Assignment: Mining the Pacific – future proofing or fool’s gold?
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Climate change is intensifying, sea levels are rising and the very existence of low-lying Pacific Islands is under threat. The Cook Islands, though, has a plan to assure their peoples’ future. Enter deep sea mining, harvesting metallic nodules on the bottom of the sea floor for use in things like electric car batteries and mobile phones. Its supporters say it’s a climate change ‘solution’- a better alternative to mining on land. And one that could make Cook Islanders very rich indeed. Its detractors worry we’re messing with its Moana - or ocean – with no real idea of the impacts. Katy Watson travels to Rarotonga to find out how islanders feel about searching for ‘gold’ on the sea floor.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:06.7 | I'm Katie Watson. |
| 0:07.9 | This week on assignment in the Cook Islands, |
| 0:10.3 | we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific Ocean, |
| 0:13.5 | more than 4,000 metres deep, in fact, to the bottom of the sea floor. |
| 0:18.2 | I'm on Raritonga, the largest of 15 islands that make up this Pacific nation. |
| 0:23.7 | I'm standing near the shallow waters of the reef that form a ring around the island. |
| 0:28.8 | This calm lagoon is where the blue Pacific becomes a bright turquoise. |
| 0:34.0 | Cook Islanders live and breathe this ocean. They proudly call it the Moana. |
| 0:39.4 | But as with many Pacific Island nations, |
| 0:41.7 | these shores are threatened by the ocean too, |
| 0:44.3 | as sea levels continue to rise. |
| 0:58.6 | Some governments in this region are looking to the seabed to lift their people up. |
| 1:03.6 | At the bottom of the Pacific here lie billions of round rocks or nodules, |
| 1:08.7 | packed full of metals needed for things like mobile phones and electric car batteries. |
| 1:13.4 | Mining them is being sold as a solution to help move away from fossil fuels. |
| 1:16.1 | For Cook Islanders, though, it's personal. |
| 1:19.8 | For some, this is a potential path to future riches. |
| 1:26.5 | For others, that could be outweighed by the risk of irreversible damage to their very identity, their Moana. |
| 1:34.6 | To get here, we flew five or so hours east from Sydney. |
| 1:37.6 | It's about 3,000 miles away. |
| 1:41.5 | In fact, if you look at the map, it's pretty much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. |
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