The government of Namibia decided to ban plans to develop a marine phosphate mining project off the coasts of the country for 18 months until a survey is conducted to offer evidence that no environmental impact will be caused.
The planned deep sea phosphate mining is similar to Chatham Rock Phosphate’s proposal for the Chatham Rise, in New Zealand, and imply dredging millions of tonnes of seabed up to the surface, extracting the phosphate and then throwing the sediment back into the sea.
In the case of the Namibian Marine Phosphate operation, mining would have been done at a much shallower level (180-300 metres) than in the Chatham project.
This is an experimental operation which has never been tried before now, consequently its environmental impact on the seabed cannot be predicted.
The Namibian Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Bernard Esau, has postponed the project while a complete Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is carried out due to a strong opposition from the Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations.
The organism has been very vocal in its objection to phosphate mining in the country because it is worried of the long-lasting detrimental effects the operation would have on local fishery breeding grounds.
The EIA’s goal is to monitor any marine changes and to test out assurances provided by the mining companies.
The fishing industry is not against phosphate mining, in fact we believe that we should exploit all our resources but it must be in the spirit of co-existence,” argued the minister of Fisheries.
“The underlying issue and what should be done should not be put aside, we have seen what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. We do not want this to happen here as well,” added Esau when he announced the moratorium a couple of weeks ago.
The minister went on to add that it was time that both the mining and the fishing industry started to work together to find a middle ground to go forward, New Era publication reported.
Esau also stressed the importance of the fisheries industry to as to job generation.
In terms of job creation, phosphate mining is insignificant to the fishing industry [given] the 13,000 jobs the industry creates compared to 300 the phosphate mining [is expected to] create. Most of the people that will be employed will not be locals, since we don’t have the expertise. Esau pointed out.
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