PM Browne Calls for Moratorium on Seabed Mining
UNITED NATIONS — Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne on Friday called for a halt to seabed mining until science can prove it will not cause serious harm, urging world leaders to prioritize the protection of oceans that small island nations depend on for survival.
“For islands like mine, the ocean is not scenery. It is the source of food and jobs and the opportunity for new chances of growth and development,” Browne told the U.N. General Assembly. “But it must be protected”.
He pressed for “decisive action against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, plastics that choke reefs, and pollution that steals mangroves,” warning that these threats undermine both livelihoods and ecosystems.
“As custodians of vast, exclusive economic zones, small islands offer partnership and stewardship,” Browne said. “Let us back robust global plastics and fossil fuel non-proliferation treaties. Expand blue carbon finance for mangroves and seagrass”.
He also called for greater technological cooperation, urging that “maritime domain awareness and the provision of satellite and data sharing services [become] standard support for SIDS”.
“Until independent science proves no serious harm, we support a moratorium on seabed mining,” Browne declared. “No one should mortgage the ocean floor to pay for short-term bills”.
He concluded by insisting that “law must be our guardrail” and linked Antigua and Barbuda’s efforts with Vanuatu’s in seeking international legal clarity on states’ climate obligations, framing the defense of oceans as both an environmental and legal imperative.
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Then start by reigning in the plethora of hotel owners who keep destroying our mangroves with their unregulated bulldozers and polluting our seas.
If you are so concerned as you say you are, start with them forthwith, or Antiguans will think you are just part of the worst KAKISTOCRACY the citizens of Antigua have ever known or witnessed!
Them wouldn’t even listen to Gaston, we are not any industrial manufacturing country, we are a academically service oriented society dictated by neocolonialism, educated to just work for someone in an extractive agrarian to now hotels etc economy, if we had people with masters degree in geology and mining resources from Antigua lands then we could speak. Wait a minute, we have one such qualify person in that academic field of study,and people like Joann messiah make a caricature of Harold Lovell for having a degree in dirt as she describes it, those manufacturing countries would have been glad to get Lovell to work in their mining operations.
Back to Gaston, he a the worst when it comes to environment destruction once he gets paid, over Barbuda is gun he have the police and soldiers holding on the barbudans so PLH and other white land grabbers can destroy swamp lands and mangrove to build golf course, and he gave them buffer zone so they can keep away prying eyes. And he is also dredging the sea bed for hadeed new power plant to get to charge the Antiguan tax payers after they purposely sabotage the wadadli power plant built by the UPP under the hon Baldwin Spencer administration. Look I believe he just waiting with baited breath to get these unaccountable funds from them organization out there because he is desperate to pay all these people around him to sign his tune to let him maintain power, he need them to sing praises and nice fairytale stories about him as smart.