DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

Illicit drugs: Africa's growing silent crisis

The World Health Organization has warned that many young Africans are turning to substance abuse. The UN predicts that by 2030 the number of drug users in Africa will have increased substantially.

A bizarre sight welcomes anybody who enters the home of Asia Bianca and her husband in the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi. An infant's slippers, strewn with cigarette waste and drug paraphernalia. This is no ordinary home.

The slippers belonged to their little daughter, who died six months after she was born.

"When we went to bed, she was fine. Then when I woke up, she was foaming at the mouth. So I got scared and hoped when I was high on heroin that I hadn't placed my hand or leg on her, causing her to suffocate," a visibly downcast Bianca tells DW.

Despite doctors ruling out her fears, Bianca still carries the guilt of her daughter's death. The 20-year-old and her husband are some of the 3,000 active injecting drug users in Malindi.

She says she was introduced to the habit by her ex-boyfriend, who used to lace her cigarettes with heroin secretly.

By the time she realized what was happening, she was already hooked.

What is drug and substance abuse?

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes substance abuse as the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances, including alcohol and illicit drugs.

It says that illicit drug use has adverse health and social consequences because it puts a heavy financial burden on users, their families and society.

"The government has forgotten us. We are left homeless, sick at home, or sick in the streets, so we have no choice but to support each other," Yassir Abdallah, a recovering addict in Malindi, told DW.

The UN estimates that by 2030, the number of drug users in Africa will have increased by 40%.

Across the continent, drug addicts often face discrimination and a lack of support, making it difficult for them to regain their lives even if they stop using.

"Such persons need treatment and critical attention," said Richard Opare, a former addict who is now a drug addiction management professional in Ghana's capital, Accra.

"When they walk into the [rehabilitation] centers, many of the drug addicts are not ready," he said.

He explained that there was a screening system to determine which drug(s) an addict had used. Afterwards, therapists conducted an assessment to ascertain the severity of the problem. He said that drug addicts were given medical attention through the detox stage to ensure that they got better. 

Sharing needles when injecting drugs is linked to contracting HIV and Hepatitis

Heroin and cocaine on the beach

Best known for its white sandy beaches and Italian tourists, Malindi is home to one of the biggest group of heroin addicts in Kenya.

Like most coastal towns in the East African country, it is used by international traffickers as a transit point for drugs transported from Afghanistan to the West.

According to the UN drugs agency (UNODC), the most often used illicit drug on the continent is currently cannabis. The second most frequently used class of drugs are  amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), which include "ecstasy" and methamphetamine.

However, more and more drug users are beginning to inject substances, though the practice is deemed particularly risky as sharing contaminated needles and syringes can transmit viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis B, and C.

In West Africa, Guinea-Bissau is also an important hub for drug trafficking — especially for cocaine. It began its transformation into a narco-state in 2005, when former president Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira — who had ruled the country with an iron fist from 1980 to 1999 — was reelected after returning from six years of exile in Portugal. 

"The drug lords feel right at home in Guinea-Bissau, like they are in paradise," Calvario Ahukharie, the former head of Interpol in Guinea-Bissau, told DW.

COVID and substance abuse

Experts say that the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, the high cost of living and a lack of prospects have created "a perfect storm" for substance abuse on the entire continent.

"When schools closed [during the lockdown], the number of young drug users shot up," said Alphonse Maina, a volunteer with the Omari Project, a community-based rehabilitation center in Malindi.

"In Malindi, if you are not taking heroin, you are taking khat, smoking marijuana or cigarettes."

He and other experts say that people should treat drug abuse as a medical condition, not a crime. They say that it's critical to combat stigma and provide those who request it with free rehabilitation and medical care.

"If you're arrested with a small portion of heroin or cocaine for personal use, you go in for 15 years," Wamala Twaibu of the Uganda Harm Reduction Network said. His initiative has been criticized for offering legal support to those arrested for injecting drugs such as heroin.

"The law is not fair. And what is happening is that law enforcement is using the law to extort. To get money from these communities, already disadvantaged communities."

At the moment, the only support for Asia Bianca is her husband — who is himself an addict.

Eunice Wanjiru, Antonio Cascais and Michael Oti contributed to this article

Edited by Keith Walker

Albania belatedly begins to harness the power of the sun

Albania enjoys the most sunshine hours of any country in Europe. 

But the Ukraine war and rising prices for energy are making the Balkan country using more solar power for electricity production.

Albania gets more sunshine than anywhere else in Europe, 

with an average of 286 days, or 2,700 hours per year

Albania leads the Balkans in an ecological-footprint ranking by Global Footprint Network (GFN) — the organization behind the Earth Overshoot Day initiative. According to the ranking, Albania still has until November 3 when it's demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what planet earth can regenerate this year. Slovenia reached its Overshoot Day in April, while Serbia in early July.

But according to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the country makes too little from its huge solar potential with an installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity is just 22 megawatts (MW).

Most of Albania’s electricity is produced using hydropower generated by a network of dams along its mountainous rivers — hence, net energy imports are directly correlated to annual rainfall. 

Albania has recently seen rainfall drop below levels needed to replenish the reservoirs behind its dams

Albania is actually a net energy importer, with imports ranging from about 12% of its Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) in 2015 to a high of 46% in 2017.

The current government now has decided to change that — partly prompted by energy-price spikes and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Under new plans, transmission system operator OST expects wind and solar power plants connected to its network to reach a combined 220.4 MW next year — almost ten times more than the current capacity. Untapped technical potential for deploying solar projects was up to 2,378 MW, OST said.

The government is also planning a new 210 MW dam to add to its existing 1,350 MW of hydropower. The €500 million ($490 million) project will make it possible to manage the water levels in the network, meaning Albania will be able to store water supply for use when most needed, for example, during peak summer months.

Brave new world

"Until recently, Albania had no supporting regulatory framework for deploying renewable energy sources other than hydropower plants," Albanian energy expert Lorenc Gordani told DW. 

"However, this changed with the adoption of the new Law on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in 2017," Gordani said.

The new legal framework was followed with an agreement between the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy (MIE) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and then with a second one between the EBRD in 2017. The agreements saw the commitment to develop up to 700 MW in PV and wind power by 2020.

The National Action Plan for Renewable Energies 2019-2020 was to increase the planned PV capacity from 120 MW to 490 MW and wind from 70 MW to 150 MW.

"This means there are today 1,300 MW worth of projects, ranging from 10 MW to 275 MW, partnered or looking for a partnership with foreign investors to develop," Gordani said.

Lorenc Gordani believes the new legal framework will liberalize Albania's

 energy market and accelerate new projects

Albania is also seeking to update management of its power system. It is planning to implement the EU's target model for the "day-ahead and intraday markets" by the end of this year.

Gordani said Albania's plans would enable the country to enter an emerging market of alternative renewables by matching "the interests of more prominent companies and promote more sustainable big projects based on market incentives."

This framework is "quite probable to enable the country to be able to produce all its energy needs by 2025," Gordani added.

The build-up of solar power is also aimed at helping Albania balance its hydropower ambitions with its environmental obligations. Green campaigners want the government to rely less on dams, because of their impact on river ecosystems.

New plants

A large number of applications have been received for wind and solar power plants in the past two years, the OST said. 

Norwegian renewable-energy company Statkraft, for example, has launched the final stage of a floating solar plant on the Banja reservoir in southeastern Albania. Combined with the company's hydropower plant nearby, the two units will have a total capacity of 2 MW generated with the help of 6,400 panels.

Another solar plant is being built by French firm Voltalia and due to come online in 2024, injecting 100 MW of additional power into the grid. Voltalia also said it was starting work on the Karavasta solar park, which will be the largest in the Balkans.

"The main advantages of solar power in Albania are that solar is in general the lowest cost of energy," said Borge Bjorneklett.

The chief executive of Ocean Sun — a Norway-based manufacturer of floating solar power systems —  believes the solar plants he is installing in Albania have the additonal advantage of not using arable land and avoiding deforestation. In Albania, their proximity to hydropower reservoirs are reducing water evaporation from the reservoir, and would boost photovoltaic performance due to water cooling, he noted.

"Disadvantages are perhaps the novelty of the technology, bureaucratic, regulatory hurdles, poorly developed standards and certifications and a general skepticism with new technology," he added.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

Opinion: North Macedonia and the EU — the European Theater of the Absurd

After waiting for 17 years, North Macedonia has taken the next step toward EU membership. The fact that no one is celebrating is due to the absurd conditions that await the Balkan country, writes Boris Georgievski.

There is plenty of anger about the concessions North Macedonia has had

 to make to Bulgaria in order to begin the process of EU accession talks

In the words of Eugene Ionesco, "absurd is that which has no purpose, or goal, or objective." The Theater of the Absurd literary movement, whose most prominent representative is the Romanian-French writer, currently serves as the best description of the relations between North Macedonia and the European Union. 

In the complicated relationship between the two, absurdity not only has no objective, but the purpose of joining the EU has been reduced to absurdity. It sounds complicated, and indeed it is.  

The highest representatives of North Macedonia and the EU held their first Intergovernmental Conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Four more countries — Turkey, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania — are in the formal process of negotiations to join the bloc and have held Intergovernmental Conferences. 

However, North Macedonia, which became an EU candidate country in 2005, will not start negotiations after Tuesday's meeting. Unlike the others, North Macedonia has embarked on what the formal Brussels dictionary describes as the beginning of the process of opening negotiations. 

In order to open negotiations, the country must first change its constitution and include the Bulgarian minority as a constituent part of it. But in the Macedonian parliament, there is no two-thirds majority in favor of taking that step. Aside from the nationalist opposition, many pro-Western intellectuals and politicians believe that this will only kindle further expectations and demands in Sofia. 

Bulgaria's demands on North Macedonia

Boris Georgievski, head of DW's Macedonian Service

What's in dispute is not just the issue of changing the constitution to accommodate Bulgarian interests, but everything else that Bulgaria demands from its Balkan neighbor.  

The majority of Macedonians in North Macedonia are offended because Bulgaria does not recognize them as a nation and does not recognize their language. With the help of France and other European countries, Bulgaria managed to impose its interpretation of the historical events as a de facto condition for North Macedonia's progress in the Negotiating Framework, the basic document and roadmap for the negotiations with the EU. 

The term "absurd" can be applied to the Negotiating Framework. In it, a Bulgarian unilateral declaration claims that the Macedonian language does not exist, and that it is actually a dialect of the Bulgarian language. There are similar requests regarding historical figures, from the Middle Ages until the beginning of the 20th century, in the textbooks in North Macedonia. Bulgaria insists that kings and revolutionaries from those periods should be identified as ethnic Bulgarians. 

Bulgaria has not tried to hide its agenda. During his visit to Berlin in May, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said: "We will not allow 'Macedonianism' to be legitimized in the EU." Bulgaria's official policy describes "Macedonianism" an ideology that, after World War II, "artificially" and forcibly turned Bulgarians into Macedonians. This position would rather foolishly assume that throughout history, especially in Europe, there are nations and languages that have been created "naturally."  

An adversary or a partner for the EU? 

How much does North Macedonia Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski (second left) really have to smile about?

Due to this historical dispute, Bulgaria has since 2019 repeatedly vetoed the beginning of North Macedonia's accession negotiations with the EU. Now the EU has come up with what it calls a "European compromise" — a proposal that turns the bilateral dispute between the two Balkan neighbors into an EU problem. 

When Macedonia was renamed North Macedonia in 2018 to satisfy Greek demands, which, like Bulgaria's, encroached on history and identity, the country was promised that the road to the EU was open. Now, nobody believes in such assurances anymore.

Brussels had hoped that starting the accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania would show its commitment to the Western Balkans countries and raise its image while simultaneously curtailing Russia's influence. But the result is a dramatic rise in anti-European sentiments in North Macedonia and an increase in the popularity of a pro-Russian party in the country. 

Both the EU and North Macedonia have now reached a dead end. If North Macedonia wants to continue on its European path, it would have to agree to the humiliating Bulgarian demands. 

Essentially, North Macedonia's choice is not to negotiate on identity issues and never enter the EU, or to accept that its citizens will never enter the EU as Macedonians with their Macedonian language. If the EU continues supporting such demands, it could soon have another adversary instead of a partner in Europe.  

    

 India: Dalai Lama's Ladakh visit irks China

The Tibetan spiritual leader arrived in Ladakh, India, on July 15 for a monthlong visit

Given the tense relations between India and China, anything the Dalai Lama says or does in the region gains significance, say experts.

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, arrived in India's remote mountainous Ladakh region bordering China last week for a monthlong visit.  

He received a rousing reception, with thousands of people lining up on both sides of the road outside the airport in the cold desert region's town of Leh to welcome him.

"Tibet and Ladakh share rich cultural and religious ties. The people of Ladakh — including Buddhists, Muslims and Christians — have huge respect for His Holiness, the Dalai Lama," Jigmat Paljor, one of Ladakh's leading student and social activists, told DW.

"Buddhists consider him the spiritual head of Buddhism and a living Buddha of compassion. People in Ladakh are overjoyed about his visit," he added.

This is the spiritual leader's first trip outside his base in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

China-India tensions amid border disputes

It's also the first time he has been in Ladakh since New Delhi split the region from disputed Kashmir, scrapping the entire territory's semiautonomous status and taking direct control in 2019.

This is the Dalai Lama's first trip outside his base in northern India since the onset of the pandemic

That move was sharply criticized by Pakistan, as well as China. A year later, Indian and Chinese troops engaged in deadly clashes in Ladakh. They have been locked in a military standoff along their disputed border ever since

The violence — the most serious in decades — has led to a deterioration of China-India relations.

Happymon Jacob, who teaches foreign policy at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, said he wouldn't generally attach much political significance to the visit of the Tibetan spiritual leader. 

"There isn't any great significance that we can attach to the Dalai Lama's Ladakh visit. India has not made such a big issue of Chinese sovereignty as far as Tibet is concerned. In any case, before the onset of the pandemic the Dalai Lama used to visit Ladakh every year," he said.

Nevertheless, he added, "given the difficulties in India-China relations, anything that the Dalai Lama does in that particular region [Ladakh] will be viewed with great significance by the Indians and Chinese."

Chinese troops took over Tibet in 1950 in what Beijing calls a "peaceful liberation." The Dalai Lama fled into exile nine years later following an uprising and has lived in northern India ever since.

Although New Delhi recognizes Tibet as an autonomous region of China, it has several territorial disputes with Beijing elsewhere on its border, which extends 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) into the Himalayan region.

Upsetting comments?

Before leaving for Ladakh, the Dalai Lama said: "India and China are most populated countries and neighbors. Sooner or later, you have to solve this problem [border disputes along the Line of Actual Control] through talks and peaceful means."

Pravin Sawhney, one of India's leading defense experts, said the comments would have upset China for three reasons.

"One, they [the Chinese] consider the Dalai Lama as a separatist; two, he is going to a problem area because China does not consider the constitutional changes made by India in the Ladakh region in August 2019 as legitimate; and three, India says the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader but he made a political-military statement in Jammu," he pointed out.

Though Beijing views the Dalai Lama as a "separatist," he has denied seeking Tibet's independence and says he only advocates substantial autonomy and protection of the region's native Buddhist culture.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the trip is not viewed positively by Beijing.

"Anything involving the Dalai Lama is political, given how he is perceived by Beijing. The Chinese government objects even if he has brief meetings with Indian officials, and so for him to spend a month in Ladakh — a sensitive region for China — is a move that will certainly not be viewed positively by the Chinese," he said.

'All of us want peace'

How interactions with the Dalai Lama irk Beijing can be seen by how the Chinese government reacted when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter on July 6, to convey greetings to the spiritual leader on his 87th birthday.

"The Indian side also needs to fully understand the anti-China and separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at the time. "It needs to abide by its commitments to China on Tibet-related issues, act and speak with prudence and stop using Tibet-related issues to interfere in China's internal affairs."

India's Foreign Ministry hit back and said: "It has been a consistent policy of our government to treat him as a guest in India and as a respected religious leader who enjoys a large following in India."

India considers Tibet to be part of China, though it hosts Tibetan exiles. Beijing doesn't recognize the Tibetan government-in-exile and hasn't held any dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama since 2010.

Ladakh student activist Jigmat Paljor said the Dalai Lama has always been in favor of peace, dialog and reconciliation.

"I endorse his statement that China and India should resolve their border dispute immediately, for we experienced the horrors of warlike situation when the Galwan clashes took place in 2020. All of us want peace."

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru

Ticking 'socioeconomic bomb': North Africa's disappearing beaches

The coastline in Maghreb countries is eroding faster than almost anywhere else in the world. But it's not just rising sea levels that are to blame. And the good news is, there are ways to cope.

Beaches are being washed away faster in Tunisia than other Maghreb countries

Over the past 15 years, the fishermen of Ghannouch, a town around 400 kilometers (ca. 250 miles) south of the Tunisian capital, Tunis, say they have seen "radical changes" on the coastline they sail around. 

"The sand is decreasing and the rocks are starting to appear," Sassi Alaya, a local seaman and the head of the fisheries guild in the southern port, told DW. "It is a double problem because the coasts of the state of Gabes are already suffering from environmental pollution due to the chemical factories in the region. It greatly affects the work of small fisheries businesses."

"There are black spots around the coasts now," added Mounir Kcherem, a fisherman from nearby Kerkennah island. "There are huge differences between the coast today and the coast 20 years ago," he said. "Although this phenomenon is still confined to specific places around the island."

The fishing families in southern Tunisia are not the only ones dealing with such changes. A recent study by the World Bankthat looked at the economic consequences of coastal erosion in this area found that countries such as Tunisia, Morocco,Libya and Algeria were losing their beaches faster than almost anywhere else in the world.

Faster than global average

The study concluded that beaches in the Maghreb region eroded at a rate of 15 centimeters per year on average between 1984 and 2016. The global average is about 7 centimeters a year.

It can be hard to work out how much coastline has been lost in a single country because coasts both gain and lose sand, so national averages can be misleading. But it was when World Bank researchers used more detailed data and satellite imagery from the European Space Agency and the National Oceanography Center in the UK, that it became clear just how endangered the Maghreb coastline was in certain areas.

Just over a  third — 38% — of Morocco's beaches are eroding and the country loses between 12 to 14 centimeters a year. Libyan coasts are receding by around 28 centimeters every year. But these are considered comparatively stable compared to Tunisia. There, about a third — 35% — of sandy beaches are also eroding but at the much faster rate of between 50 and 70 centimeters per year.

An estimated 700,000 people are employed by Morocco's fisheries sector

For example, between 2006 and 2019 in Hammamet, a popular tourist town just south of the country's capital Tunis, the beach area halved. That equals a loss of about 24,000 square meters or between 3 and 8 meters every year, experts calculated.

World Bank economists also tried to calculate the value of such losses by working out what lost land and infrastructure on the coast was worth. They found these would be equivalent to about 2.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Tunisia, 0.7% in Libya, 0.4% in Morocco and 0.2% in Algeria. Altogether, this would have been equivalent to around $2.46 billion (€2.42 billion), on the basis of those countries' national income from 2021.

However, as the researchers also noted, "these costs are on the lower side as they do not incorporate other values such as foregone revenues from tourism."

Coastal erosion also has a further knock-on effect: As saltwater encroaches on land, it starts to pollute fresh groundwater, making it saltier. The brackish water can't be used for drinking or agriculture.

Socioeconomic disaster

The potential impact of coastal erosion on sectors like tourism and fishing are like a "socioeconomic bomb" waiting to go off, the writers of an article published by HydroSciences Montpellier, a special laboratory at the University of Montpellier in France that focuses on Mediterranean water resources, said.

"Climate change amplifies other threats and exacerbates underlying vulnerabilities and social risks," Lia Sieghart, the World Bank's practice manager for environment and natural resources for the Middle East and North Africa, told DW. "Marginalized social groups are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. That's why political stabilization and actions on climate change go hand in hand."

The situation in Maghreb countries is also more precarious because of the number of locals living on or near the coast. An estimated 40% of the world's total population lives near the sea.

Around 80% of Libyans live in urban centers, most of which are located on the country's coast

However in Morocco, the percentage of locals living close to the coast is 65% and in Tunisia, it's around 85%. Many of the Maghreb's major cities are located on the coast and in Tunisia, for example, an estimated 90% of the country's economic output happens by the seaside. 

In fact, the increasing urbanization and population pressure at coastlines may well be one of the many reasons for more rapid coastal erosion. Buildings and humans crowd out the natural elements that tend to protect against erosion, such as wetlands, plants and sand dunes.

Rising seas inevitable

Another major reason for the disappearing beaches is obviously rising sea levels. But, as experts told DW, the real reason why Maghreb countries are experiencing some of the worst coastal erosion in the world may actually lie much further inland.

"If there is a difference between the Maghreb and northern Mediterranean countries, then I think it's about the number of dams and the number of rivers," explained Gil Mahe, research director at the Hydrosciences Laboratory in Montpellier, France, who's currently working at the Institut National des Sciences et Technologies de la Mer, or INSTM, in Tunisia. Erosion is happening faster here because "there are not a lot of rivers and a lot of dams," Mahe said.

Tunisia has close to 40 dams and is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world

Studies in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco that investigate the history of sedimentation near where rivers reach the sea, have shown that where there are large dams, not enough sand is arriving on the coast, Mahe explained. The natural geomorphological functioning of a coastline would see sand arrive to bulk up the coastline, then it would be washed out to sea by marine currents.

Pressure on land and at sea

But the Maghreb coastline is under pressure from two elements of climate change. Warmer temperatures are causing sea levels to rise, which encroaches on beaches. It also makes extreme weather events, that can damage the coastline with, for example, floods, huge waves and wind, more frequent.

At the same time, a heating planet also has less rain, which means that local authorities in North Africa are trying to store fresh water wherever they can, in order to provide it to that ever-growing coastal population. This requires more dams. 

Natural buffers against erosion, such as seagrass, are considered the best way to protect coastlines

It sounds like a vicious circle. But Mahe, who is working on various plans to better manage Tunisia's coastline and make it clear to local authorities exactly what is at stake, does have some hope. While a rise in sea levels is now inevitable, he said, there are numerous ways to minmize harmful human impacts and better protect coastlines and to cope with what's coming, until humans and nature "reach a new equilibrium," he argued.

Experts such as Mahe and those at the World Bank recommend what they call "integrated coastal management plans." These can include everything from a higher tax on coastal construction work and real estate, to the renovation of inland dams that allow more sand and sediment to flow toward the coast, to the erection of wind fences on dunes, or replanting plants. 

The World Bank is assisting with some of these plans in the Maghreb, the organization's Sieghart pointed out. "It's true that no country can single-handedly address climate change," she said. But, she added, local reactions are still crucial because "these can help adapt and mitigate climate change impacts."

Edited by: Anne Thomas

Micronesia joins growing Pacific alliance to stop deep-sea mining

The Pacific republic says the potential downside of massive environmental degradation outweighs the positives of extracting minerals from the depths of the ocean.

Micronesian President David Panuelo warned that deep-sea mining could lead

 to the 'systemic collapse' of ecosystems

The scattered islands and atolls of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) are home to fewer than 105,000 people and cover a mere 702 square kilometers (ca. 271 square miles). But the region's territorial waters sprawl across 2.6 million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean, making it the 14th largest exclusive economic zone in the world. 

The ocean is the lifeblood of these relatively under-developed islands, where the average annual per capita income sits slightly below $4,000 (€3,900), but where successive governments have done what they can to protect their most important resource. So the announcement on July 10 that the FSM was joining the Alliance of Countries for a Deep-Sea Mining Moratorium, unveiled at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon in late June, was no surprise. 

In a statement issued to DW, FSM President David Panuelo said that mining the depths of the world's oceans for natural resources offers the promise of "significant wealth," but he also cautioned that it could very easily lead to "the systemic collapse of our oceanic ecosystems, resulting in mass starvation and mass environmental destruction."

Environmentalists warn that oceanic ecosystems could collapse

Could create 'abject economic suffering'

That, in turn, would worsen the impacts of climate change and bring about "abject economic suffering to peoples and communities who do not benefit from mining activities but feel their direct impacts," he said.

The alliance was initially set up by the government of Palau, another Pacific island state that stands to be severely impacted by deep-sea mining, in collaboration with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and the World Wildlife Fund. It has since also been joined by Fiji and Samoa. 

Signatory nations were provoked into action after Nauru in June 2021 triggered a rule within the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that requires the regulatory body, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), to approve a plan to exploit seabed resources under the terms of whatever rules are in place within two years of the application. As a result, the ISA could grant permission for exploitation to commence in June of next year. 

The private company that would immediately take advantage of mining permits is Nauru Ocean Research Inc., a subsidiary of Canadian mining startup The Metals Company (TMC). It has long insisted that the deep sea must be mined to obtain minerals such as cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese to meet demand for materials crucial for electric cars and other modern technologies. 

These minerals are available in vast quantities spread across the deepest seabeds of the world in the shape of potato-sized rock concretions known as polymetallic nodules.

Recycling materials as alternative

Environmentalists say that instead of mining the seabed — and potentially causing irreparable damage to marine biodiversity and harming global fisheries — industries should source the metals from the circular economy, meaning recycling it from electronic waste.

To date, the ISA has granted 31 permits for countries and private companies to explore for resources, but not to commercially exploit any that are identified. Duncan Currie, an environmental lawyer who advises the High Seas Alliance, hopes sufficient support can be gathered in the coming months to force the ISA to impose a moratorium on mining. 

The consequences of failing to have a moratorium could be extremely serious, he told DW.

"The 'collector' will dig into the sea floor, we are told, releasing sediment plumes from disturbing the seabed," he said. "These plumes will likely travel considerable distances, possibly hundreds of kilometers, smothering life on and near the sea floor."

After the nodules are brought to the surface, additional sediment will be released back into the ocean, creating additional plumes that experts have suggested will spread over 1,400 kilometers and remain in suspension for as long as a year.

The noise of the operation will affect marine mammals and other sea life hundreds of kilometers away, Currie said, with the permits presently being considered due to last for 30 years but with "almost automatic" 10-year renewals.

'Deeply felt' public opposition

"I think the public opposition to deep-sea mining is widespread, and deeply felt," Currie said. "The challenge is in translating that opposition to the ISA, and the danger is that the mining interests push through their agenda through legal machinations."

"The Law of the Sea Convention was put into place around 40 years ago, in 1982, and was amended at the initiative of developed states in 1994," he pointed out. "Seabed mining is highly legalistic, depending on those two international agreements, regulations and contracts, and once it is started, it will be extremely difficult to stop. It will trigger a one-way race to the bottom of the sea: Once the green light is given through regulations, the damaging new industrial activity will be under way."

Currie said he hopes that the opposition can be galvanized in the same way that international resistance halted plans for mining in the pristine Antarctic wilderness. 

"A moratorium is essential: Without it, history will judge the world harshly,"  FSM leader Panuelo concurred. "Sea-based oil drilling seemed a good enough idea to those seeking wealth that they did it in the Gulf of Mexico, which never positively impacted the Louisiana fishermen who were not consulted on the work and had no agency in the decision to do it," he pointed out. "But they certainly felt the impacts when the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in 2010."

"It is unlikely we can effectively manage our ocean territory without being aware of the impacts of deep-sea mining, which I believe is an unsustainable solution," he added.

Edited by: Leah Carter