This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
By Koohan Paik-Mander
The U.S. military is famous for being the single largest consumer of petroleum products in the world and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Its carbon emissions exceed those released by “more than 100 countries combined.”
Now, with the Biden administration’s mandate to slash carbon emissions “at least in half by the end of the decade,” the Pentagon has committed to using all-electric vehicles and transitioning to biofuels for all its trucks, ships and aircraft. But is only addressing emissions enough to mitigate the current climate crisis?
What does not figure into the climate calculus of the new emission-halving plan is that the Pentagon can still continue to destroy Earth’s natural systems that help sequester carbon and generate oxygen. For example, the plan ignores the Pentagon’s continuing role in the annihilation of whales, in spite of the miraculous role that large cetaceans have played in delaying climate catastrophe and “maintaining healthy marine ecosystems,” according to a report by Whale and Dolphin Conservation. This fact has mostly gone unnoticed until only recently.
There are countless ways in which the Pentagon hobbles Earth’s inherent abilities to regenerate itself. Yet, it has been the decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last decade—resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the oceans—that has fast-tracked us toward a cataclysmic environmental tipping point.
The other imminent danger that whales and dolphins face is from the installation of space-war infrastructure, which is taking place currently. This new infrastructure comprises the development of the so-called “smart ocean,” rocket launchpads, missile tracking stations and other components of satellite-based battle. If the billions of dollars being plowed into the 2022 defense budget for space-war technology are any indication of what’s in store, the destruction to marine life caused by the use of these technologies will only accelerate in the future, hurtling Earth’s creatures to an even quicker demise than already forecast.
Whale Health: The Easiest and Most Effective Way to Sequester Carbon
It’s first important to understand how whales are indispensable to mitigating climate catastrophe, and why reviving their numbers is crucial to slowing down damage and even repairing the marine ecosystem. The importance of whales in fighting the climate crisis has also been highlighted in an article that appeared in the International Monetary Fund’s Finance and Development magazine, which calls for the restoration of global whale populations. “Protecting whales could add significantly to carbon capture,” states the article, showing how the global financial institution also recognizes whale health to be one of the most economical and effective solutions to the climate crisis.
Throughout their lives, whales enable the oceans to sequester a whopping 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That astonishing amount in a single year is nearly double the 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon that was emitted by the U.S. military in the entire 16-year span between 2001 and 2017, according to an article in Grist, which relied on a paper from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute.
The profound role of whales in keeping the world alive is generally unrecognized. Much of how whales sequester carbon is due to their symbiotic relationship with phytoplankton, the organisms that are the base of all marine food chains.
The way the sequestering of carbon by whales works is through the piston-like movements of the marine mammals as they dive to the depths to feed and then come up to the surface to breathe. This “whale pump” propels their own feces in giant plumes up to the surface of the water. This helps bring essential nutrients from the ocean depths to the surface areas where sunlight enables phytoplankton to flourish and reproduce, and where photosynthesis promotes the sequestration of carbon and the generation of oxygen. More than half the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from phytoplankton. Because of these infinitesimal marine organisms, our oceans truly are the lungs of the planet.
More whales mean more phytoplankton, which means more oxygen and more carbon capture. According to the authors of the article in the IMF’s Finance and Development magazine—Ralph Chami and Sena Oztosun, from the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development, and two professors, Thomas Cosimano from the University of Notre Dame and Connel Fullenkamp from Duke University—if the world could increase “phytoplankton productivity” via “whale activity” by only 1 percent, it “would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of 2 billion mature trees.”
Even after death, whale carcasses function as carbon sinks. Every year, it is estimated that whale carcasses transport 190,000 tons of carbon, locked within their bodies, to the bottom of the sea. That’s the same amount of carbon produced by 80,000 cars per year, according to Sri Lankan marine biologist Asha de Vos, who appeared on TED Radio Hour on NPR. On the seafloor, this carbon supports deep-sea ecosystems and is integrated into marine sediments.
Vacuuming CO2 From the Sky—a False Solution
Meanwhile, giant concrete-and-metal “direct air carbon capture” plants are being planned by the private sector for construction in natural landscapes all over the world. The largest one began operation in 2021 in Iceland. The plant is named “Orca,” which not only happens to be a type of cetacean but is also derived from the Icelandic word for “energy” (orka).
Orca captures a mere 10 metric tons of CO2 per day—compared to about 5.5 million metric tons per day of that currently sequestered by our oceans, due, in large part, to whales. And yet, the minuscule comparative success by Orca is being celebrated, while the effectiveness of whales goes largely unnoticed. In fact, President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill contains $3.5 billion for building four gigantic direct air capture facilities around the country. Nothing was allocated to protect and regenerate the real orcas of the sea.
If ever there were “superheroes” who could save us from the climate crisis, they would be the whales and the phytoplankton, not the direct air capture plants, and certainly not the U.S. military. Clearly, a key path forward toward a livable planet is to make whale and ocean conservation a top priority.
‘We Have to Destroy the Village in Order to Save It’
Unfortunately, the U.S. budget priorities never fail to put the Pentagon above all else—even a breathable atmosphere. At a December 2021 hearing on “How Operational Energy Can Help Us Address Logistics Challenges” by the Readiness Subcommittee of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Representative Austin Scott (R-GA) said, “I know we’re concerned about emissions and other things, and we should be. We can and should do a better job of taking care of the environment. But ultimately, when we’re in a fight, we have to win that fight.”
This logic that “we have to destroy the village in order to save it” prevails at the Pentagon. For example, hundreds of naval exercises conducted year-round in the Indo-Pacific region damage and kill tens of thousands of whales annually. And every year, the number of war games, encouraged by the U.S. Department of Defense, increases.
They’re called “war games,” but for creatures of the sea, it’s not a game at all.
Pentagon documents estimate that 13,744 whales and dolphins are legally allowed to be killed as “incidental takes” during any given year due to military exercises in the Gulf of Alaska.
In waters surrounding the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean alone, the violence is more dire. More than 400,000 cetaceans comprising 26 species were allowed to have been sacrificed as “takes” during military practice between 2015 and 2020.
These are only two examples of a myriad of routine naval exercises. Needless to say, these ecocidal activities dramatically decrease the ocean’s abilities to mitigate climate catastrophe.
The Perils of Sonar
The most lethal component to whales is sonar, used to detect submarines. Whales will go to great lengths to get away from the deadly rolls of sonar waves. They “will swim hundreds of miles… and even beach themselves” in groups in order to escape sonar, according to an article in Scientific American. Necropsies have revealed bleeding from the eyes and ears, caused by too-rapid changes in depths as whales try to flee the sonar, revealed the article.
Low levels of sonar that may not directly damage whales could still harm them by triggering behavioral changes. According to an article in Nature, a 2006 UK military study used an array of hydrophones to listen for whale sounds during marine maneuvers. Over the period of the exercise, “the number of whale recordings dropped from over 200 to less than 50,” Nature reported.
“Beaked whale species… appear to cease vocalising and foraging for food in the area around active sonar transmissions,” concluded a 2007 unpublished UK report, which referred to the study.
The report further noted, “Since these animals feed at depth, this could have the effect of preventing a beaked whale from feeding over the course of the trial and could lead to second or third order effects on the animal and population as a whole.”
The report extrapolated that these second- and third-order effects could include starvation and then death.
The ‘Smart Ocean’ and the JADC2
Until now, sonar in the oceans has been exclusively used for military purposes. This is about to change. There is a “subsea data network” being developed that would use sonar as a component of undersea Wi-Fi for mixed civilian and military use. Scientists from member nations of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), including, but not limited to Australia, China, the UK, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, are creating what is called the “Internet of Underwater Things,” or IoUT. They are busy at the drawing board, designing data networks consisting of sonar and laser transmitters to be installed across vast undersea expanses. These transmitters would send sonar signals to a network of transponders on the ocean surface, which would then send 5G signals to satellites.
Utilized by both industry and military, the data network would saturate the ocean with sonar waves. This does not bode well for whale wellness or the climate. And yet, promoters are calling this development the “smart ocean.”
The military is orchestrating a similar overhaul on land and in space. Known as the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), it would interface with the subsea sonar data network. It would require a grid of satellites that could control every coordinate on the planet and in the atmosphere, rendering a real-life, 3D chessboard, ready for high-tech battle.
In service to the JADC2, thousands more satellites are being launched into space. Reefs are being dredged and forests are being razed throughout Asia and the Pacific as an ambitious system of “mini-bases” is being erected on as many islands as possible—missile deployment stations, satellite launch pads, radar tracking stations, aircraft carrier ports, live-fire training areas and other facilities—all for satellite-controlled war. The system of mini-bases, in communication with the satellites, and with aircraft, ships and undersea submarines (via sonar), will be replacing the bulky brick-and-mortar bases of the 20th century.
Its data-storage cloud, called JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure), will be co-developed at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. The Pentagon has requested bids on the herculean project from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and Google.
Save the Whales, Save Ourselves
Viewed from a climate perspective, the Department of Defense is flagrantly barreling away from its stated mission, to “ensure our nation’s security.” The ongoing atrocities of the U.S. military against whales and marine ecosystems make a mockery of any of its climate initiatives.
While the slogan “Save the Whales” has been bandied about for decades, they’re the ones actually saving us. In destroying them, we destroy ourselves.
Editor’s note: O Canada!Welcome to the new wild west. If you liked Deepwater Horizon you will love Deep Sea Mining. This statement pretty much sums it up, “countries could have their chance to EXPLOIT the valuable metals locked in the deep sea.”Corporations love to deal withpoorer, less developed countries who can do less by way of supervision because they lack greater resources and capacity.
“Like NORI, TOML began its life as a subsidiary of Nautilus minerals, one of the world’s first deep-sea miners. Just before Nautilus’s project in Papua New Guinea’s waters failed and left the country $157 million in debt, its shareholders created DeepGreen. DeepGreen acquired TOML in early 2020 after Nautilus filed for bankruptcy, the ISA said the Tongan government allowed the transfer and reevaluating the company’s background was not required.”
And mining royalties are paid to the ISA. If this doesn’t sound fishy, I don’t know what does. There never should be a question as to what a corporation’s angle is. Their loyalty always is to the stockholders.
Citizens of countries that sponsor deep-sea mining firms have written to several governments and the International Seabed Authority expressing concern that their nations will struggle to control the companies and may be liable for damages to the ocean as a result.
Liability is a central issue in the embryonic and risky deep-sea mining industry, because the company that will likely be the first to mine the ocean floor — DeepGreen/The Metals Company — depends on sponsorships from small Pacific island states whose collective GDP is a third its valuation.
Mining will likely cause widespread damage, scientists say, but the legal definition of environmental damage when it comes to deep-sea mining has yet to be determined.
Pelenatita Kara travels regularly to the outer islands of Tonga, her low-lying Pacific Island home, to educate fishers and farmers about seabed mining. For many of the people she meets, seabed mining is an unfamiliar term. Before Kara began appearing on radio programs, few people knew their government had sponsored a company to mine minerals from the seabed.
“It’s like talking to a Tongan about how cold snow is,” she says. “Inconceivable.”
The Civil Society Forum of Tonga, where Kara works, and several other Pacific-based organizations have written to several governments and the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to express concerns that their countries may end up being responsible for environmental damage that occurs in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an expanse of ocean between Hawai‘i and Mexico.
“The Pacific is currently the world’s laboratory for the experiment of Deep Seabed Mining,” the groups wrote to the ISA, the U.N.-affiliated body tasked with regulating the nascent industry. As a state that sponsors a seabed mining company, Tonga has agreed to shoulder a significant amount of responsibility in this fledgling industry that may threaten ecosystems that are barely understood. And if anything goes wrong in the laboratory, Kara is worried that Tonga’s liabilities could exceed its ability to pay. If no one can pay for remediation, Greenpeace notes, that may be even worse.
“My concern is that the liability from any problem with deep-sea mining will just be too much for us,” Kara says.
Another Pacific Island state, Nauru, notified the ISA in June that a contractor it sponsors is applying for the world’s first deep-sea mining exploitation permits. The announcement triggered the “two-year rule,” which compels the ISA to consider the application within that period, regardless of whether the exploitation rules and regulations are completed by then.
Among the rules that may not be decided upon by the deadline is liability: Who is responsible if something goes wrong? Sponsoring states like Nauru, Tonga and Kiribati — which all sponsor contractors owned by Canada-based DeepGreen, now The Metals Company — are required to “ensure compliance” with ISA rules and regulations. If a contractor breaches ISA rules, such as causing greater damage to ocean ecosystems than expected, the contractor may be held liable if the sponsoring state did all they could to enforce strict national laws.
However, it’s not yet clear how these countries can persuade the ISA that they enforced the rules, nor how they can prove that they are able to control the contractors, when the company is foreign-owned. The responsibility of sponsoring states to fund potentially billions of dollars in environmental cleanup depends on the legal definitions of terms like “environmental damage” and “effective control,” which may be as murky two years from now as they are at present.
Myriad problems may occur in the mining area: sediment plumes may travel thousands of kilometers and obstruct fisheries, or damage could spread into other companies’ areas. Scientists don’t know all the possible consequences, in part because these ecosystems are poorly understood. The ISA has proposed the creation of a fund to help cover the costs, but it’s not clear who will pay into it.
“The scales of the areas impacted are so great that restoration is just not feasible,” says Craig Smith, an oceanography professor emeritus at the University of Hawai‘i, who has worked with the ISA since its creation in 1994. “To restore tens or hundreds of thousands of square kilometers would be probably more expensive than the mining operation itself.”
Nauru voices concerns
Just over a decade ago, before Nauru agreed to sponsor a deep-sea mining permit, the government worried that it was going to find itself responsible for paying those damages. The government wrote to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, voicing concerns about the liability it could incur. As a sponsoring state with no experience in deep-sea mining and a small budget to support it, the delegation wanted to make sure that the U.N. did not prioritize rich countries in charting this new frontier in mineral extraction. Nauru and other “developing” countries should have just as great an opportunity to benefit from mining as other countries with more experience in capital-intensive projects, they argued.
Sponsoring states like Nauru are required to ensure their contractors comply with the law but, the delegation wrote, “in reality no amount of measures taken by a sponsoring State could ever fully ‘secure compliance’ of a contractor when the contractor is a separate entity from the State.”
Seabed mining comes with risks — environmental, financial, business, political — which sponsoring states are required to monitor. According to Nauru’s 2010 request, “it is unfortunately not possible for developing States to perform their responsibilities to the same standard or on the same scale as developed States.” If the standards of those responsibilities varied according to the capabilities of states, the Nauru delegation wrote, both poor and rich countries could have their chance to exploit the valuable metals locked in the deep sea.
“Poorer, less developed states, it was argued, would have to do less by way of supervision because they lacked greater resources and capacity,” says Don Anton, who was legal counsel to the tribunal during the decision on behalf of the IUCN, the global conservation authority.
The tribunal, issuing a final court opinion the next year, disagreed. Each state that sponsored a deep-sea miner would be required to uphold the same standards of due diligence and measures that “ensure compliance.” Legal experts generally regarded the decision well, because it prevented contractors from seeking sponsorships with states that placed lower requirements on their activities. However, according to Anton, the decision meant that countries with limited budgets like Nauru have only two choices when they consider deep-sea mining: either sponsor a contractor entirely, or avoid the business altogether.
According to the tribunal’s decision, “you cannot excuse yourself as a sponsoring state by referring to your limited financial or administrative capacity,” says Isabel Feichtner, a law professor at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “And that of course raises the question: To what extent can a small developing state really control a contractor who might just have an office in that state?”
Nauru had just begun sponsoring a private company to explore the mineral riches at the bottom of the sea Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI), initially a subsidiary of Canada-based Nautilus Minerals, transferred its ownership to two Nauru foundations while the founder of Nautilus remained on NORI’s board. As a developing state, Nauru said, this kind of public-private partnership was the only way that it could join mineral exploration.
Nauru discussed the tribunal’s decision behind closed doors, according to a top official there at the time, and the government sought no independent consultation, hearing only guidance from Nautilus. Two months after the tribunal gave its opinion, Nauru officially agreed to sponsor NORI.
Control
After the tribunal’s decision, the European Union recognized that writing the world’s first deep-sea mining rules to govern companies thousands of miles away would be a tall order for countries with little capacity to conduct research.
The EU, whose member states also sponsor mining exploration, began in 2011 a 4.4 million euro ($5.1 million) project to help Pacific island states develop mining codes. However, by 2018, when most states had finished drafting national regulations, the Pacific Network on Globalization (PANG) found that the mining codes did “not sufficiently safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples or protect the environment in line with international law.” In addition, in some cases countries enacted legislation before civil society actors were aware that there was legislation, says PANG executive director Maureen Penjueli.
“In our region, most of our legislation assumes impact is very small, so there’s no reason to consult widely,” she says. “We found in most legislations is that it is assumed it’s only where mining takes place, not where impacts are felt.”
For Kara, mining laws are one thing, but enforcement is another. Sponsoring states must have “effective control” over the companies they sponsor, according to mineral exploration rules, but the ISA has not explicitly defined what that means. For example, the exploration contract for Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML) says that if “control” changes, it must find a new sponsoring state. When DeepGreen acquired TOML in early 2020 after Nautilus filed for bankruptcy, the ISA said the Tongan government allowed the transfer and reevaluating the company’s background was not required.
Kara questions whether Tonga can adequately control TOML, its management, and its activities. TOML is registered in Tonga, but its management consists of Australian and Canadian employees of DeepGreen. It is owned by the Canadian company. Since DeepGreen acquired TOML, the only Tongan national in the company is no longer listed in a management role.
“It’s not enough to be incorporated in the sponsoring state. The sponsoring state must also be able to control the contractor and that raises the question as to the capacity to control,” Feichtner says.
When Kara’s Civil Society Forum of Tonga and others wrote to the ISA, they argued Canada should be the state sponsor of TOML, considering TOML is owned by a Canadian firm. In response, the ISA wrote that the Tongan government “has no objection” to the management changes, so no change was needed.
“Of all the work they’re doing in the area, I don’t know whether there’s any Tongan sitting there, doing the so-called validation and ascertaining what they do. We’re taking all of this at face value,” Kara says. With few resources to track down people who live in Canada or Australia, Kara is worried that Tonga will not be able to hold foreign individuals accountable for problems that may arise.
In merging with a U.S.-based company, DeepGreen became The Metals Company and will be responsible to shareholders in the U.S. The U.S., however, has not signed on to the U.N. convention that guides the ISA, and as such is not bound by ISA regulations, the only authority governing mining in the high seas.
“What I think is pretty clear is that ‘effective control’ means economic, not regulatory, control,” says Duncan Currie, a lawyer who advises conservation groups on ocean law. “So wherever it is, it’s not in Tonga.”
The risks
On Sept. 7, Tonga’s delegation to the IUCN’s global conservation summit in France joined 80% of government agencies that voted for a motion calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until more was known about the impacts and implications of policies.
“As a scientist, I am heartened by their decision,” says Douglas McCauley a professor of ocean science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The passage of this motion acknowledges research from scientists around the world showing that ocean mining is simply too risky a proposition for the planet and people.”
Tonga’s government continues to sponsor an exploration permit for TOML. According to the latest information, Tonga and TOML have agreed that the company will pay $1.25 in royalties for every ton of nodules mined. That may amount to just 0.16% of the value of the activities the country sponsors, according to scenarios presented to the ISA by a group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Royalties paid to the ISA and then distributed to countries may be around $100,000.
Nauru’s contract with NORI stipulates that the company is not required to pay income tax. DeepGreen has reported in filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that royalties will not be finalized until the ISA completes the exploitation code. With the two-year rule, NORI plans to apply for a mining permit, regardless of when the code is written.
“The only substantial economic benefit [Nauru] might derive is from royalty payments, and these are not even specified yet. and on the other hand, it potentially incurs this huge liability if something goes wrong,” Feichtner says.
Like NORI, TOML began its life as a subsidiary of Nautilus minerals, one of the world’s first deep-sea miners. Just before Nautilus’s project in Papua New Guinea’s waters failed and left the country $157 million in debt, its shareholders created DeepGreen.
“I am afraid that Tonga will be another Papua New Guinea,” Kara says. “If they start mining and something happens out there, we don’t have the resources, the expertise, because we need to validate what they’re doing.”
DeepGreen has said it is giving “developing” states like Tonga the opportunity to benefit from seabed mining without shouldering the commercial and technical risk. DeepGreen did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.
“I’m still trying to figure out their angle. Personally, I think DeepGreen is using Pacific islanders to hype their image. I’m still thinking that we were never really the target. The shareholders have always been their target,” Kara says.
She says she doubts the minerals at the bottom of the ocean are needed for the world to transition away from fossil fuels. In a letter to a Tongan newspaper, Kara wrote, “Deep-sea mining is a relic, left over from the extractive economic approaches of the ’60s and ’70s. It has no place in this modern age of a sustainable blue economy. As Pacific Islanders already know — and science is just starting to learn — the deep ocean is connected to shallower waters and the coral reefs and lagoons. What happens in the deep doesn’t stay in the deep.”
The deep-sea may be vast and unexplored, but it is incredibly important. It encompasses 75% of the ocean’s volume and is the largest and least explored of Earth’s biomes. Some scientists believe that the deep sea and its water column may be the largest carbon sink on Earth. Plus, new species are still being found there, and sometimes, entirely new ecosystems are discovered.
A UN body called the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is responsible for governing and protecting the deep seabed on behalf of humankind as a whole. In practice, the ISA Secretariat routinely prioritizes the interests of pro-mining governments and companies over the protection of our fragile ecosystems.
The Republic of Nauru turned the deep-sea mining world on its head this summer when it invoked Article 15, colloquially known as the Trigger, starting a 2-year countdown on the finalization of mining regulations for polymetallic nodules in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Deep-sea mining has been given the go-ahead to commence in two years, after the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru notified the UN body governing the nascent industry of plans to start mining.
The stakeholder consultation process is to provide the stakeholder community — citizens of the Republic of Nauru, scientists, government and non-governmental officials, industry representatives, and other interested members of the public — with the opportunity to discuss, review, comment, and guide revisions to the Nauru Ocean Resources Incorporated (NORI) Collector Test Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) received by the ISA. Stakeholder consultation is recommended by the ISA’s Legal and Technical Commission.
NORI (a wholly owned subsidiary of The Metals Company of Canada) Stakeholder Consultation Process concludes on Friday November 19, 2021
This is a call to action for people to SUBMIT comments on the Environmental Impact Statement for a Deep Sea Mining Test Collection. Exploratory mining is the first step towards exploitation of the deep sea. Until Nov 19th, we have the opportunity to submit comments on the Collector Test EIS, to show that there is widespread opposition to deep seabed mining. Please feel free to copy and paste the included comments into the entry fields within the NORI Collector Test consultation web page.
There are two categories: 1.General Comments 2. Specific Comments . So, for example, you can simply copy the ‘General Comments’, and paste them directly into the General Comments field.
1. Scroll down to the form under the heading “Participate in the Stakeholder Consultation Process & Submit Written Comments”.
2. In the “specific comments” boxes, include the page number and section that correspond to the responses.
3. Copy and paste the responses below as a guideline or use them as a template to write your own comments.
General Comments
In light of the already-substantial research around deep sea disturbances due to mechanical strain, the proposed NORI-D collector test to be conducted within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), under the management of The Metals Company (TMC), should not be allowed to go any further.
The most notable, and comprehensive research to date being DISCOL (DIS-turbance and re-COL-onization experiment in a manganese nodule area of the deep South Pacific) conducted in 1989 by Hjalmar Thiel and his team of researchers. In 2015, 26 years later, scientists returned to the DISCOL site located within the Peru Basin, and discovered that little to no life had returned to baseline levels — including characteristic animals such as sponges, soft corals, and sea anemones, amongst many others. In the words of Thiel himself, “The disturbance is much stronger and lasting much longer than we ever would have thought.” Over a quarter of a century later, and still next to no life has returned to the area where the tests were conducted. It is clear that there is no feasible process which could in any way mitigate the kinds of disturbances created by the tests TMC wants to perform.
The Prototype Collector Vehicle (PCV) that will be used during NORI-D will, at the very least, totally disturb the top 1-10 cm of sediment on the sea floor in order to extract the polymetallic nodules. This incredibly invasive process will rip apart benthic communities that have taken thousands of years to develop. Possibly even more destructive are the two sediment plumes that will result both from the PCV’s articulation (rolling, tracking, turning, sucking, and depositing fine sediment and crushed nodules) and the return pipe from the Surface Support Vehicle (SSV) where the unwanted fine sediment, warmed seawater, and crushed nodules will be returned to a depth of 1200 meters. This agitated combination of silt and heavy metals will blanket, and coat countless organisms, preventing them from breathing, and eating. It will also block bioluminescent light that some use to attract prey and find mates. This is an unacceptable level of loss and disturbance, and the International Seabed Authority (ISA) must act unanimously to halt all such tests.
The ISA has the historic opportunity to fulfill its mandate of “ensuring the effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects that may arise from deep-sea-related activities.” Without question, the NORI-D collector test will be harmful, and more importantly catastrophic to the living communities of megafaunal, macrofaunal, meiofaunal, and microbial organisms that live in the NORI-D test area, and beyond. The campaign will not yield any further insight — the destructive, and long-lasting disturbances of polymetallic nodule collecting are unavoidable within the domain of seabed mining.
Indeed, even within the context of ALARP, or the mitigation of harms to ‘as-low-as-reasonably-possible,’ it would be hard to imagine a more devastating activity than seabed mining within the incredibly complex, and fragile ecosystem of the benthic-abyssal plains within the CCZ, and globally over any portion of the seabed.
Please act quickly to halt this test, and any subsequent proposals for such activities which will cause irreparable harm to the seabed and its living communities.
For the Specific Comments Section go to this link in Cryptpad:
Community fishers struggle to hold their own against heavily-subsidized foreign fleets. Fisheries subsidies have long given wealthy nations an edge over Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Jamaica that are rich in fishing traditions and natural resources.
In places like the multigenerational fishing village of Manchioneal, Jamaica, artisanal fishers say they simply can’t compete with heavily-subsidized foreign fleets working in depleted waters.
But decisions made by the WTO this year on subsidies could lead to more sustainable and equitable fisheries around the world, in turn leading to better food security and more fish.
This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
MANCHIONEAL, Jamaica — Nestled deep in the northeast coast of Jamaica, hidden in the thick fertile forests of Portland parish, sits the multigenerational fishing community of Manchioneal. Families have been continually fishing these tropical waters since at least the 1950s, preserving and passing down artisanal fishing traditions. The community’s work and lifestyle, which includes earning their catch many miles offshore, has persisted even in the face of foreign competition bolstered by subsidies.
Trips taken by Manchioneal fishers can last anywhere between two and four days, depending on the weather and the fisher’s discretion. Fishing is one of this community’s main sources of income, responsible for at least 35% of employment in the community, according to available information.
Though their fishing traditions remain intact, the risks and costs are high. Today, the very survival of Manchioneal’s fishing community has been put in peril by the uneven playing field influenced by global subsidies to fisheries.
Globally, experts estimate that governments allocate about $35.4 billion annually in fishing subsidies. These funds are meant to support fisheries industries, which some governments acknowledge as drivers of both economic growth and food security.
But approximately $22.2 billion of those subsidies are geared toward capacity-enhancing, according to one 2019 analysis. For a large-scale fishing fleet, that includes things like marketing, tax exemptions, fishing access agreements, boat construction, fishing port development, and more. Since these fleets already have the means and equipment, the additional support exponentially increases their ability to fish for longer periods of time and go farther out into international waters. Rural fisher community development programs also benefit from subsidies, but artisanal fishers like those in Manchioneal say the reality is that they remain threatened by the sheer level of competition.
“I’ve seen them [Jamaica’s National Fisheries Authority] bring a few lines and some hooks once I think,” said 20-year veteran fisherman Cato Smith in an interview. “But I didn’t receive any and whatever they gave wasn’t much compared to how often we spend for upkeep.”
Weighted hooks and fishing line. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.Fishing gaff made of pipe. The survival of Manchioneal’s fishing community has been put in peril by the uneven playing field influenced by global subsidies to fisheries, which includes the quality of fishing equipment. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
For every $1 in fishing subsidies spent in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Jamaica, industrialized nations spend $7, according to research by the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia’s fisheries center.
Independent, nonaligned Jamaican fishers, in particular, don’t benefit from any fishing subsidies. This adds another layer of competition with heavily subsidized foreign fleets, both in international waters adjacent to Jamaica and in Jamaica’s own waters.
In general, foreign fleets are also able to operate far longer at sea than artisanal fishers, drastically increasing overfishing within those waters. That leaves unsubsidized fishers like Smith unable to venture out far enough to supply the island’s domestic demand for fish.
“The demand is always there, so to get enough fish we have to go far out,” Smith said.
Overfishing is a global issue that has the potential to destabilize food systems worldwide, posing a real threat to food security and trade relations. There has been some movement to create more protections, though it’s still in the early stages.
On July 15 this year, WTO member states, including Jamaica, met for marathon discussions on a draft text asking members to strictly prohibit illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The draft text not only calls for an end to subsidies for IUU fisheries, but also an end to all subsidies for overfished stocks.
“No Member shall grant or maintain subsidies for fishing or fishing related activities regarding an overfished stock,” it states.
The agreement was initially brought forward in 2001 in response to an increase in overfishing at the turn of the new millennium, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The task set by the WTO was clear: minimize or eliminate subsidies in overfished waters.
Talks are scheduled to conclude with a final agreed-upon document by the end of the year.
Traditional fishers in Jamaica. Image via PxHere (Public domain).
A persistent tradition
For many who live in coastal communities like Manchioneal, seafood is the main source of protein. Fisheries also provide employment for many young people in general in Jamaica, some of whom have fallen through the cracks of the education system because of lack of financial support.
According to the agriculture ministry’s draft fisheries policy, the fisheries industry contributes to direct and indirect employment of more than 40,000 people and contributes to the local economy of many fishing communities. It also makes an indirect contribution to the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people.
The community of Manchioneal gets its name from the fruit-bearing manchineel (Hippomane mancinella) trees that grow along the area’s coastline. The tree species is known for its wide-set branch network, love of water, and production of what many call beach apples, which are ironically toxic.
But it’s the shape of the harbor that makes the town truly special.
The harbor is perched between two arches of land on either side with a belt of mountains overlooking the small opening of about 600 meters (nearly 2,000 feet) that leads out to the Caribbean Sea.
An 18th-century cannon is still perched on a hill overlooking Manchioneal Bay to this day. The harbor and its cannons made for an impressive defensive fortress, which made the site highly valuable to the British during the 1600s when they first colonized Jamaica.
18th century British Cannon on a hill in Muirton Boy’s Home, overlooking Manchioneal Bay. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
Sylvester Robinson, a fisherman and net maker in Manchioneal, says the area has long been a fishing community.
“I started originally in Port Antonio in the ’60s, and I didn’t really know much about it, but I had some friends who were fishers,” Robinson said in an interview. “At first, I was working at the bakery, and during the week I would take bread for my fisher friends. What I found out was: if I brought them bread in the week, I could get a fish from each of them on the weekend. I really liked that.”
In the past, that was how many people got involved in fishing: they knew a friend who knew a friend, who had a boat.
“One day I saw a man making nets, and to me it looked interesting, so I would visit him after work,” Robinson said. “I would watch him making nets, and ask him questions, until I started to go out to sea with him. At that time, we used paddle boats, with long oars. Eventually, I moved here to Manchioneal, by that time I had gone from paddle boat to motorboat so I could go out further and I would catch hundreds of pounds of fish.”
Many of the fishers in the community are born into the traditions of a fishing family. Those traditions include the use of hooks and lines, poles, nets, pots and even spears for those who know how to free dive.
Manchioneal’s Smith is a second-generation fisherman, who has been in the business long enough to witness the impact of globalization firsthand.
“Fishing has been my occupation since I was 20 years old, it was handed down from my father to me,” he said. “So, I grew up fishing.”
Even though fishers like Smith and others regularly work out of Manchioneal Port, several miles offshore, they are also often forced to venture out into deeper waters.
“Our fishing port is like 14 miles [22.5 kilometers] offshore, but we have banks that are like 40-plus miles [more than 64 km] offshore, in international waters,” Smith said. “But you have other boats who come and catch a lot of fish, because Jamaica has more fish than other Caribbean countries.”
Parked boat on land at Manchioneal Harbor. Even though fishers like Cato Smith and others regularly work out of Manchioneal Port, several miles offshore, they are also often forced to venture out into deeper waters. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.Cato Smith, a second-generation fisherman, holding one of his fishing poles. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
The threat of increasingly unpredictable weather has also played a role in recent years, as climate change impacts intensify weather systems like hurricanes. Jamaica’s 2021 hurricane season saw four storms by mid-October.
That, in turn, has exacerbated international competition on the seas. According to fishers, some small-scale fishers in other parts of Jamaica, like Port Maria, St. Catherine or Oracabessa, simply tend to fish within their own harbors and ports, unless they’re driven farther out to sea due to depleted fishing stocks.
But, according to Smith, that’s not the case.
“No, it is not overfishing,” he said. “You have to go [specific] places to catch the fish, because the demand for it is great, worldwide. Fishing here has always been going out to the deep sea.”
Experts note, however, that some of the traditional catches by these local fishers, include kingfish, jack, sprat, mackerel and tuna, among others which are typically found further from shore.
A decade ago, in 2011, a report on coastal coral reefs in Jamaica from the World Resources Institute noted that Jamaica’s “nearshore waters are among the most overfished in the Caribbean.” The report also places Manchioneal near-shore reefs in the “very high” threatened category, which indicates a danger to biodiversity and overall fisheries in the area.
Even Smith concedes that despite longtime traditions, the impetus for his and others’ extended sea treks today is linked to the fact that current demand exceeds the volume of fish available in nearby waters.
Manchioneal beach. A report on coastal coral reefs in Jamaica noted that Jamaica’s “nearshore waters are among the most overfished in the Caribbean.” Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
On equal footing
For local fishers to even access subsidies, certain formalities must be observed. The Oracabessa Fishing Sanctuary, located in Jamaica’s St. Mary parish, is one the 10 gazetted fishing sanctuaries that receive subsidies from the local government in the form of financial aid to the sanctuary. This cooperative group of fishers, according to executive director Travis Graham, has banded together with nearby hotels, and its members currently work as coral gardeners and sanctuary patrols.
But artisanal fishers like Smith and Robinson say they haven’t benefited from any subsidy programs so far.
“It’s hard to get the fishermen as a group, and without that, they cannot access any funding from the government,” said George William, a fisher and agent with the National Fisheries Authority.
William is a seasoned fisherman of 50 years, and has worked with the National Fisheries Authority, an arm of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, for roughly 30 years.
“They were thinking about making a sanctuary here [in Manchioneal],” William said, hinting at the viability of the bay. “But the fishers won’t band together. If they did, there would be a lot to preserve because all along the coast here sea turtles come to nest. It’s a breeding ground for them.”
With a clerk as his teammate, William services the National Fisheries Authorities outpost in Manchioneal, where they sell gasoline as well as boat and fishing licenses.
“Whenever they have work to do, for instance, out in Pedro Cay, I help out [with] things having to do with the sanctuaries and to see that the fishers don’t overfish, so that the next generation can grow up and have fish,” William said.
View from behind the Manchioneal Fisheries Authorities outpost. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
In 2018, the Jamaican government passed new adjustments to the Fishing Industry Act, placing heftier fines on outlawed fishing practices like operating without a license, possessing or selling prohibited or illegally caught fish, and more. The government also outlawed fishing by deep diving with compression air tanks. This had been a growing trend for years, despite the high risk of compression sickness or “the bends,” which has crippled and even killed some fishermen.
According to Smith, some fishers suffer from the bends while deep diving, recover, and then go right back to using it. Many are still willing to take the risk even after it was outlawed, because they feel it gives them an edge over their foreign counterparts on the water. Jamaica’s revised fishing subsidies draft could provide the leverage these local fishers need.
Floyd Green, Jamaica’s minister of agriculture and fisheries, did not respond to multiple inquiries about developments regarding the government’s current or new fisheries subsidies agreement.
WTO’s mission: Why it matters
The issue of hefty subsidies for wealthier foreign fleets over local fishers is about more than just unfair competition. These subsidies could throw a serious wrench into Jamaica’s food security agenda, forcing Jamaicans to purchase their own fish from foreign sources.
It’s one of the negative outcomes in the equation that the WTO is seeking to remedy with its revision process. Fishers from industrialized states, who are already well-equipped, will be ineligible for subsidies after the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference in November 2021.
The WTO agreement they’re scheduled to present and table in Geneva from November to December could end up being one of the single most important decisions they make for Jamaica’s long-term fisheries sustainability.
Muirton river, Jamaica. Image courtesy of Gladstone Taylor.
Banner image: Jamaican fishers in their fishing boat. Image by Adam Cohn via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
What this adds up to should be clear enough, yet many people who should know better choose not to see it. This is business-as- usual: the expansive, colonizing, progressive human narrative, shorn only of the carbon. It is the latest phase of our careless, self-absorbed, ambition-addled destruction of the wild, the unpolluted, and the nonhuman. It is the mass destruction of the world’s remaining wild places in order to feed the human economy. And without any sense of irony, people are calling this “environmentalism.”1 —PAUL KINGSNORTH
Once upon a time, environmentalism was about saving wild beings and wild places from destruction. “The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind,” Rachel Carson wrote to a friend as she finished the manuscript that would become Silent Spring. “That, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done.”2 She wrote with unapologetic reverence of “the oak and maple and birch” in autumn, the foxes in the morning mist, the cool streams and the shady ponds, and, of course, the birds: “In the mornings, which had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, and wrens, and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marshes.”3 Her editor noted that Silent Spring required a “sense of almost religious dedication” as well as “extraordinary courage.”4 Carson knew the chemical industry would come after her, and come it did, in attacks as “bitter and unscrupulous as anything of the sort since the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species a century before.”5 Seriously ill with the cancer that would kill her, Carson fought back in defense of the living world, testifying with calm fortitude before President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee and the U.S. Senate. She did these things because she had to. “There would be no peace for me,” she wrote to a friend, “if I kept silent.”6
Carson’s work inspired the grassroots environmental movement; the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Silent Spring was more than a critique of pesticides—it was a clarion call against “the basic irresponsibility of an industrialized, technological society toward the natural world.”7 Today’s environmental movement stands upon the shoulders of giants, but something has gone terribly wrong with it. Carson didn’t save the birds from DDT so that her legatees could blithely offer them up to wind turbines. We are writing this book because we want our environmental movement back.
Mainstream environmentalists now overwhelmingly prioritize saving industrial civilization over saving life on the planet. The how and the why of this institutional capture is the subject for another book, but the capture is near total. For example, Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute—someone who has been labeled as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” and “the guru of the environmental movement”8—routinely makes comments like, “We talk about saving the planet.… But the planet’s going to be around for a while. The question is, can we save civilization? That’s what’s at stake now, and I don’t think we’ve yet realized it.” Brown wrote this in an article entitled “The Race to Save Civilization.”9
The world is being killed because of civilization, yet what Brown says is at stake, and what he’s racing to save, is precisely the social structure causing the harm: civilization. Not saving salmon. Not monarch butterflies. Not oceans. Not the planet. Saving civilization. Brown is not alone. Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, more or less constantly pushes the line that “Instead of pursuing the protection of biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake, a new conservation should seek to enhance those natural systems that benefit the widest number of [human] people…. Conservation will measure its achievement in large part by its relevance to [human] people.”10 Bill McKibben, who works tirelessly and selflessly to raise awareness about global warming, and who has been called “probably America’s most important environmentalist,” constantly stresses his work is about saving civilization, with articles like “Civilization’s Last Chance,”11 or with quotes like, “We’re losing the fight, badly and quickly—losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.”12
We’ll bet you that polar bears, walruses, and glaciers would have preferred that sentence ended a different way.
In 2014 the Environmental Laureates’ Declaration on Climate Change was signed by “160 leading environmentalists from 44 countries” who were “calling on the world’s foundations and philanthropies to take a stand against global warming.” Why did they take this stand? Because global warming “threatens to cause the very fabric of civilization to crash.” The declaration con- cludes: “We, 160 winners of the world’s environmental prizes, call on foundations and philanthropists everywhere to deploy their endowments urgently in the effort to save civilization.”13
Coral reefs, emperor penguins, and Joshua trees probably wish that sentence would have ended differently. The entire declaration, signed by “160 winners of the world’s environmental prizes,” never once mentions harm to the natural world. In fact, it never mentions the natural world at all.
Are leatherback turtles, American pikas, and flying foxes “abstract ecological issues,” or are they our kin, each imbued with their own “wild and precious life”?14 Wes Stephenson, yet another climate activist, has this to say: “I’m not an environmentalist. Most of the people in the climate movement that I know are not environmentalists. They are young people who didn’t necessarily come up through the environmental movement, so they don’t think of themselves as environmentalists. They think of themselves as climate activists and as human rights activists. The terms ‘environment’ and ‘environmentalism’ carry baggage historically and culturally. It has been more about protecting the natural world, protecting other species, and conservation of wild places than it has been about the welfare of human beings. I come at from the opposite direction. It’s first and foremost about human beings.”15
Note that Stephenson calls “protecting the natural world, protecting other species, and conservation of wild places” baggage. Naomi Klein states explicitly in the film This Changes Everything: “I’ve been to more climate rallies than I can count, but the polar bears? They still don’t do it for me. I wish them well, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that stopping climate change isn’t really about them, it’s about us.”
And finally, Kumi Naidoo, former head of Greenpeace International, says: “The struggle has never been about saving the planet. The planet does not need saving.”16 When Naidoo said that, in December 2015, it was 50 degrees Fahrenheit at the North Pole, much warmer than normal, far above freezing in the middle of winter.
13 “Environmental Laureates’ Declaration on Climate Change,” European Environment Foundation, September 15, 2014. It shouldn’t surprise us that the person behind this declaration is a solar energy entrepreneur. It probably also shouldn’t surprise us that he’s begging for money.
14 “Wild and precious life” is from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.” House of Light (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992).
