Portugal’s Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, will used EU’s ‘Our Ocean 2017’ conference to announce new commitments in the sustainable management of the oceans and to "significantly increase funding for deep-sea scientific research, including studies on the environmental impacts of seabed mining."
The conference in Malta on 5 and 6 October, brings together representatives from 61 countries who have been set the noble challenge of devising a system of global governance of the oceans, but Portugal wants license income from deep-sea mining, despite the minister's talk of a clean, blue and environmentally friendly ocean economy.
The funding for studies on the environmental impacts of seabed mining is an area that concerns environmentalists as, if government is paying for research, the results will be what the government wants to hear, i.e. that deep sea mining is a wonderful new opportunity to raise licence income from companies that will then be let loose in delicate sub-sea marine environments.
The minister says she will suggest that "a balanced approach should be promoted in the relationship between humanity and the ocean, and - for this - it is necessary to promote a sustainable ocean economy."
"In Portugal, the blue economy is growing, especially in terms of maritime transport, nautical tourism and fish processing industry," recalled Ana Paula Vitorino whose eye is on deep-sea mining as a source of easy revenue.
"The commitment is to increase the contribution of the economy of the sea to the national economy in general, and to strengthen measures to protect the ocean, such as the increase of marine protected areas and the effective regulation of extractive activities, such as fisheries and aquaculture,' said Vitorino in a pre-speech briefing to Portugal’s media which attempted to gloss over the mining issue by emphasising fishing and fish-farming development.
With Portugal’s vast sea area seen as an opportunity to make money, Vitorino says there also is a need for “coordinated competing maritime activities and strategic management of the ocean at multilateral and international levels that is agreed and recognised globally."
With Portugal’s expanded sea area being agreed at the United Nations, Vitorino says that the country must become "a pioneer and enabler of negotiation and discussion on the themes of deep sea exploration, conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in waters beyond national jurisdictions."
For areas outside national governance, there already exists the International Seabed Authority, (ISA), the United Nations’ independent organisation, that is tasked with regulating seafloor mining in international waters.
The ocean floor is vast and largely unexplored, but it contains deposits of valuable minerals such as copper, cobalt, nickel and rare-earth minerals that are used in current electronics manufacture.
The ISA already has granted contracts to countries to explore for minerals but no large-scale commercial mining operations are taking place yet because the ISA is still figuring out how to make sure deep-sea mining is carried out safely and with due regard for the environment.
The agency has committed to develop environmental regulations by 2020 which means that huge underwater robots could start mining the sea-bed and delicate hydrothermal vents a few years later.
The commitments that Vitorino will announce on Thursday in Malta add to those already taken at the previous Our Ocean conference in Washington in 2016, where the Portuguese government announced the launch of the Blue Fund, paid for largely by oil companies, to develop the ocean economy, promote scientific work related to the oceans and enhance environmental protection.
As for deep-sea mining, Matthew Gianni, the co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition commented, “If you open up the doors on all this, we’ll be playing damage control for the next 200 years or more.”
The European Marine Board highlights the dangers of the emerging “deep blue economy” in seas deeper than 200 metres - "New technologies are opening up waters hitherto unexplored and out of reach, while science, policy and governance scramble to keep pace. The fear is that fragile deep-sea ecosystems will be damaged before they are properly understood. Just 0.0001% of the deep sea has been sampled biologically."
Portugal lacks the skills, science and political honesty to research and regulate this new industry with Vitorino saying all the right things before the conference starts but her stated aim is to raise ocean income by 50% over the next few years. This is likely to be with the contribution of license fees from sub-sea mining companies.
As with Portugal's oil concession area sell-off, environmentalists fully expect that Portugal's enhanced ocean area will be sectioned off and concessions sold to deep-sea mining companeis which, of course, will have to abide by "the strictest of guidelines."