Tongan academic calls for moratorium on deep sea mining

The director of a Tongan tertiary institute has called out deep sea mining companies for preying on the Pacific.

Dr ‘Ungatea Fonua Kata, director of the Tupou Tertiary Institute in Tongatapu (TTI) has been vocal about her position on the issue since the Kingdom passed the Seabed Minerals Act in 2014.

Dr Kata said the Act, which provides regulation and management of explorations and mining activities in Tonga, was passed after the government issued a license to Canadian deep sea exploration and mining company, Nautilus Minerals, which went bankrupt in 2019.

After the Act was passed, Tupou Tertiary Institute was then approached by the Civil Society Forum of Tonga to gather public reaction.

“There was a 98 or 97 per cent very high rate who knew nothing about it. So we then ran a kind of a dissemination campaign on the radio… we did ask them whether they thought deep sea mining was good for Tonga and there was an overwhelmingly ‘no’.

“There were little radio clips on facts about deep sea mining in Tonga. It was the students who did the research. And they also went to schools to kind of disseminate the results of the school.

“We had pamphlets and posters. That was what we did in 2015. And from there, we still from that point on until now have the strong position that Tonga should have the moratorium position, which is not to engage in deep sea mining until there is a lot more knowledge gathered about that type of resource extraction.”

Dr Kata says big deep sea mining companies are taking advantage of Pacific politicians.

“Why aren't they doing the deep sea mining in their own countries? Because they have their laws and that holds them accountable. That's why they come to the Pacific because they can prey on us.

“Big money to us here is nothing to big billionaires. You can give a million dollars [here]… that will be a huge sum of money. [But] it won't be a huge sum of money for the big companies.

“So I think those basic things are clear to me. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that.”

Dr Kata compared the promised revenue from deep sea mining to The Emperor's New Clothes.

“Research shows that the promise to Tonga is $8 million, whereas the money that the company will receive is something like $40 billion.

“Now, what kind of arrangement is that for Tonga? And what impact does $8 million have, which we can raise from taxes or something else, rather than us allowing other companies to come and extract these resources from our oceans.”

Watch Dr ‘Ungatea Fonua Kata full interview below.