At least 390 organisations and individuals endorse joint statement against Deep Sea Mining

by CWM Communications Team

CWM Pacific and least 390 NGOs, institutions, academia, parliamentarians, scientists, movements and individuals internationally have endorsed a joint statement against Deep Sea Mining (DSM), calling for recognition of a common responsibility to protect the ocean.

In the statement, they said: “Rich states, promoting their multinational companies, facilitated by powerful institutions have been working with our own Pacific Island governments enticing them with the promise of wealth, despite technologies for extracting minerals on the ocean floor remaining untested in terms of environmental safety.”

Pointing to how the Pacific islands had bore the brunt of nuclear testing and the environmental cost of land-based mining, they asked all Pacific leaders to join the growing ranks of those opposing the mining of the ocean floor as it would destroy their common heritage. While they welcomed the stand taken by some Pacific governments of a moratorium on DSM within their EEZs*, they strongly urged all their governments to support a global ban on DSM.

“Pacific governments have to ask themselves, to what extent are they willing to destroy the ocean’s life support system during a time of climate emergency”, when there are existing issues of overfishing, pollution, and ocean acidification. A Pacific collective of NGOs will be launching this joint call to coincide with this year’s launch of the UN Ocean Decade for Science and Sustainability.

Read the full statement at: https://www.cwmission.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pacific-joint-statement-against-Deep-Sea-Mining-DSM.pdf

*Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the sea, an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a seazone over which a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources.

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