As environmental concerns heat up amid growing interest in minerals exploration and mining of the Pacific ocean’s seabed, one scientist is advocating the search for more inactive hydrothermal vents as a way of safely mining the sea.
Dr Sven Peterson, a minerologist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Germany, said inactive vents were less likely to host marine life, so mining them would pose lesser danger to the ocean’s ecosystems.
“At water depths of 500 to 5000 metres which the mining industry will be interested in, there is no light but we still see oases of life there. This, of course, is of concern among biologists who do not want mining to happen at these oases in the deep.
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Two hundred delegates from 22 island countries and territories in the Pacific region met with experts from around the world at the 3rd Session Pacific Platform for Disaster Management to examine “a way forward” to reduce the risks of disasters including the impacts of climate change that are affecting development in the Pacific Region.
Dr Russell Howorth, Director of the Suva-based Applied Geoscience and Technology Division (SOPAC) of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) has been appointed to the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
Dr. Russell Howorth told delegates that to reduce risk and vulnerability from disasters confronting Pacific Island countries and territories, a number of important issues must be addressed “in an integrated manner at a national level and supported by regional and international partners.”
The risk of dying in a flood or tropical cyclone in the Pacific region is today only a third of what it was in 1990 says a United Nations report titled Revealing Risk, Redefining Development. This 2011 edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR11) will be launched in Auckland (New Zealand) on 3 August at the Third Session of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management.Newsflash
The Government of Papua New Guinea has confirmed that it intends to take up a 30% stake in the Solwara 1 project in the Bismarck Sea in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Nautilus Minerals will retain a 70% holding in a joint venture to be established with the PNG Government. In a letter to Nautilus, PNG Treasurer Peter O’Neill said the Ministerial Committee on Economic Sectors and the National Executive Council (NEC) had endorsed a recommendation that the State exercise its rights to 30% equity in the a joint venture. |
