From E-TANGATA
By Teuila Fuatai

Playing the Long Game

The Cook Islands prime minister, Mark Brown, was recently in Aotearoa for a week-long tour of community halls and churches.

His mission? To convince the large Cook Island population living here of the benefits of deep sea mining.

Teuila Fuatai was at the first meeting in Māngere.

With his bright blue shirt and neck ‘ei or flower garlands, Prime Minister Mark Brown looked right at home in Māngere’s Enuamanu Hall.

Brown sat centre-stage, flanked by Bishop Tutai Pere (chair of the government’s Seabed Minerals Authority advisory committee), Tou Travel Ariki (the kaumaiti nui or president of the House of Ariki, the body of high chiefs that advises the Cook Islands parliament), and Alex Herman (the government’s now outgoing Seabed Minerals commissioner), among others.

As one person observed, it was “an intimidating line-up” of the country’s political, religious and cultural leaders.

There to listen was a largely elderly crowd of over a hundred Cook Islanders who’ve made New Zealand their home.

Brown was undoubtedly the main attraction for this audience. He spoke convincingly of the anticipated benefits of deep-sea mining, about university scholarships for young Cook Islanders, and infrastructure basics like good roads and better air access to the pā enua or outer islands, where the cost and availability of flights remain a major issue.

The message from more than two hours of speeches and presentations was clear: A future with mining in the Cook Islands will give us and our people options that we don’t have right now.

“There were a lot of examples around how this industry was leading to ‘firsts’ for our country,” said one attendee, Charlotte Samuela. “Like it’s the first time we’re getting to look at the deep sea, or the first time we’re leading our own research mission as Cook Islanders.”

Charlotte grew up in Rarotonga and now works as a theatre nurse in Auckland. Like many others there, she wanted to know more about how the government planned to manage environmental concerns.

“There was less emphasis on the potential impacts, or really what the research simply can’t tell us yet, which is what I would’ve liked.”

But deep-sea mining is an emerging industry, with very little available long-term research on its impacts, something the government representatives themselves acknowledged.

Still, the Cook Islands government has granted three mining companies exploratory research licenses in the Cook Islands’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ). These companies are hoping to identify, and eventually access, vast deposits of rare earth minerals. It’s a plan that is dividing Cook Islanders at home and overseas.

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 (Photo: Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority)
 Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown spent a week in Aotearoa in November talking to NZ-based Cook Islanders about deep sea mining in their home country. He’s pictured here in Dunedin.