"Cook Islands Parliament makes changes to seabed mining law", 23 February 2024

The Cook Islands has made amendments to its Seabed Minerals Act this week, including replacing the term “mining” with “minerals harvesting … to reflect the actual activity that takes place”.

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Prime Minister Mark Brown, who is also the minister responsible for seabed minerals, said mining was a broad term which ranged from extraction through to digging and cutting.

“The clear feedback from our stakeholders and communities is that they prefer to use a specific term when we refer to collecting nodules from the floor, so we have introduced the term harvesting, to reflect the actual activity that takes place,” he said in Parliament when presenting the amendments.

Three mining companies have been exploring the Cook Islands exclusive-economic zone (EEZ) to find out whether deepsea mining can go ahead without causing serious environmental harm – the measure needed to be satisfied to allow it to happen.

Brown said the new terminology rule would apply to all three companies currently exploring the Cook Islands waters.

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