our kids have no connection and relationship with their environment, they won’t value it,” Rongo said. “They’ll give it to anyone who comes here, and wants to develop a mine or fish; they won’t care, they’ll just give it.” 

He understands that some of his elders feel like they worked so hard to escape the hardships of traditional living and don’t want to go back, but he sees it as a climate solution: a way to lessen the insatiable consumerism and growth driving the climate crisis. 

“If we live this life, we are actually adapting to climate change,” he said. “We live our simple life, we are doing our bit at the local level.” 

Kahoʻohalahala feels the same. Since that first sail on Hōkūleʻa, he has traveled across Polynesia and to Micronesia and realized that the ocean unites far more than divides Pacific peoples. 

“In Oceania it took us a long time to understand that even though we’re colonized by different nations, we’re actually the same people and we have always been the same people,” he said. “All of us collectively as the people of Oceania, we have a connection to this ocean, which has inherent responsibility for its care.”

(Rachel Reeves contributed reporting for this story. This story is part of the Grist series Unearthed: The Mining Issue, which examines the global race to extract critical minerals for the clean energy transition. It was also reprinted in Civil Beat.)