Bakgrunnen er at Cook Islands tidligere i år tildelte tre letelisenser i dyphavet utenfor øyene (expronews.com: “First seabed exploration licenses awarded”). Ingenting er da mer naturlig enn at konferansen Deep Sea Minerals 2022 vier en egen sesjon til det første landet i verden som åpner opp for leting etter manganknoller (polymetallic nodules).
Polymetallic nodules (manganese nodules) form atop sediment covering the abyssal plains of the global ocean. These nodules form by the accretion of iron and manganese oxides around a tiny nucleus, such as a large grain of sand, a shark tooth, or an older nodule fragment. Polymetallic nodules are usually potato size and grow very slowly. Nodules have high concentrations of battery metals in a single ore such as manganese, nickel, copper, cobalt and sometimes lithium. Unlike land ores, they do not contain toxic levels of heavy elements, and producing metals from nodules generates 99% less solid waste, with no toxic tailings.
Myndighetene, ved Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority, vil gi tre foredrag:
- Moving to Sustainable Development – The Cook Islands Process
- Recent and Forthcoming Scientific Developments on Seabed Minerals in the Cook Islands
- Updated Mineral Resource Assessment for Polymetallic Nodules in the Cook Islands Economic Zone
I tillegg vil delegasjonen presentere en poster som presenterer nye kart av havbunnen utenfor øygruppen («A new seabed geomorphology map for the Cook Islands»).
Dertil vil en av lisenshaverne – Moana Minerals – presentere miljøproblematikken gjennom et foredrag med tittelen «Leading ESIA practice applied to the Moana Minerals work program».
«In addition to being extremely high grade (0.5%) in terms of cobalt, the nodules [of the Cook Islands] also contain significant levels of nickel, copper, manganese, iron and rare earth elements.»
Moana Minerals
Letingen etter havbunnsmineraler er i sin spede begynnelse, og et lite land på den andre siden av kloden er nå førende i jakten på metaller som er avgjørende for gjennomføringen av det grønne skiftet. Da er det bare naturlig at en myndighetsdelegasjon reiser til Bergen for å fortelle aktørene i bransjen om prosessen frem til tildeling av lisenser, arbeidet som gjøres for å minimalisere de miljømessige konsekvensene samt gi en oppdatert oversikt over mulige ressurser.
Statsminister Mark Brown leder delegasjonen og har takket ja til å holde innledningsforedraget på konferansen («Our Seabed Minerals Heritage in the Cook Islands»).
The Cook Islands
This small island large ocean state comprises 15 islands and atolls (including 3 uninhabited) in the South Pacific Ocean about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 sq km (a little larger than Alaska; Norway’s EEZ is 2,385,178 sq km) and dwarfs the total land area of only 240 sq km.
The island nation is geologically situated on a relatively old portion of the Pacific Plate with abyssal plains and a massive underwater plateau dating back to the Middle Cretaceous. It is on the abyssal plains that large deposits of polymetallic nodules have formed, aided in part by slow-moving deep water oxygenated currents that are thought to originate from Antarctica (some 7,000 km to the south).
In the Tertiary period, this area crossed a series of mantle hotspots (the so-called Hot Spot Highway) leading to the formation of the islands. These have been subjected to various degrees of erosion, coral platform formation and – in some cases – subsequent uplift.
The Cook Islands have a resident population of 14,800 with 72% living on Rarotonga and 85.8% of the population identifying as Cook Islands Maori (2021 prelim census data). Most Cook Islanders are based overseas, with over 120,000 living in New Zealand and Australia.
The Cook Islands are thought to have first been settled around AD 900 by Polynesian people who probably migrated from various parts of Polynesia. Some 600 years later Spanish navigators were the first Europeans to spot the northern Cook Islands in 1595 followed by the first landing in 1606. The British navigator Captain James Cook arrived in 1773, and the islands were renamed after him in 1835 by Russian explorers.
The Cook Islands attained self-governance in 1965 and are a representative democracy with a parliamentary system in free association with New Zealand. The present Prime Minister, the Honourable Mark Brown, was re-elected in August this year. Alongside the elected government, the Cook Islands have traditional and religious leaders who together form the three pillars of power within Cook Islands society.