Business Weekly
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Voters in Greenland have backed a party which opposes a rare earth mining project. On Business Weekly, we ask what this means for the security of the global supply of rare minerals and hear why this project was so controversial. From the ice to the ocean, where the race to extract minerals is on. But environmentalists are concerned that deep sea mining could hurt the world’s oceans, even if they are being mined to help the environment in other ways. You may have heard of the term non-fungible token, but do you know what they are and how they work? We look at whether they are just another crypto craze or an amazing financial opportunity for digital artists. Plus, how to learn the art of complaining. The show is presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Matthew Davies.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Weekly with Lucy Burton. |
| 0:08.4 | It's great to have you with us today as we investigate the next mining frontier, the deep sea. |
| 0:14.8 | There are huge treasures lying at the bottom of the ocean, but the environmental implications for extraction are so great |
| 0:22.2 | that some manufacturers are refusing to be associated with it. And as a piece of digital artwork |
| 0:28.2 | sells for $69 million, we'll be looking at non-fundable tokens. What are they? Are the people |
| 0:35.9 | who buy them mugs, as one art expert suggested, or are |
| 0:39.6 | they astute investors? We'll begin, though, with a surprise election result from Greenland. The vast |
| 0:46.0 | island nation sits just east of Canada between the Arctic Circle and the Atlantic Ocean. |
| 0:52.4 | And you might remember that Donald Trump considered buying it back in 2019. |
| 0:57.7 | The reason Trump wanted to get his hands on it? Well, Greenland might have a population of just 56,000, |
| 1:04.4 | but it has vast, untapped deposits of rare earth minerals. That's a material that's used to make all kinds of electronic |
| 1:12.6 | equipment from car batteries to mobile phones. Sitting on the southernmost tip of Greenland is the |
| 1:19.0 | Kwanaveld mine, which is believed to have the potential to become the most significant producer |
| 1:24.1 | of rare earths in the Western world. But in a snap election, the people of Greenland have given their backing to a left-wing party |
| 1:31.7 | called Inuit Atichiguit, who opposed the development to the field, which has radioactive material in it. |
| 1:55.1 | The left-wing Inuit-Ataka-Chiguitt Party, or I.A., secured 37% of the vote and has won 12 seats out of 31 in Parliament. |
| 1:59.0 | It is an indigenous party with a strong environmental focus. |
| 2:04.6 | The outgoing forwarding The outgoing forward party boosted its own vote to nearly 30%, encouraging it to press for the much-needed of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative. |
| 2:49.1 | He explained just how important Greenland's mineral reserves are. |
| 2:53.0 | At the moment, we have China that controls the entire rare web production and supply. So it becomes |
| 2:59.9 | increasingly strategically important for the West to find a way to break the monopoly, |
| 3:05.4 | especially when one considers that EU depends in China for 98 to 99% of its rarewood supply, |
... |
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