Video Transcript
Full Interview Below
Dr. John Parianos: I’m Knowledge Management Director at the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority. My team and I — our job is to look at all the information that’s available, to collate and synthesize it as best we can so that our stakeholders, the people of the Cook Islands government and further afield, can make the best decision about the development — or not — of our seabed minerals.
Mahlet Mesfin: I’m Mahlet Mesfin, Non-resident Fellow at the Stimson Center. Since they’ve been discovered, seabed minerals have been in active debate around who owns them, how they’re harvested, and what the impacts of such activities are. Some of these minerals are found in international waters, or areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the International Seabed Authority, or the ISA, was established to organize and control mineral resource activities in those areas.
The Cook Islands know that they have an abundance of marine minerals in their jurisdiction, and have spent decades putting together legislation and regulatory systems to help manage seabed mining. How do you think about aligning the domestic processes with those being developed internationally?
Dr. John Parianos: The exclusive economic zone of the Cook Islands — all of that is a multi-use path, called Marae Moana. And for the marine environment within Marae Moana, everything either has to be protected or conserved.
Mahlet Mesfin: A central challenge in these discussions is environmental risk and managing that. As seabed mining moves from exploration to potential commercial activity, governments really have to face decisions on how they’re regulating an industry that has never operated at scale in the deep ocean in these environments.
Dr. John Parianos: It is a little bit like taking a step into the unknown. However, it’s better to try and design the rules in advance than to make them up as you go. So there’s a lot of discussion, a lot of negotiation — for example, with the International Seabed Authority. Sometimes it’s not really clear what they’re assessing things against. For example, what is “serious harm”?
We don’t use that term in the Cook Islands, like they do at the ISA. We have our own nomenclature, derived from other standards. For example, a lot of what we’ve done we took from an organization called NIWA, which is now part of Earth Sciences New Zealand. They developed a series of guidance on how to assess these things, and we took that. We’d like to think we improved it in a few critical ways — and that’s what things were assessed to. So then we can have a much more structured, balanced discussion about it.
The big gap — one of the big gaps, I should say — is really a large-scale demonstration of what would happen if you did proceed. But small-scale pilot testing has happened before — probably four or five times now, dating back to the 1970s, where three trials were done. There was also disturber testing done in the 1990s, and most recently over the last few years, there have been two more demonstrations — in fact a third one was done last year as well.
So what you do is compile the information you have, and then you make a structured, hopefully balanced risk assessment of the impacts from that. And very importantly, you qualify the level of confidence.
Mahlet Mesfin: The terminology of “serious harm” not being defined does seem somewhat problematic. So can you go into a little more detail about how you have defined it within the context of your regulatory framework?
Dr. John Parianos: In our study and analysis of the issues at hand, it boils down to what we call acceptability. In exchange for the ecosystem services you take from the environment — are they acceptable in exchange for those ecosystem services? There’s no simple answer to that. There’s no tick-a-box or crystal ball or anything like that. In the end, the decision is going to be made by a particular body in the Cook Islands.
I’m not going to be part of that decision — and it’s not even anything to do with my Authority. It has to do with our National Environment Service, which is completely separate for reasons of governance. They’ll have to make that decision. And all we can try to do is present as complete a picture as possible — of how severe the impacts are, how extensive the impacts are, how confident we are in those impacts — versus the projection of what the services are going to look like. And then they’ll have to make a decision.
Mahlet Mesfin: So, last question — this is a very complicated topic and we could have covered many things in this discussion. I just want to give you an opportunity to reflect on one thing you want the audience to understand about seabed mining and the debates today.
Dr. John Parianos: It’s very easy to hear polarized views from people in the sector — both those who are for and those who are against. In government, we feel we’re a bit in the middle, really. My background is industry, so I do appreciate where the companies are coming from. But my shareholders, I’d guess you’d call them, are the people of the Cook Islands. My loyalty is to them. So I want to make sure they’re as well-informed as possible for when that judgment call comes along one day.
As a scientist, I’d like to see a structured approach to these sorts of things. So whether you’re for, against, or neutral — and a lot of people really are neutral — the idea is to have a structured approach so that there’s cause and effect, so that impacts are put into perspective, so the benefits are put into perspective. And if that can be a key part of the dialogue going forward — rather than complete polarization and people just making an emotive decision — I think that would be a good thing.
Our Prime Minister puts it very well. He says, “We will not be guided by fear.” He wants to get the knowledge, make the journey, and then make a decision based on that. I agree with that.
