Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals.
Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands.
Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through.
Photo: AP
“The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said on Monday evening in a statement.
Pacific nations Kiribati, Cook Islands and Nauru sit at the forefront of a highly contentious push to mine the depths of the ocean.
Kiribati holds rights for deep-sea mining exploration across a 75,000km2 swathe of the Pacific, in a region known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone. Through state-backed subsidiary Marawa Research, Kiribati had been working with Canada-based The Metals Co to explore the mineral deposits. However, that agreement was terminated “mutually” at the end of last year, the company told AFP.
A Kiribati fisheries official said the nation was now exploring opportunities with other foreign partners.
The Metals Co said Kiribati’s mining rights were “less commercially favorable” than other projects with Pacific nations Nauru and Tonga.
Kiribati’s announcement comes as international regulators begin a series of crunch meetings that could decide the fate of the nascent industry. The Metals Co and other industry players are pushing the International Seabed Authority to set rules allowing large-scale exploitation.
Kiribati, a climate-threatened archipelago that is home to about 130,000 people, lays claim to an ocean expanse that forms one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world.
Kiribati President Taneti Maamau’s administration in 2019 severed diplomatic links with Taiwan in favor of China.
Chinese companies have in recent years been granted rights to harvest Kiribati’s profitable fisheries — one of the nation’s few natural resources besides minerals.
A visiting cadre of Beijing police have also visited the capital, Tarawa, to help train local Kiribati forces.
Tessie Lambourne, a leading member of Kiribati’s opposition, said China seemed to be seeking access to “our maritime space for its own interest.”
“I always say that our government is bending over backwards to please China,” she said.
China and Cook Islands last month struck a five-year cooperation agreement to study the Pacific nation’s seabed mineral riches. The deal did not include any exploration or mining license.
Companies hope to earn billions by scraping the ocean floor for polymetallic rocks, or nodules, that are loaded with manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel — metals used to build batteries for electric vehicles.
Nauru and Kiribati believe the industry holds the key to economic prosperity in a region where scarce land is already under threat from rising seas.
However, Palau, Fiji and Samoa are staunchly opposed, pushing for lingering environmental questions to be cleared up before anyone takes the plunge.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS