The pressure ultimately proved to be too strong. On Sunday, December 1, the coalition government in Oslo, made up of the Labor and Center parties, announced that it had reached an agreement with the Socialist Left (SV) party on the budget bill for 2025. Among the concessions granted to the small left-wing party, which has 13 seats in Parliament (out of 169), was the suspension of the granting of licenses for Norwegian seabed mining until the end of 2025.
“This is a huge win,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic. “After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists and fishers, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection, as the opening process for deep sea mining in Norway has been stopped. The wave of protests against deep sea mining is growing. We will not let this industry destroy the unique life in the deep sea, not in the Arctic nor anywhere else.”
“Fortunately, SV has understood the seriousness and taken responsibility to stop the madness,” said Karoline Andaur, CEO of WWF-Norway. Since November 28, her organization has been taking on the Norwegian government in a trial scheduled to continue until December 5. The organization is contesting the legality of the environmental impact assessment carried out by the government before the January 9 decision by MPs to open up 281,000 square kilometers of seabed to exploration and mining.
Read more Subscribers only Politics are polluting International Seabed Authority general assembly
The decision was widely criticized, both in Norway and abroad, and has prompted strong action in response. Thirty-two countries, including France, as well as some 50 multinationals, have called for a moratorium. And on February 7, members of the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling on Norway to reconsider its decision. More than 900 scientists have signed a statement warning of the risks of opening up little-explored areas to an activity with potentially dramatic consequences for ecosystems and the species that live there.
‘Great concern’
It was all in vain, since on June 26, the Norwegian government announced that it planned to issue the first exploration and extraction permits in the spring of 2025. In yet another attempt to put the brakes on Oslo, some 50 MEPs sent a letter to the Norwegian Parliament and government on November 25, expressing their “great concern” about the current process and “solemnly” calling for it to be halted.
Read more Subscribers only Seabed mining: ‘It is essential to halt operations until sufficient scientific data is available’
For Norway, which likes to present itself as a champion of the fight for climate protection and biodiversity despite its immense wealth from oil and gas activities, the pressure was beginning to become difficult to sustain. Speaking in Parliament on March 15, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide acknowledged that deep-sea mining was the greatest smudge on the Norwegian public image in history.
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Publish date : 2024-12-02 15:30:00
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