French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has accused the environment minister of defamation over seabed mining.

Last week, Environment Minister Heremoana Maamaatuaiahutapu claimed Temaru’s party Tavini Huiraatira did not support an assembly vote on a seabed mining moratorium because Temaru had signed a mining contract with China when he was president.

Temaru denied this, saying it had never been a policy of Tavini Huiraatira party to “sell off the country or its soul”.

• READ MORE: Other Oscar Temaru reports

The moratorium called for a block on any activity until more is known as there had to be evaluations to understand the risks seabed mining posed to the environment.

Temaru said his party did not support the assembly’s moratorium text because it did not tie mining rights to decolonisation.

The Tavini wants the moratorium linked to a 2016 UN resolution which urges the administering power to guarantee the permanent sovereignty of the people of French Polynesia over its natural resources, including marine resources and submarine minerals.

While Temaru’s party wants to formalise recognition of the property rights of French Polynesia, France considers the exclusive economic zone of French Polynesia to be a French national asset.

Huge economic zone
French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is more than 4.7 million sq km and accounts for almost half of the water surface under French jurisdiction.

Temaru said the UN process called on France to respect the territory’s right to sovereignty over all resources, including those at sea.

He said under French law, the state could claim French Polynesia’s resources if they were declared of strategic value.

Paris believes it has the rights to the territory’s seabed and continental shelves, which are thought to be rich in rare earths.

Three years ago, France submitted a claim to extend the continental shelves in French Polynesia by almost a quarter of a million sq km.

The submission had been made in New York at the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in the presence of Maamaatuaiahutapu.

Obligations to indigenous
In 2019, a lawyer of the group Blue Ocean Law Julian Aguon said that while France had designs to exploit seabed resources it also had fiduciary obligations as by law the indigenous people had permanent sovereignty over natural resources.

He said France was a party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which were binding treaties.

Aguon said a precedent was set by the International Court of Justice when it ruled in favour of Nauru which challenged Australia for breaching trusteeship obligations over phosphate mining.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

French Polynesia has voted a draft opinion for a temporary ban on seabed mining projects.

Of the territory’s Council for the Economy, Social, Environment and Culture, 43 members vote for the proposal, while two abstained.

The council acts as a consultant in advising and recommending during the enacting of legislation’s from the French Polynesian government.

This is after the territory’s President, Édouard Fritch, made a resolution to ban seabed mining after the Pacific Islands Forum.

Marine Resources Minister Heremoana Maamaatuaiahutapu told Tahiti Nui TV that this should be an example to other Pacific neighbours.

“Kiribati, Nauru and the Cook Islands are already engaged in an exploration process,” he said.

“We need to convince our cousins of the Pacific to stop this craziness.

‘We are the first’
“We are the first country or associate member of the Forum to take this resolution on, I must say — the exploration of the seabed,” Maamaatuaiahutapu said.

“The knowledge that we have of our seabed is only 5 percent.”

French Polynesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is more than 4.7 million sq km and accounts for almost half of the water surface under French jurisdiction.

The council has been urging the government to secure resources in the seabed off France’s overseas territories.

It said France would be negligent not to profit from this as French Polynesia has rare earths, whose reserves are held by China in a near monopoly.

The pro-independence movement regularly challenges French control of the resource.

‘Solely for knowledge’

In May, Maamaatuaiahutapu said that Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia and French Polynesia all had the same stance on deep-sea mining — “if we have to examine what’s on the ocean floor, it should be solely for the acquisition of knowledge, not for exploitation purposes”.

“And that has to be very clear. We want knowledge acquisition missions.

“I dare not even say ‘exploration’ because that term is too often associated with exploitation.

“We have 502 seamounts listed and we don’t know a single one. I think it’s important to know about the biodiversity around these seamounts beyond the minerals they house,” he said at the time.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Docked and under some kind of arrest in Port Vila, Vanuatu, are two Chinese flagged fishing boats, allegedly caught in unauthorised waters.

Of course it makes headlines, but the truth here is decidedly murky.

The arrest of Donggongxing 13 and 16 is headline stuff; South Pacific nations seldom arrest Chinese boats. It causes too much trouble with Beijing.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu seizes Chinese fishing vessels
• Chinese vessels detained by Vanuatu, accused of fishing illegally

After all there are between 200 and 300 Chinese boats operating in Vanuatu’s 663,251 sq km exclusive economic zone. Few of them are ever seen in Vila or Luganville; they all operate out China’s biggest South Pacific fishing base – Suva, Fiji.

All of them are either longliners or purse seiners, taking tuna.

But not these arrested boats.

Now this is odd – this is a case of the arrests being less significant than the class of boat.

Known as ‘pot vessels’
In the Western and Central Pacific Fishing Commission (WCPFC) register of 3450 fishing boats there are just three – all three are Chinese – known as “pot vessels”.

The names of the exclusive three? Donggongxing 13, 16 and 17.

Why are the region’s only pot vessels sitting off Hiu in the Torres Islands?

The police map issued to the media shows they were arrested 32 km west of Hiu. That puts them inside Vanuatu’s territorial waters (not the EEZ) as defined by the Marine Zones Act 2018.

As the Global Fishing Watch screen grab shows, there are plenty of Chinese boats (out of Suva) around Hiu – in the EEZ but not in territorial waters. Even the Chinese avoid going into territorial waters; getting caught is too easy (especially if the French send a jet aircraft).

However, it should be noted that neither Donggongxing 13 nor 16 show up on Global Fishing Watch: they had their positioning systems switched off.

A tuna boat probably has no real reason to go into territorial waters, but WCPFC data gives a possible clue. The vessels were authorised to catch grouper and sea cucumber.

Both catches are lucrative
Although beche de mer and grouper are ocean species, they are also easy to catch closer to shore, inside territorial waters. It is why the Vietnamese “blue boats” were reaching into the South Pacific. Both catches are lucrative.

All three Donggongxing vessels are owned by Zhuhai Dong Gang Xing Long Distance Fishing Co. Beijing has given the relatively new company permission to fish in Mauritania in Africa, and Vanuatu.

Their permissions were given under the Chinese government’s “One Belt, One Road” (the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)).

Because China has given an international commitment to eventually cut back on building new fishing boats, Dong Gang Xing has been constructing them quickly. Ten are targeting for the Pacific.

And this is where it gets odd; the company says they have permission under BRI to build a base in Vanuatu.

Why they believe this is not clear. Vanuatu has not said anything but has instead arrested two boats.

But were the two boats in territorial waters because they believed that under the deal between Vila and Beijing, Chinese boats can now enter territorial waters?

And if so, is Vanuatu heading for a diplomatic row with China?

Michael Field, who writes for Nikkei Asia, has provided this article for Asia Pacific Report.