A Cook Islands government delegation — led by Prime Minister Mark Brown, and including prominent cultural and spiritual leaders — has been in Aotearoa this week, talking to its New Zealand-based community about deep-sea mining around their home islands.

Brown and his government have been openly supportive of deep-sea mining, which continues to divide Cook Islanders at home and abroad. While some are concerned about the potential harms of large-scale mining, others believe an injection of mining wealth is exactly what the country needs.

Louisa Castledine, who lives in Rarotonga and hails from Manihiki, is among a growing number of locals opposed to deep-sea mining in their waters. Here she is talking to Teuila Fuatai.

 

My home of Manihiki is an ocean island. We have a population of about 180 people and we’re located 1,300 kilometres north of Rarotonga, about four hours on the small bandit plane.

Our people live in a close community. The values we place on our genealogy, kin and natural environment are deeply rooted in our cultural identity.

My husband and I, with our three children, moved back to Rarotonga from New Zealand to connect with our Cook Islands roots. We wanted our children to grow up knowing their people, islands and ocean intimately, just like I did in Manihiki.

My family were pearl farmers, renowned for their fishing and diving abilities. Our way of life was intricately linked to a thriving environment. We understood the delicate balance of give and take needed to sustain our people and preserve our environment. That meant understanding that everything around us — our coconuts, fish, plants, birds, and different kaimoana — had a season. There were particular times to harvest and seed, and we exercised this knowledge to feed our family and protect our livelihoods as pearl farmers.

These practices rely on the unity, experience, values and stewardship of the people who uphold them. We’re proficient in traditional methods of ra’ui and tāporoporo, and modern concepts of preservation and conservation.

This knowledge is why mining our seabed fundamentally clashes with who we are as people.

At its core, deep sea mining serves external interests to meet an unquenchable thirst for overconsumption and capitalism. It’s not about the specific interests of the Cook Islands, which are already at the forefront of the climate crisis.

Despite that, the appetite for deep sea mining among Cook Islanders became very real when tourism, our largest industry, came to a halt because of Covid. For two years, we were closed off to the rest of the world, and our income vanished. We became economically vulnerable. The pandemic experience exposed our need to diversify our economy.

During this time, deep-sea mining gained momentum and the government invited mining companies to “explore” the seabed. Exploration licences of five years were issued to three mining companies, starting in 2022.

The government issued these following a series of meetings it held throughout the Cook Islands, including in the pā enua (outer islands).

These were supposed to be a form of community consultation. However, to this day, people have very little clarity about the impacts of deep-sea mining.

Take Manihiki, for example. The high seas pocket close to my home island contains a substantial deposit of the polymetallic nodules that mining companies are desperate to access.

In a recent discussion with my wider family, it was clear that we understood very little of the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining, and how the invasive extractive industry would affect the land and our natural resources.

The message from the government and mining advocates to us and many other Cook Islands families has been focused on the potential for seabed mining to provide a sustainable future, prosperity, financial independence and a diverse revenue source that will benefit all our people.

But many questions remain unanswered. Some of those that came up in our family discussion were:

Would our oceans be filled with large ships moving minerals, with vacuum bulldozers like trucks carting minerals from mine areas, but out of sight underwater?

Would it be similar to the mining operations we see on land with hundreds of personnel flying in and out?

What sort of jobs would be available to us locals? Or would the specialists, scientists, machine operators and other personnel mainly be flown in?

Where would these workers be based? On our main island of Rarotonga, there is already a shortage of long-term rentals.

Would they all then come to Manihiki, and if so, where would they live?

In that scenario, would we have to make land and housing available to them? If so, how much of our plants and crops would we have to clear?

Where exactly would the minerals be processed? Would it be on our small islands or will they shipped away?

Our family concluded that our tiny local population would be unable to fulfil these new specialist roles. To do that, we’d need to seriously strengthen our education system to enable us to develop this expertise locally. And no one was sure whether that was even being considered.

Because of that, we decided there would need to be an influx of outsiders to cater to such a big industry and the various jobs.

We tried to work through the logistics of what could happen.

We talked about how the mining workforce might be expected to travel from Rarotonga to Manihiki, which would require better transport access. There are plans now to upgrade the airport, and many of us wondered whether this was tied specifically to the deep-sea mining industry.

So, while we may get more affordable flights, this would likely only occur if we said yes to mining the seabed. It’s unlikely that our small population of 180 on Manihiki would sustain a major airport upgrade and more frequent and cheaper flights.

We also talked about how an increase in visitors would improve island morale and bring economic benefits, but also take a toll on our natural resources because these newcomers would need to be housed and fed.

Every development will require a sacrifice from another part of our environment or society. Further growth will mean taking more from our natural resources and changing something about the way our people live.

Overall, our discussion went down many paths, and outlined hypothetically how different aspects of our land, moana, and daily life would be affected by perceived “progress”.

We couldn’t predict everything that might eventuate, and we agreed that there was a fine line when balancing economic gain with unintended costs to our people and our environment.

For instance, would outsiders in the mining workforce adopt our language?

Would they align with our customary ways or should we prepare for the further dilution of our language and cultural customs?

Our family discussion, which took place one evening over dinner, also brought home for me how much the government hadn’t covered in its consultation process across our islands. There’s been a clear lack of information on the potential impact on our everyday lives.

That lack of clarity has been compounded by the tactics and behaviour of the deep sea mining industry.

Since the exploration licences were awarded, we’ve had little to no information from mining companies on their research.

Worse, they’ve charmed and courted their way through our islands and people. Industry representatives have embedded themselves and the vast resources of their companies into our communities. Almost every aspect of our society has received money, support or help from the mining industry — right down to one of our Cook Island Māori language immersion preschools.

As individuals, and as a community, that stream of assistance has made it difficult to untangle what we’re getting ourselves into. Particularly because many of our leaders, including our prime minister, Mark Brown, are championing the mining of our seabed.

A recent public survey showed that the majority of locals don’t support deep-sea mining. But many of our people, particularly our older generation, our mātua, have been sold on the financial benefits of deep-sea mining. Understandably, their desire is for economic security for future generations.

However, our community hasn’t been given a complete or fair understanding of the issues. And that’s because the government has framed the conversation to focus solely on the financial rewards.

More than that, the industry and its supporters are using our social structure, which the government is plugged into, to their advantage.

In the Cook Islands, similar to other Pacific cultures, we place a lot of trust and value in our familial relationships, particularly the leaders of our families.

Our society is steeped in collective cultural values. But more and more, we’re seeing those values challenged and cannibalised by western ideals and adversarial methods of gaining and maintaining power.

In the case of deep-sea mining, the industry has secured the support of some of our foremost cultural and spiritual leaders by funding their organisations or initiatives.

Some of these leaders were part of this week’s government delegation to Aotearoa. Alongside our politicians, they have a pro-mining stance and publicly promote the industry, which legitimises it in the eyes of our community.

Mining companies have also inserted themselves into our most beloved community activities by injecting a lot of money into our cultural, sporting and education systems.

For example, CIC — a Cook Islands company set up to “pursue seabed mineral exploration opportunities” and backed by a consortium that includes mining industry heavyweight Odyssey Marine Exploration — has created a trust called Te Rito o Taku Peu Tupuna, which means “the richness of culture”. It sponsors our cultural events, including Te Maeva Nui, our biggest annual cultural event that marks our independence as a nation.

On the surface, this approach may seem like corporate responsibility, but it’s really a form of neo-colonialism. It targets our places and events of cultural significance, where we’re most open and welcoming and where inclusivity is practised generously by my people.

In response, we’ve created Ocean Ancestors, a grassroots collective to try and educate our people with all the information that the mining industry has selectively chosen to ignore. In September, dozens turned out to our rally against deep sea mining at the Avarua harbour.

To date, the key message from our government about the exploration phase is that it will expand our knowledge. However, when we look at the government’s interactions with the industry and the rest of the world, the message is that the Cook Islands is on track to mine.

Specifically, it has edited its regulations so the word “mining” doesn’t appear. Now, we hear only about “harvesting” minerals. Similarly, the phrase “seabed minerals development” is used to avoid any reference to mining.

The government has also reassured investors that it has the social licence from our people to do this and that its governmental structure is secure.

I believe our government has lost sight of who they represent.

The Cook Islands people have received no substantial research from the mining companies and the government on potential impacts. It isn’t good enough that those in charge continue to greenwash our concerns around the very real and harmful impacts of commercial mining activities by saying they will be “managed and monitored”.

We need to know more about what we’re getting ourselves into before we do irreversible harm to our environment and our way of life.

 

Louisa Castledine is the spokesperson of Ocean Ancestors, a grassroots collective opposing deep sea mining in the Cook Islands.

As told to Teuila Fuatai. Made Possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

• An earlier version of this article described CIC as a subsidiary of Odyssey Marine Exploration. To clarify, CIC has financial and operational backing from a consortium that includes Odyssey Marine Exploration. Odyssey is the “exclusive marine operating partner” in the consortium, giving Odyssey the exclusive operating rights for CIC’s marine exploration work in the Cook Islands. Its five-year exploration licence is due to end in February 2027.

E-Tangata, 2024