Chatham Rise decision a blow to economic growth

Wellington (12 February 2015): The New Zealand Initiative says Chatham Rise Phosphate’s failure to secure a mining consent underscores the flaws in marine resource legislation, which if left unchanged, could permanently stunt economic growth in New Zealand.

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) yesterday announced that would not grant the Wellington-based company a consent to harvest rock phosphate nodules from Chatham Rise, an undersea ridge situated several hundred kilometres off the Canterbury coast.

The decision was based on a precautionary principle enshrined in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act of 2012, which mandates that the EPA must favour the environment over development where the environmental impact of the activity is uncertain.

The precautionary approach is balanced by adaptive management principles elsewhere in the Act, which allow applicants to conduct a small scale test of their mining proposal to answer these uncertainties.

However, Initiative Research Fellow Jason Krupp said yesterday’s decision showed that adaptive management was unlikely to ever be applied due to the over-cautionary approach the EPA is legislatively forced adhere to.

“New Zealand has the fourth biggest exclusive economic zone in the world – a source of significant mineral wealth that could potentially make a substantial and sustained contribution to the country’s economy,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that is likely to remain untapped as long as the legislation prevents companies from using scientific methods of assessing the impact of undersea mining on the environment.”

The Chatham Rise decision comes less than six months after the EPA rejected a consent application by Trans-Tasman Resources to harvest iron ore from a stretch of seabed situated 22km off the Taranaki coast. The Decision Making Committee in that case also ruled that there were too many uncertainties for adaptive management to proceed.

“It is bitterly ironic that the cautionary approach is so strictly applied that the very mechanism designed to scientifically provide certainty is also forbidden from proceeding,” said Krupp. “Adaptive management needs to be included into decision making process from the get go, not bolted on at the end after the decision has effectively been made.”

ENDS

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