Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust
Abstract
In an article concerning the possibility of seabed nodule mining in the Cook Islands (Cook Islands News 27 March), Te Ipukarea Society wrote “We are confident that further research will show that the goods and services that the ocean provides humanity are actually worth many times more than what we will get from mining, and for a much longer term.”
In discussing this claim I will focus on deep sea services because with a precautionary approach to nodule mining the main impacts will be in the deep sea rather than the surface waters. The variety and global values of the main deep sea services are presented in the 2020 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) circular: “Economic value of ecosystem services from the deep sea and the areas beyond national jurisdiction” (Ottaviani 2020).1 Although the circular is focused on the “areas beyond national jurisdiction” (ABNJ), or International Waters, it also includes the deep sea within “exclusive economic zones” (EEZs), which makes it inclusive of the Cook Islands polymetallic nodule fields.
The FAO circular followed the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) 2 classification of goods and services, which included non-biological (abiotic) services as well as biological (biotic) services. In evaluating all MEA ecosystem services the FAO circular concluded that the non-biological (abiotic) services of fossil fuels and minerals accounted for 59% of the total value, and the biological (biotic) services 41%.
The Te Ipukarea Society claim is pitting the value of the local minerals ecosystem service against the other services. To focus on this issue, I removed minerals (and fossil fuels) from the FAO table and refer to the remainder as biotic services, although some have non-biological components.
The table shows the FAO estimated value of each service for 2014 along with its percentage of the total. These are global estimates and below we will estimate the relevant Cook Islands contribution to the global total and compare it to the estimated value of nodule mining.
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