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Accepted Paper:

The moral economy of seabed mining in Papua New Guinea  
Colin Filer (Australian National University) Jennifer Gabriel (James Cook University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the moral and political qualities of the arguments that have been made by the opponents of seabed mining in Papua New Guinea, where the government has already authorised the development of the first seabed mining project in the Pacific island region.

Paper long abstract:

The Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has already authorised the development of the first seabed mining project in the Pacific island region, but controversy continues to swirl around the possible impacts of this practice on the natural environment and the livelihoods of coastal communities. The controversy has now reached the shores of several other Pacific island nations whose governments have granted exploration licences to companies interested in the exploitation of deep-sea mineral resources and have started to develop legal and policy frameworks to regulate this type of activity. However, the intensity of the debate appears to be a function of the size of the national population, as well as the period of time for which it has been going on. This paper will investigate the arguments that have been raised against seabed mining in PNG, especially the case made by some environmentalists, that it should not proceed in the absence of 'free, prior and informed consent' on the part of indigenous communities because PNG is a signatory to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as being a signatory to the UN Conventions on Biological Diversity and the Law of the Sea. It will also consider the question of how questions of morality have invaded the space that would normally be occupied by a more straightforward argument about the distribution of economic benefits between different levels of government, including the local-level governments that contain the 'indigenous people' whose consent is not required by government policy.

Panel Land01
Large-scale resource extraction projects and moral encounters
  Session 1