Seabed mining impacts bared

AS the deep sea mining industry chase investors at the Asia Pacific Deep Sea Mining Summit, a new critique by the deep sea mining campaign revealed indefensible flaws in the environmental and social benchmarking analysis of the Solwara 1 project commissioned by Nautilus Minerals.
The proposed Solwara 1 deep sea mine, situated in the Bismarck Sea, is the world’s first to receive an operating licence.
Endorsed by a coalition of economists, scientists, non-governmental organisations and civil society groups, the critique, entitled Accountability Zero, was launched by professor Richard Steiner during his presentation at the Summit on Tuesday.
Francis Grey, founder of Economists at Large and co-author of Accountability Zero said: “By using metrics that bear no relevance to deep sea and marine environments, the Solwara 1 ESBA values at zero the ecosystem goods and services provided by deep sea and marine ecosystems. The ESBA report fails to meet the well accepted requirements of a cost-benefit analysis.”
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