CHAPTER NINE

The last of the backwaters

SHOULD WESTERN COUNTRIES BE REINSTATED AS MINING POWERS? THE idea is inconceivable for most, sickening even. In France, environmentalists are against the idea, but President Emmanuel Macron is not.

The idea has been tossed around within the French government for years. It was in one of its glass offices overlooking the Seine that Arnaud Montebourg, the minister of industry under François Hollande, voiced his intention to reopen France’s mines: ‘The renewal of mining in France is underway … We want to make sure our country is supplied with the raw materials it needs to ensure its independence, cost and quantity control, and sovereignty.’1

France: a slumbering mining giant

Montebourg’s words echoed the reindustrialisation policy promised by Hollande during his 2012 presidential campaign. The thinking is sound, for France is in fact a mining giant lying dormant (see Appendix 8). Until the early 1980s, France had a strong mining industry for minerals as diverse as tungsten, manganese, zinc, and antimony, beginning in the first industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. It also had a prosperous iron industry, following the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. France’s booming mining industry generated thousands of direct and indirect jobs, from the Maurienne valley in the Alps to the rugged landscape of Lorraine in the north-east, and from the Black Mountain folds in the southern centre to the Mouthoumet massif further west. France was on its way to becoming one of the world’s biggest antimony, tungsten, and germanium producers.

To turn words into action, Montebourg proposed the creation of a national company of mines, the CMF. It would have a budget of up to €400 million to invest in mining companies, explore partnerships in Africa, and deliver mining permits in mainland France, and thus ‘reengage France in the global battle for access to natural resources’.2

But following the financial mishaps of two French mining houses, Eramet and Areva, Montebourg’s successor, Emmanuel Macron, shelved the project: ‘Eramet and Areva were under strain after commodity prices crashed. It would be unwise to create a third fully state-owned enterprise. We prefer to focus on current restructuring.’3

The setback didn’t stop Macron as president from launching a ‘responsible mining’ project to reduce the environmental impact of all future mining projects,4 nor from issuing eleven research permits in metropolitan France and French Guiana.5 In 2017, the working group, comprising socialists, ecologists, and republicans, presented a mining code reform to parliament to enable sustainable mining in France.6

Having the most pro-mining president the country has seen for many years has thus reopened the question of restarting mining in metropolitan France, and fundamentally changed the nature of the debate. Until now, it was easy for France to criticise Beijing for manipulating raw-material prices and ignoring international trade rules. But as France looks to revive its own mining industry, it must face up to its own responsibilities.

The government’s position on the controversial topic has polarised public opinion, and sparked citizen movements and resident associations across France, who have taken to the streets, chanting, ‘Not here, not anywhere.’7 One of the environmental groups is the highly vocal Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth), which has labelled the government’s promise of sustainable ore exploration as ‘unrealistic’, and has denounced the ‘mistruths’ of the mining revival.8

And who can blame them? Numerous mining disasters in France have hardened the population against the industry.9 The same can be said of many other Western countries. An environmental nonprofit organisation in the US has listed a staggering 500,000 abandoned mines.10 And according to the Environmental Protection Agency, ‘Mining pollutes approximately 40 per cent of the headwaters of Western watersheds and … cleaning up these mines may cost American taxpayers more than $50 billion.’11 The same has been found in Australia, which has some 60,000 derelict mines that no one knows how to rehabilitate.12 In the UK, authorities have stated that ‘abandoned mines are one of the most significant pollution threats in Britain’.13 Western citizen movements have gone from NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard — to BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.14

But these groups are inconsistent. They condemn the effects of the very world they wish for. They do not admit that the energy and digital transition also means trading oilfields for rare metals deposits, and that the role of mining in the fight against global warming is a reality we have to come to terms with.15 French government documents state as much: reopening French mines ‘is part of the national ecological strategy towards sustainable development’.16 The debate is also opening our eyes to what the Chinese have known all along: the Western development model is mired in contradictions. It is a hard choice between dreams of a greener world and the reality of a more technological world.

Now that all the makings of an anti-mining rebellion are in place, we shouldn’t expect a mining revival in France anytime soon. Even the Ministry of the Environment doesn’t foresee any significant mining activity in the next ten years at least. As for the entire rare metals industry, the Government Accountability Office in the US believes it would take at least fifteen years to rebuild the industry.17 And while Western countries wait for stakeholders to reach an agreement, their mining culture is wasting away. Training is insufficient, and young people are no longer drawn to careers in geology. As the last of the talents disappear, there is a real risk that the sector’s revival may be decades in the making.

I support bringing back mining in the West. Not so much for the value, the additional tax revenues, and the thousands of jobs it would create; nor for the strategic security of having our own supply chain at a time when producer countries are tightening the noose around our necks. Rather, my argument is on behalf of the environment.

Reopening mines in the West is the best possible decision we can make for the environment. Relocating our dirty industries has helped keep Western consumers in the dark about the true environmental cost of our lifestyles, while giving other nation-states free rein to extract and process minerals in even worse conditions than would have applied had they still been mined in the West, without the slightest regard for the environment.

The effects of returning mining operations to the West would be positive. We would instantly realise — to our horror — the true cost of our self-declared modern, connected, and green world. We can well imagine how having quarries ‘in our backyard’ would put an end to our indifference and denial, and drive our efforts to contain the resulting pollution. Because we would not want to live like the Chinese, we would pile pressure onto our governments to ban even the smallest release of cyanide, and to boycott companies operating without the full array of environmental accreditations. We would protest en masse against the disgraceful practice of the planned obsolescence of products, which results in more rare metals having to be mined, and we would demand that billions be spent on research into making rare metals fully recyclable. Perhaps we would also use our buying power more responsibly, and spend more on eco-friendlier mobile phones, for instance. In short, we would be so determined to contain pollution that we would make astounding environmental progress and wind back our rampant consumption.

In this scenario, China’s mining activities would face real competition from more ethical Western mines. If China thus lost its edge, its soil, rivers, and air would be beneficiaries. Consumers would be better informed and more demanding, and the industry’s only chance at winning back market share would be to improve its own practices. China’s environment would emerge the winner from this virtuous competition imposed by the West.

Nothing will change so long as we do not experience, in our own backyards, the full cost of attaining our standard of happiness. Mining the earth responsibly on our own turf will always be more valuable than mining irresponsibly elsewhere. It would be a deeply ecological, selfless, and brave decision that adheres to the ethics of responsibility extolled by countless environmental groups — and rightly so.

An example was the protest in 2009 against European countries exporting their nuclear waste to Russia.18 Some activists went as far as tying themselves to railway tracks to stop trains coming out of waste-storage facilities, protesting that we alone are responsible for processing our waste, and that palming it off to others is downright immoral. This kind of virulent opposition to the way the end of the fuel cycle is managed should focus just as much on how our dirty mining is outsourced. Protesters should be forming human chains around the ports of Le Havre, Algeciras, or Rotterdam to stop shipments of metals from China from entering the European Customs Union, and should chain themselves to the gates of their government buildings until a law is passed that allows rare earths mining in their countries.

Paris and the conquest of the seas

In France, activists should also ask the government to keep a closer eye on the actions of two Pacific island kings, Filipo Katoa and Eufenio Takala. These enigmatic royals control a wealth of rare earths so great that the future of France’s energy and digital transition may depend on their good graces.

On 12 July 2016, wearing the traditional maros over their suits, the monarchs from Alo and Sigave — located in the Wallis and Futuna French island collectivity in Far Oceania between Tahiti and New Caledonia — mounted the steps of the Élysée Palace to attend a reception in their honour. While in Paris they were shown around the National Assembly, the Senate, and the Ministry of Overseas Territories. The kings and their delegation had come to discuss matters such as the opening up of their kingdoms, the economic dynamism of their region, and better access to healthcare.19 It’s an important relationship, as shown in 2016 when President Holland invited the kings to his presidential stand alongside the prime minister of New Zealand, John Key, and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, for the Bastille Day parade. Paris is keeping the two royals in its inner circle while it works out how to maintain its presence on their isles. Will it take increasing the €15 million it already spends every year on this special relationship? And will France manage to keep any irredentist hankerings at bay, the consequences of which would be disastrous for the country?

With 16,000 kilometres separating the capital, Mata Utu, from Paris, the Polynesian kingdoms are the furthest French territory from the mainland since becoming French protectorates in 1887. Yet despite this, nothing in Wallis and Futuna happens according to French standards. Decentralisation laws, international treaties, land regulations, and the traffic code all take second place to local custom, which is guarded by the ‘last kings of France’ and their mystical powers.20 Even trade unionists may not strike without first seeking the approval (or ensuring the neutrality) of their ‘great chiefdom’.

The kings do not have absolute power, but share it with tribal institutions and with the custodian of antediluvian protocol, the chief of ceremony. The French government maintains the status quo with a monthly salary of €5,500 for the king of Wallis.21 Indeed, ‘Wallis and Futuna are republican kingdoms,’ said Pierre Simunek, a former sub-prefect in Mata Utu.22

Another infringement of French rule in Wallis and Futuna is the partial application of the 1905 French law on the separation of the church and the state. The basic public service of primary education is entrusted to the church, which by tradition is a powerful institution in Wallis and Futuna. What’s more, territorial assemblies are usually opened with a prayer by Bishop Ghislain Marie Raoul Suzanne de Rasilly. ‘The sessions start with a blessing from the Holy Spirit, everyone makes the sign of the cross … and then the shouting begins,’ recalled Simunek.23

The former sub-prefect shared another telling detail. Above the assembly president’s seat is a portrait of the French president. Above his portrait are the flags of the Wallis and Futuna kingdoms, which are in turn below the French flag. And topping the entire arrangement is a large crucifix. To Simunek, this implied that Wallis and Futuna’s prefect and sub-prefect — the highest representatives of a country known for its aversion to religious symbols — are in this context ‘protectors of the throne and altar’.

To what lengths is France prepared to go to maintain its sovereignty over a territory barely bigger than the city of Paris? If France is kowtowing, it is because the isles allow France to stretch its footprint into the Pacific. It gives Paris a say over the world’s biggest ocean and largest trade area, and enables it to weigh in on negotiations with regional organisations (such as the Pacific Islands Forum), and to build partnerships with de facto neighbours — and with Australia in particular. As stated in France’s white paper on defence: ‘New Caledonia and the communities living in French Polynesia and Wallis-et-Futuna make France a political and maritime power in the Pacific.’24

The main reason, however, is that Wallis and Futuna give France exclusive access to what in the region is known as La Grande Marmite — a 20-kilometre-diameter crater left over from the Kulo Lasi volcano. It also happens to be a veritable treasure trove of rare earths, and the object of attention from the French Geological Survey, the French Institute for Integrated Marine Science Research, and the Eramet mining group.

Its discovery has created huge tensions in Wallis and Futuna. Fearing that Paris will stake its claim, the chiefdoms are claiming ancestral rights on the territory both above and below water, and Futunans, together with Wallisian elected officials, have demanded the immediate suspension of exploration campaigns. ‘One of the ministers of the Royal Counsel even threatened succession over rare earths,’ said Simunek.25

And so the clear waters of the Wallis and Futuna lagoon are not as placid as they appear to be. But France isn’t giving up. ‘We need to unite. All of us,’ insisted President Hollande in a speech during the state visit of the two Polynesian kings. He concluded his speech on the importance of mining mineral and underwater minerals with a refreshing ‘Long live France! Long live Wallis and Futuna! Long live the Republic!’

But they’re not the only islands involved: the exclusive economic zones of Tahiti and Clipperton Island, in the north-east Pacific, also have a wealth of rare metals lurking on the ocean floor. Other states have made similar discoveries in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Japan recently uncovered staggering quantities of rare earths off the coast of the Ogasawara archipelago, 2,000 kilometres south-east of Tokyo.26 It would seem that entire swathes of marine areas — 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface — are more than watery wastelands where shoals of fish spawn. The ‘blue economy’ has the potential to generate exponential wealth.

As a new goldrush forms on the horizon, the rare-earths battle (like that of the energy and digital transition) is taking to the seas. Spearheading the offensive is the Canadian group Nautilus. It is preparing to start operations off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and has identified some twenty additional underwater sites to be mined in the future.27 Always on the ball, China has designed submersibles capable of exploring the ocean floor at record depths. ‘Beijing has positioned itself using financing the West doesn’t have,’ explained a marine geosciences expert. ‘The exploration of the oceans has only just begun.’28 Already, the International Seabed Authority has been flooded with mining-permit applications.

France is also ahead of the pack. It has successfully executed its maritime-extension policy in the last few years by applying the international law of the sea, defined in the Geneva convention of 1958, to encroach on the international maritime areas adjacent to land surfaces under its control, including Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, New Caledonia, and the Kerguelen Islands. France’s maritime domain now spans over 11.7 million square kilometres — twenty times mainland France’s surface area — making it the world’s biggest territory, followed by the US (11.3 million square kilometres) and Australia (8.5 million square kilometres).29

Even those nostalgic for its lost colonial empire cannot deny just how big the French republic is today. And it could get even bigger: the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf — the UN body which sets the outer limits of coastal countries — is considering extending the underwater areas owned by France to 350 nautical miles (650 kilometres), provided France can demonstrate that these are natural extensions of its land surface.

France is not the only country to stake its claim on the maritime Monopoly board. Canada, Denmark, Australia, Russia, Japan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Somalia are just some of the dozens of countries requesting the extension of their exclusive economic areas: Denmark has its eyes on the southern continental shelf of Greenland; Russia on parts of the Arctic Ocean; Norway on the Bouvetøya and Dronning Maud Land; Mauritius on the region of Rodrigues island; Papua New Guinea on the Ontong Java Plateau; and the Seychelles on the Northern Plateau Region.30 Some countries have even resorted to subterfuge: China has gone as far as building artificial islands in the South China Sea so that it can claim exclusive use of the surrounding marine territory.

In short: for thousands of years, 71 per cent of the planet’s surface did not belong to anyone; for sixty years, countries owned 40 per cent of the surface of the oceans, and a further 10 per cent is the subject of continental shelf extension requests. We can surmise, therefore, that coastal states have jurisdiction over 57 per cent of the seabed.31 The allure of rare metals has led to the biggest ‘land’ grab in history, and in record time.

But there is also something heartening in what we’re seeing. For thousands of years, humans the world over have impaled, stabbed, and disembowelled each other over land that makes up one-third of the planet. Now we are deciding on another one-third of the planet — half of the oceans — in no time at all and without having to kill anyone. Only battalions of lawyers armed to the teeth with international law are required. It is significant progress that proves that humanity is capable of improving over time.

The downside, however, is that the exponential growth of our need for rare metals will increasingly commoditise the world’s backwaters, which have long been spared from humanity’s greed. But it will be decades before mining in the ocean becomes technically and ecologically possible. Until then, states are already divvying up the sea like parcels of land.

The day President Obama fired the starting gun on a new space race

Outer space isn’t out of bounds either. This is despite the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which clearly states that the space beyond the ozone layer is the common property of humanity. But like the oceans, humans are already preparing for minerals from outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

The United States was first off the mark. In 2015, President Obama signed off the revolutionary Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which grants any US citizen the right to ‘possess, transport, use, and sell’ any space resource. The wording is subtle; it does not openly challenge the international law establishing the principle of non-ownership of celestial bodies, but claims the right of ownership of the riches they bear.32

It’s a nuance that changes the way we survey the sky. Capitalism — by which objects are ascribed value — has apparently given rise to a new breed of gold-panner who sees asteroids as bags of cash in orbit. Just as a kilogram of apricots goes for a few dollars at the market, an acre of land in Montana or Queensland is worth thousands of dollars, and Modigliani’s Reclining Nude is auctioned off for US$170 million, an asteroid crossing the Earth’s orbit could sell for thousands of billions of dollars.

Since 2015, Americans have started to put price tags on these celestial juggernauts. One of them, the 2011 UW-158, which narrowly missed the Earth’s surface in its namesake year, was estimated to be worth €5,000 billion. It was crammed with 90 million tonnes of rare metals — the ‘new oil’ of the energy and digital transition — including more platinum than humans have ever extracted from the Earth’s crust. By opening the door to ownership of space minerals, President Obama gave the self-proclaimed ‘space gold-panners’ of Silicon Valley the legal comfort they needed to pursue their space mining ambitions. Among these businesses are Space Resources Australia, its US counterpart, Platinoid Mines Corporation, and its British counterpart, Asteroid Mining Corporation, which has announced the launch of its first asteroid-exploration probe for 2023.33

For the time being, commercial space exploitation is utopian at best. The cost of space launches is prohibitive, and there is no ecosystem in place for companies to profit from off-Earth activities. So why didn’t the international community simply laugh off the 2015 Space Launch Act? Because space ownership is not a question of how, but of when. So, while member states of the European Space Agency address the taboo concept of space mineral ownership under Obama’s Space Launch Act, international agencies will have to provide the legal and diplomatic framework for divvying up the sky.

The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs would also have to review the 1967 treaty to ensure access to ownership if ‘New Space’ — the fledgling private space economy that has come with the emergence with US space entrepreneurs — is to take off.34 This could happen within five or six years.35

Enter other players like Luxembourg, which is already securing its position.36 In 2016, its finance minister, Etienne Schneider, announced the Asteroid Mining Plan — the first European space initiative to promote a favourable legal framework for asteroid mining. In 2019, he signed an agreement with the US to share intelligence on space. There is even the provision of €200 million in funding to incentivise space-mining companies to set up in the Grand Duchy. Evidently, the scandal-plagued tax haven is focusing on new growth by fashioning itself as the global hub of the New Space Economy so that it can attract entrepreneurs and jobs … and generate handsome tax revenues.37

We need to think very hard about the moral of this story of land, oceans, and asteroids. The more equal distribution of resources that we celebrate has, in fact, led to the biggest drive for mineral ownership the world has ever seen. The ambition to reduce humans’ impact on the ecosystem by way of the energy and digital transition has actually further trampled biodiversity underfoot. And now, our newfound craving for minerals in space is wiping out the last of the sacred wildernesses. Are we looking to the skies to invoke the gods — or subjugate them?