New Caledonia has imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone in a rare and sweeping move that places the French Pacific territory among the most restricted exploration areas on the planet’s waters.

The law blocks commercial exploration, prospecting and mining of mineral resources that sits within Kanaky New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone.

Nauru and the Cook Islands have already publicly expressed support for seabed exploration.

• READ MORE: Cook Islands environment group calls on govt to condemn Trump’s seabed mining order
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Sovereign island states discussed the issue earlier this year during last year’s Pacific Islands Forum, but no joint position has yet been agreed on.

Only non-invasive, scientific research will be permitted across New Caledonia’s surrounding maritime zone that covers 1.3 million sq km.

Lawmakers in the New Caledonian territorial Congress adopted a moratorium following broad support mostly from Kanak-aligned political parties.

“Rather than giving in to the logic of immediate profit, New Caledonia can choose to be pioneers in ocean protection,” Jérémie Katidjo Monnier, the local government member responsible for the issue, told Congress.

A ‘strategic lever’
“It is a strategic lever to assert our environmental sovereignty in the face of the multinationals and a strong signal of commitment to future generations.”

New Caledonia’s location has been a global hotspot for marine biodiversity.

Its waters are home to nearly one-third of the world’s remaining pristine coral reefs that account for 1.5 percent of reefs worldwide.

Environmental supporters of the new law argue that deep-sea mining could cause a serious and irreversible harm to its fragile marine ecosystems.

But the pro-French, anti-independence parties, including Caledonian Republicans, Caledonian People’s Movement, Générations NC, Renaissance and the Caledonian Republican Movement all planned to abstain from the vote the politically conservative bloc knew they could not win.

The Loyalists coalition argued that the decision clashed with the territory’s “broader economic goals” and the measure was “too rigid”, describing its legal basis as “largely disproportionate”.

“All our political action on the nickel question is directed toward more exploitation and here we are presenting ourselves as defenders of the environment for deep-sea beds we’ve never even seen,” Renaissance MP Nicolas Metzdorf said.

Ambassador’s support
But France’s Ambassador for Maritime Affairs, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, had already asserted “the deep sea is not for sale” and that the high seas “belong to no one”, appearing to back the policy led by pro-independence Kanak alliances.

The vote in New Caledonia also coincided with US President Donald Trump signing a decree a week earlier authorising deep-sea mining in international waters.

“No state has the right to unilaterally exploit the mineral resources of the area outside the legal framework established by UNCLOS,” said the head of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), Leticia Carvalho, in a statement referring back to the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Republished from the National Indigenous Times.

The United States government can now remove the US$325 million luxury yacht Amadea, owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, currently docked in Fiji.

A Fiji High Court judge refused an application to stay his earlier ruling to allow the enforcement of a US Justice Department warrant to seize the luxury vessel which has been docked in the western port of Lautoka for almost a month.

Justice Deepthi Amaratunga told the court the Mutual Assistance Act which facilitated the enforcement of US seizure action limited his ability to stay the earlier order.

• LATEST: Fiji’s Court of Appeal restrains Amadea from leaving
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US officials based at the embassy in Fiji were expected to make an announcement with the Fiji police force later today explaining action taken overnight on Thursday and plans to sail the Amadea out of Fiji.

Fiji police boarded and seized the vessel yesterday and handed the property to US marshals and representatives from the Coast Guard, FBI and maritime authorities.

The Department of Justice announced today the vessel had been placed in the possession of the US Marshals’ Service.

Suleiman Kerimov, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, is not believed to be on board the vessel.

RNZ Pacific correspondent Lice Movono reported from Suva earlier today that Fijian police with US law enforcement, who had been in the country since the Amadea arrived in Fiji from Mexico, boarded the yacht yesterday.

“The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Kerimov as part of a group of Russian oligarchs who profit from the Russian government through corruption and its malign activity around the globe, including the occupation of Crimea,” a US Department of Justice statement said.

“According to court documents, Kerimov owned the Amadea after his designation. Additionally, Kerimov and those acting on his behalf and for his benefit caused US dollar transactions to be routed through US financial institutions for the support and maintenance of the Amadea.”

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

Three crew members of an unnamed foreign ship intercepted by a Papua New Guinea Navy vessel near Kavieng, New Ireland, last month have denied violating local laws and withholding information from authorities.

In the Kavieng District Court before Magistrate Patrick Baiwan on Wednesday were ship’s captain Shi Kehu from Fujian province in China, second-in-command Ying Kit Lam from Hong Kong, and crew member Mariglen Dhimogjini from Albania.

They will return to court next Tuesday and have been ordered to stay on board the vessel berthed at the Kavieng port, under a 24/7 police guard.

• READ MORE: PNG linked drug bust and ‘black ship’

The unnamed vessel which police believe is linked to a K1.47 billion (NZ$642 million) drug bust recently in Australian waters, was intercepted in waters north of Kavieng on August 23 by the crew of the HMPNGS Moresby.

Shots were fired at the crew when they refused to stop.

The captain was later treated in hospital for a gunshot wound.

National Fisheries Authority (NFA) executive manager monitoring control and surveillance Giza Komangin told The National the three had violated provisions of the Fisheries Management Act 1998.

Captain charged
Captain Shi was charged with:

• REFUSING to divulge names and contacts of persons and vessels that the vessel was conducting bunkering activities at sea;
• REFUSING to stop the vessel for boarding and inspection by fisheries and navy officials when instructed to;
• DESTROYING and deleting electronic data and tracks to avoid seizure or detection by fisheries officers;
• FAILING to comply with requirements of gear stowage when navigating inside PNG waters; and,
• VIOLATING other state laws to supply fishing vessels with fuel and other supplies an activity requiring a valid fishing licence.

Yong was charged with knowingly giving information that is false and misleading about the operation of the vessel and refusing to divulge names of contacts of person to investigation officials.

Dhimogjini was charged with refusing to divulge names and contacts of persons and vessels engaged in its operation inside Pacific Island waters.

Vessel named Min Shi Yu
NFA officials during their investigations discovered that the vessel’s name was Min Shi Yu 00368 engaged in fishing activities, and supplying fuel and food to other fishing vessels at sea.

On May 1, 2020, it left Quanzhou in China with a crew of seven and picked up Kit Lam and Mariglen Dhimogjini in Hong Kong.

The vessel had no markings to show its name, flag or country of registry, or international radio call sign to show that it was legitimately navigating through PNG waters.

Only three of the nine crew members have passports, five have identification cards, and one has no identification at all and no logbooks or records were available.

Miriam Zarriga is a reporter for The National newspaper in Papua New Guinea. The Pacific Media Centre republishes National articles with permission.

The giant oil exploration ship is conducting offshore oil exploration off the New Zealand coast on behalf of Arctic driller Statoil and Chevron, a US oil company part-owned by President Donald Trump, reports Greenpeace News.

The swimmers’ position forced the Amazon Warrior to halt its operations and deviate off course.

They were 50 nautical miles off the Wairarapa coast when the action took place.

To find oil, the Amazon Warrior is using seismic cannons to blast the seafloor with soundwaves every eight seconds, day and night, reports Greenpeace News.

The ship needs to travel in straight lines along a grid to get data about potential oil reserves, and any deviation makes this data unusable.

The blasts the Amazon Warrior lets off are comparable in sound to an underwater volcano and can cause chronic distress to whales and dolphins in the area.

‘Extreme depths’ permits
Statoil and Chevron have permits to drill to extreme depths of up to three kilometres if oil is found – twice as deep as Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the world’s largest and most devastating oil spill in 2010.

The “fossil fuel” President, Donald Trump, has shares in Chevron, and the oil company funded a large part of his presidential inauguration.

Twenty five-year-old Sara is another of the swimmers who was floating in the path of the Amazon Warrior with Russel Norman.

She said she was putting her body “on the line” because the ship was searching for the very oil that would “destroy her future”.

“The science is settled that we can’t burn the majority of the fossil fuel reserves we know about if we want to keep the Earth’s temperature below dangerous levels,” she said, according to Greenpeace News.

“What this means is that not a single newly discovered oil well anywhere in the world can operate if we want to avoid a climate catastrophe. Right now I’m looking at a ship that’s been invited here by the New Zealand government to do just that.

“I’m young and I’m already experiencing the effects of climate change. Every year the storms get worse, the floods and the droughts are getting more extreme. Just imagine how grim my future looks if we can’t stop this.

‘People rising up’
“It’s easy to feel powerless because what we’re up against is so big. But everywhere, people are rising up and demanding change. Their actions are having a snowball effect, and in many parts of the world, we’re starting to see huge, positive changes.”

Greenpeace has been tailing the Amazon Warrior for the past two days in its newest boat, Taitu.

The organisation crowdfunded nearly $100,000 in just a week to buy the 15-metre boat, and ran an online competition to choose her name.

A 2013 Amendment to the Crown Minerals Act, dubbed the “Anadarko Amendment”, was put in place to stop protests at sea around oil exploration. The law change makes it an offence to interfere with or get closer than 500 metres of an offshore ship involved in oil exploration.

From on board Taitu, Greenpeace’s Dr Russel Norman, said the right to peaceful protest was essential to a healthy democracy and New Zealand had a long and proud tradition of protest at sea.

“Neither the government nor the oil industry can stifle people across New Zealand peacefully rising up against this mad pursuit of new oil to burn in the midst of what is nothing less than a climate emergency,” he said.

“Climate change threatens our homes, health and families. Despite knowing this, our Government is actively subsidising oil companies to look for new oil, putting profits above people’s lives – it has become necessary for people to take action.

‘Extreme storms’
“In New Zealand, we’ve already seen extreme storms, flooding, drought and fires in the space of a just a few weeks, and it’s only April. Climate change makes these weather events more frequent and more intense.”

Taitu’s trip follows on from a flotilla that included Ngāti Kahungunu’s voyaging waka, Te Matau a Māui, which travelled out to the Amazon Warrior to deliver a message on behalf of more than 80 hapū of Te Ikaroa.

Public opposition to oil exploration has seen protests in ports, petitions garnering tens of thousands of signatures, and significant local government and iwi opposition.

• Greenpeace NZ’s chief warns Amazon Warrior
• Greenpeace’s live feed from the Taitu
• New Greenpeace boat key to oil industry battle

Our message it clear! Rise up. End oil. The Taitu crew are flying a giant banner from a kite and streamers that carry anti-oil exploration messages from New Zealanders. Follow the action here: www.greenpeace.nz/taitu #greenpeace #oil #taitu #statoil #chevron #ocean #sea #clouds #picoftheday

A post shared by Greenpeace Aotearoa NZ (@greenpeacenz) on Apr 9, 2017 at 12:53am PDT

Japan has historically been one of Indonesia’s biggest investors, but it was dealt a blow in 2015 when President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s government awarded the contract for a high-speed train project linking Jakarta and Bandung, West Java, to China.

The tensions surrounding the railway deal seemed to have eased on Sunday, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said after a meeting with Jokowi in Bogor, West Java, that his country would cooperate with Indonesia to build railways and other types of infrastructure.

The two leaders also discussed North Korea, with Abe saying that the country’s development of nuclear capabilities and missiles has reached “a new level of threat”.

North Korea said last week that it can test launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at any time from any location chosen by leader Kim Jong-un. The county also said the United States’ hostile policy towards it was to blame for its arms development.

Solving disputes peacefully
On the South China Sea, Abe said Japan believes in the importance of upholding international law and solving disputes peacefully.

“The South China Sea issue has drawn the attention of the international community and it directly affects peace in the region,” Abe said.

Maritime security cooperation is of utmost importance for fellow maritime nations, Japan and Indonesia, he added.

“Japan will actively encourage cooperation in maritime security and the development of Indonesia’s remote islands,” the prime minister said.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, which has around $5 trillion worth of trade passing through annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of the sea.

Although Indonesia is not part of the dispute, it does object to China’s claim to the waters around the Natuna Islands.

Railway wars
Winning the contract in 2015 for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, estimated to cost $5.5 billion, was a coup for China, which is vying for influence in the region under its “One Belt, One Road” policy as part of its ambitions to become a global train supplier.

The roughly 600km Jakarta-Surabaya project is likely to cost less than the Jakarta-Bandung railway, as it will run at a slower speed, while most of the land for the project has already been secured, according to Indonesia’s transport minister.

The minister was reported to have said in October that the government invited Japan to work on the Jakarta-Surabaya project, which is aimed at slashing journey times between the capital and the East Java city by more than half, to around five hours.

Japan and Indonesia also plan to develop the Masela gas block in Maluku Province and Patimban Port in West Java, Jokowi said.

On other regional issues, Abe said North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens is a very important challenge for his administration to resolve.

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens a decade ago. Abe has made resolving the emotive issue a signature pledge of his political career.

FFA Director-General James Movick says the service will be available 365 days a year, Australia providing the appropriate aircraft for carrying the sensitive electronic equipment needed.

The scheme starts in July next year and will cost A$11 million a year. It will run for 30 years.

The Australian government has also announced the gift of a new patrol boat to assist the Vanuatu Mobile Force’s Maritime Wing with search and rescue and securing Vanuatu’s 668,220km² Exclusive Economic Zone against illegal fishing and transnational crime.

The new vessel will be delivered in late 2018 at a cost of A$14.7 million (Vt1.2 billion).

The new steel-hulled patrol boat will be larger than RVS Tukoro at 39.5m long, with a beam of 8m and a loaded draft of 2.5m.

With a top speed of 20 knots, at its typical cruising speed of 12 knots, the vessel will have a 3000 nautical mile range. It will accommodate a 23-member crew, and have a 30-year service life.

Larger vessels
Australia’s gifting of these larger, more capable replacement vessels builds on the success of the Pacific Patrol Boat Programme, which provided the RVS Tukoro.

The patrol boat programme is part of Australia’s Pacific Maritime Security Programme (PMSP), which aims to enhance maritime security co-operation across the South Pacific.

The new patrol boat will be built by defence shipbuilder Austal, which won the bid to build 19 or more new patrol boats for South Pacific nations under the PMSP.

The new patrol boats will also be maintained by Austral for the next seven years from Cairns, Queensland.

The Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (Movimentu Kontra Okupasaun Tasi Timor/MKOTT) has sent an open letter to Cosgrove, saying that “occupation and exploitation” had continued in the country after independence from Indonesia.

“This occupation has, to our dismay and disappointment, been continued by the government of Australia, the country of which you are Governor-General, a wealthy and prosperous country,” the letter said.

Spokespeople for MKOTT said the Australian Embassy had rejected the meeting, quoting Deputy Ambassador Angela Robinson as saying Cosgrove had a “very full program during his short time” in the country.

The open letter from MKOTT, dated March 2, said:

His Excellency, Mr Peter Cosgrove, Governor-General of Australia

Welcome to Timor-Leste.

The Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (Movimentu Kontra Okupasaun Tasi Timor/MKOTT) is a social movement composed of activists, students, individuals, former resistance and civil society organisations. Since its creation in 2004, this moment has advocated for legal, judicial and diplomatic processes between the Australian and Timor-Leste governments to find a maritime boundaries solution which is fair to both countries.

As a movement of people from Timor-Leste, we deeply appreciate your actions as a commander of the international force which came to Timor-Leste seventeen years ago, saving the lives of many Timorese from the brutal violence of the Indonesian military after we won our independence.

Even though we were informed by the Australian embassy in Dili that you were unable to meet with us during your visit to Timor-Leste because your schedule was full, and also because your role in the Australian government does not relate to the question of the maritime boundary between Timor-Leste and Australia, we still see you as an important person in the relationship between our two countries.

Today, as a good friend of the people of Timor-Leste, you visit our land once again, where seventeen years ago you offered you solidarity and assistance. We believe that you understand very well how the people of this nation have suffered as a result of war and conflict, and have been kept poor for centuries of colonial occupation and domination.

Unfortunately, however, this occupation and exploitation has continued after Timor-Leste achieved independence. This occupation has, to our dismay and disappointment, been continued by the government of Australia, the country of which you are Governor-General, a wealthy and prosperous country. Therefore, by means of this letter, MKOTT would like to use the occasion of your visit to Timor-Leste to beseech you, as a historical friend of the people of Timor-Leste, to use your influence and ask the Australian Government to:

1. Respect the sovereignty and dignity of the people and nation of
Timor-Leste as they do and have done with other nations.
2. Revert to the maritime boundary dispute resolution mechanisms under
the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.
3. Focus negotiation “Frank and Open” on maritime boundary and do not
turn the subject in to broader bilateral relationship.
4. Discontinue their use of now discredited “Continental Shelf” argument.
5. Stop using their considerable political and economic power to
continue to rob Timor-Leste’s people of their current and future wealth.

We would like to once again express our deep gratitude for your solidarity with the Timorese people, and thank you very much for your attention.

Sincerely,

Juvinal Dias and Faustino Soares
(Spokesperson of the Movement)