DEEP SEA MINING IN PARADISE

The Cook Islands ready for deep sea mining - it will make them rich.

(Russia Today - 2013) - The Cook Islands government in the Pacific has plans to send robots to the sea floor to harvest minerals that are believed to be worth tens of billions of dollars.

 

Mining the minerals on the bottom of the South Pacific could increase the country's gross domestic product a hundredfold, the Cook Islands' Finance Minister Mark Brown told the Guardian. He believes the seabed minerals could transform the 14,000 inhabitants into some of the richest in the world in terms of per-capita income.

 

Despite environmentalists warnings that mining could irreparably damage the country's beaches and marine ecosystem, recent technological advances make mining more possible and the economics make it more likely.   

Read more - http://rt.com/business/deep-sea-mining-cook-islands-112/


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RELATED

Deep Sea Mining in Papua, New Guinea

 

(SciDevNet 2012) - Deep sea mining (DSM) is the new frontier in extractive mining. For the companies involved, as well as the governments that own the mining rights, it offers substantial profits.

 

However DSM is still experimental in nature, with potentially vast adverse environmental effects.

 

It also makes use of new technologies that have yet to be tested.In January 2011, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) granted the world's first deep-sea mining lease to Nautilus Minerals Inc, a Canadian mining firm, which is about to embark on a seabed mining project known as the Solwara 1 project.

 

However fears have been expressed by critics of the project that not enough research has been carried out to enable convincing conclusions to be drawn on the likely environmental impacts of DSM, particularly as there is very little knowledge of biological diversity and ecosystems within the deposit areas.

 

The ecosystems surrounding hydrothermal vents combine superheated and highly mineralized vent fluids with microbes that are capable of using chemicals as a nutritional source. In recent years, such ecosystems have been found to host over 500 species previously unknown to science.

 

Read more - http://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/opinion/deep-sea-mining-a-dangerous-experiment.html

 

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How Deep Sea Mining (DSM) could destroy the cradle of life on Earth. 

 

(The Ecologist - October 2010) - ‘It’s the cradle of life on earth,’ explains Dr Rod Fujita from the Environmental Defense Fund and author of studies looking into deep-sea mining, ‘ and the only one that does not depend on sunlight.

 

There are species there that are found nowhere else on earth. It’s not like any land habitats we are used to; in fact you have to have your perspective altered to appreciate this deep-sea world,’ he says.

 

Of particular concern are the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste that will be produced by the mining process, which Professor Richard Steiner, from the University of Alaska,  compares to that of a ‘giant underwater tractor’ and which will be pumped onto deeper seabeds nearby.

 

Dr Fujita said the physics of water as well as weather and currents made it difficult to predict or contain any spill and that deep-sea mining had the capacity to produce pollution that could travel across into international waters.

Read more -
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/653840/how_deepsea_mining_could_destroy_the_cradle_of_life_on_earth.html

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Link to this post - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/08/deep-sea-mining-in-paradise.html

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ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS -

 

ANCIENT BUDDHIST CITY IN AFGHANISTAN TO BE RAZED BY MINING COMPANY

 

MES AYNAK is an Afghan village with a buried treasure: a magnificent Buddhist city dating from the early centuries AD.

Discovered by a geologist in 1963, the buried city is regarded as the most important archaeological find in a generation. However, the fact that it is sitting on a vast copper deposit has sealed its fate and it's about to be destroyed.

 

A full excavation of the city has been impeded by political upheavals. First the Marxist takeover, then the Soviet invasion, next the Taliban government and Al-Qaida revolt (using the city tunnels as a hideout), and finally by the war with American forces.

 

By the time French archaeologists returned in 2004 they realized that looters had plundered the site of many valuable Buddha images and damaged the remaining frescoes. Looting continued under the new Afghan government.

 

In the last few years there have been other discoveries in the same valley. They range from fortified monasteries, a Zoroastrian fire temple, and several other Buddhist buildings, ancient coins, to more than 1,000 statues and a variety of other archaeological treasures.

 

Then in 2008 Chinese businessmen arrived, and bought a 30-year lease on the entire site with the objective of mining copper.

 

French archaeologists are now scrambling to save what they can before the site is razed.

The media have compared the destruction of the major Buddhist site at Mes Aynak to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in the summer of 2001.

 

The route to the site is hazardous due to recurrent attacks by the Taliban. Despite massive investment in the fortified camp at Mes Aynak, and enormous security, there have been several Taliban attacks on the Chinese mining camp and most of the 150 Chinese staff in residence recently fled back home.

 

In the meantime, excavations continue. Mining was due to begin in January, but Taliban attacks have delayed the start of the mining project. How long archaeologists have now remains unclear.

 

MES AYNAK's historical background:   It seems to have remained a wealthy centre until a period of slow decline began in the eighth century, with the arrival of Muslim invaders; the settlement was finally abandoned 200 years later.  Archaeologists have found a layer of ash and charcoal and smashed statues, which seems to have coincided with the slow rise of the Islamic Ghurid dynasty in the area.

 

Before that Buddhism was spreading over the Hindu Kush and the region was the meeting place for the ideas and peoples of the civilizations surrounding Central Asia. Its mountains and valleys were a major intellectual crossroads where the Hellenistic, Persian, Central Asian, Tibetan, Indian and Chinese worlds met and fused. At this period, Afghanistan was the epicentre of classical globalisation: midway on the trade route from Rome to China, traders came to Afghanistan from all over the world,

Read article in depth here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/01/mes-aynak-afghanistans-buddhist-buried-treasure-faces-destruction/