2023-11-27 05:30:03
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Greenpeace activists boarded a mining ship at the bottom of the sea in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico, and said Sunday they would stay there to protest the exploration the ship is doing to help activity that would destroy marine life.
Australian firm The Metals Company, whose subsidiary manages the ship, accused the activists of endangering the crew and violating international law.
The growing conflict came as international demand for critical minerals that can be found on the seabed increases. At the same time, more and more countries say more research is needed into the environmental impact of deep-sea mining.
Greenpeace began protesting Thursday by positioning kayaks under the ship, Coco, for up to 10 hours at a time to prevent it from deploying its equipment in the water.
In response, the company’s CEO, Gerard Barron, threatened on Saturday to initiate legal proceedings, according to correspondence shared by Greenpeace and reviewed by The Associated Press that alleged that protesters had violated international law and endangered the safety of the crew of the mining ship.
During the protest, a kayak capsized in the boat’s wake when the Coco accelerated without warning, Greenpeace said. Legal representatives of THe Metal Company’s NORI subsidiary said that was an example that the protest was not safe.
At the moment no judicial process had been initiated, according to Greenpeace. The mining company said it would employ all available legal measures to protect the rights of its investors.
Later that day, two activists boarded the Coco. They will remain camped on the main crane used to deploy and retrieve the equipment from the water until The Metals Company agrees to leave, said Louisa Casson, head of Greenpeace’s campaign against underwater mining.
“We will continue to try and disrupt as much as we can, because we are very concerned that this is a mere procedure designed purely to gather data to be able to submit a mining application next year,” Casson said Sunday from a Greenpeace boat near Coco .
A subsidiary of The Metals Company has been prospecting in the Clarion Clipperton area since 2011. It says data from its latest expedition, investigating seafloor reclamation following last year’s surveys, will be used in an application to begin mining. in 2025.
In response to the protesters’ encampment, Barron told The Associated Press that Greenpeace’s actions “to stop science suggest a fear that new scientific findings could challenge its misleading narrative about environmental impact.”
He added that if the investigation showed that its activity would be unjustifiably destructive, The Metals Company was prepared to withdraw “100%.”
Casson said the firm’s actions suggested that is not true. “That they are doing this in the interest of science is very questionable,” he said. “There is a clear economic reason: they are entirely an underwater mining company.”
The Metals Company said it expected to find mainly manganese on the seabed, a material that US President Joe Biden declared a critical mineral last year. Driven by clean energy technologies, demand for other key battery components, such as lithium, has tripled, according to a market analysis last July.
“It makes sense to be able to extract these raw materials from parts of the planet where there is less life, not more,” Barron said. “You can’t avoid the fact that there are about 10 grams of biomass per square meter on the abyssal plains,” he said, much less than in most landmines.
Casson pointed out that these values were not comparable and that studies also show that more than 5,000 species inhabit that part of the Pacific, and according to scientists they would be harmed by light and sound pollution, as well as huge clouds of dust.
This week, Mexico joined the coalition of 23 other countries that have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Although France has alone called for an outright ban, the other signatories are calling for a pause to further investigate the effects of underwater mining.
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