Demonstrators carry banners and flags during a protest outside the venue hosting the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon on June 29. Photo / AP
Demonstrators carry banners and flags during a protest outside the venue hosting the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon on June 29. Photo / AP
OPINION:
Last week I got to experience my first Member's Bill being pulled out of the biscuit tin. As a party of two the odds of getting pulled are not good. It's a bizarre feeling staring at this unassuming biscuit tin, hoping like hell your bill is pulled out. After the excitement of seeing the Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill come through, I reflected on how it got there.
In 2014, when the first ever seabed mining application landed on my desk, I was an iwi CEO based in South Taranaki, and this application was the very first to test the then very new Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012. National were in government and had a very aggressive extraction agenda.
As Taranaki Iwi we have extensive experience in receiving and analysing extractive proposals. With Trans-Tasman Resources' application we concluded that the technology and methodology being used to extract would cause irreparable environmental damage, the data and research provided was speculative and their obligations to us as kaitiaki had not been met.
Eight years later and with three successful legal cases under our belt, our analysis has been validated. With multiple petitions of thousands of signatures supporting this view, still our government refuses to listen, instead relying on International Seabed Authority negotiations.
It is with this in mind that I joined the Pacific Parliamentarians' Alliance on Deep Sea Mining and attended the 2022 United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal to share our experiences as tangata whenua, the only indigenous people in the world to have successfully tested seabed mining legislation in the courts.
Working as part of a coalition of indigenous leaders and environmentalists, we took on the task of lobbying world leaders on the dangers of deep sea mining with the goal of putting in place an international moratorium or ban on the risky and largely untested practice.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer with Fiji President Frank Bainimarama at the United Nations Oceans Conference in Lisbon. Photo / Supplied
The turning point of the conference came when French President Emmanuel Macron spoke and declared that "we have to create a legal framework to stop high seas mining". France's intervention was massive, it sent shock waves through the diplomatic world.
The trip was hugely successful, and by the end of the conference nations including Palau, Fiji, Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, France, Portugal and Chile had all announced their opposition to deep sea mining.
The fact that these countries, including a major G7 nation like France, could put a stake in the ground in support of ocean protection, while Aotearoa still sits on the fence and actively enables the industry, highlighted just how weak and timid our domestic and international environmental positions really are.
There's nothing we can't achieve if we work together as tangata whenua, tangata moana and indigenous peoples of the world, as long as we operate with humility, respect and with whakawhanaungatanga guiding us.
It was upsetting to return to Aotearoa only to learn that now the Government's research institute, Niwa, is working with its Australian counterpart CSIRO and the deep sea mining industry to lay the groundwork for opening up more of our territorial waters and EEZ for destruction.
Jacinda Ardern and David Parker can no longer get away with burying their heads in the sand and pretending that they are environmental leaders, or that they have an independent foreign policy. They must make clear that Labour are not beholden to vested corporate interests who care for nothing other than lining their pockets on the back of environmental vandalism.
Straight after returning from Portugal, I was travelling to Rotorua for our Te Pāti Māori Matariki conference that was focused on the late Moana Jackson's vision for Matike Mai, constitutional transformation.
One of the keynote speakers, Dayle Takitimu, who led the Te Whānau-a-Apanui campaign against deep sea mining, summed up the problems tangata whenua have when fighting for our rights as kaitiaki: "Our Treaty-protected rights are actually very simple. There is nothing confusing about full exclusive and undisturbed possession. Full exclusive and undisturbed possession is being watered down to consultation."
Just as Te Whānau-a-Apanui and their allies took to their waka and stopped deep sea oil drilling in the Raukūmara basin, so too will we put our bodies on the line to ensure seabed mining never occurs in Taranaki or anywhere in Aotearoa's waters.
While we continue to lobby, fight court battles, and push legislation in Parliament, we must not wait on the Westminster Pākehā system to realise the error of its ways and put this right. We must continue to build our movements for tino rangatiratanga and environmental justice and use our own people power to draw a line in the sand and make clear that seabed mining will never have the consent of the people.
In the words of Moana Jackson, "rather than talking truth to power, we are talking the truth of our power".
