Deep-sea mining pushed

 THE demand for metals is adding more pressure on land-based resources, resulting in growing social and environmental issues, Nautilus’ PNG based environmental adviser William Saleu said.

He told a meeting in Nadi, Fiji recently that seafloor mining with its small environmental footprint and limited social impacts offered many advantages over land-based mining.

Saleu said: “Nautilus Minerals has taken an ‘above and beyond approach’ to environmental management. 

To promote transparency, Nautilus Minerals agreed that collaborating scientists working on the environmental impact assessment for the Solwara 1 project, be free to publish the results of their studies. 

Taking the lead in exploring the deep sea and eventually extracting minerals from the ocean floors, Nautilus Minerals was confident that the Solwara 1 project would bring many social and economic benefits to the people of PNG. 

“Nautilus Minerals like the communities of Papua New Guinea care about the environment. The company has taken a vigorous and intensive approach to all of its exploration and environmental research for the Solwara 1 Project.”

The weeklong meeting provided a forum for representatives of governments from the Pacific Island countries, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international experts and industry to discuss potential issues from an environmental perspective.  

The key areas included environment impact assessment (EIA) processes, establishing environmental management plans (EMP), monitoring and enforcement of the EMPs.

Stakeholders including representatives from 15 Pacific Island countries applauded the meeting as a step in the right direction for this new industry.   

PNG was represented by the Department of Mineral Policy and Geo-hazard and Mineral Resource Authority and was able to provide leadership to other Pacific Island countries on the back of its firsthand experience with seafloor mining and permitting gained over the last 15 years. 

This was the fourth meeting of the deep sea minerals project, which was an initiative of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and funded by the European Union. 

The project had seen the SPC devise and implement a regional training programme to develop and enhance the knowledge of all regional stakeholders on issues relating to deep sea minerals.