2023-07-17
AVARUA - In a remote corner of the Pacific, a Polynesian microstate is preparing for an industrial plunge into the deep sea. The Cook Islands want to extract billions of metal nodules that are lying there.
Companies from Belgium (DEME), the Netherlands (Boskalis) and the USA are drawing up the plans. They've started exploring. The nodules are abundant here and the prospect of earning money from their extraction them is of 'national interest' to the government. It wants to diversify away from tourism, which was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Public opinion in the archipelago is divided. Fishermen fear that the fishing grounds will be destroyed, while one politician recalls a tradition of bad governance. Prime Minister Mark Brown and his inner circle fear criticism. They claim that seabed minerals are essential for a 'green electrification'. And so, as international negotiations on a deep-sea mining code resume in Jamaica and a movement against deep-sea mining grows, the Cook Islands have decided to go it alone.
A crossborder investigation in the Cook Islands by Belgian journalists Greet Brauwers and Raf Custers and Cook Islands journalist Rachel Reeves.
Supported
€50,000 allocated on 13/12/2021ID
ENV1/2021/010Grant
NEWSPAPER
- ‘God heeft die mineralen op de zeebodem gelegd’, De Standaard (15/07/2023) - Dutch
- FR and ENG translations available.
- De Ochtend - VRT Radio 1 - 2:06:49 - 2:16:39 Interview Raf Custers by Jan Van Delm (Dutch)
- When Deep-Sea Miners Come A-Courting, Hakai magazine (25/07/2023);
- Petites mais obstinées : les Îles Cook veulent creuser en eaux profondes, Lava media, (31/07/2023);
- For Some Islanders, Deep Sea Mining Evokes Colonialism, Mother Jones (30/07/2023).
RADIO
- De Ochtend, Radio 1, 23/07/2023
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