Marine phosphate: NMP claims unfair scrutiny

An environmental consultant says Namibia Marine Phosphate’s (NMP's) proposed mining project off the coast of Namibia has faced prolonged and intense scrutiny, despite providing relevant government agencies with scientifically robust data on the matter.

Environmental Compliance Consultancy consultant Jessica Bezuidenhout, who was responding to questions from lawmakers during a briefing to the parliamentary standing committee on natural resources, said the protracted process involved in getting NMP’s environmental clearance certificate (ECC) and objections by various stakeholders have tainted the image of the project.

“This project has been under scrutiny for a long time, and what that did was create misconceptions around the project... [and] government was forced to withdraw the environmental clearance certificate,” Bezuidenhout told lawmakers.

Bezuidenhout said specialist studies have been undertaken into the project.

“It is one of the most thorough environmental assessments that has been conducted, with the most specialist studies, including obtaining data from the ministry of fisheries, to confirm whether there would be an impact or not,” she said.

Protracted process

The company’s application for an ECC has been sitting with environmental commissioner Teofilus Nghitila, following legal challenges lodged against NMP to have the issuance of the licence declared invalid.

The Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations (CNFA), the Namibia Hake Association (HNA), the Midwater Trawling Association (MTA) and Omualu Fishing brought an application seeking a declaration that the ECC issued to NMP in 2011 had lapsed and was of no use.

In 2021, the High Court declared that NMP was not in possession of a valid ECC and was therefore not entitled to undertake mining activities. The company has since applied for a new ECC.

Project environmentally sound

Highlighting the benefits of the project, NMP MD Mike Woodborne said the project could positively impact Namibia for a period of up to 100 years.

“The size of this deposit of phosphate that is being defined for this resource contains over 1.6 billion tonnes of phosphate. It is therefore a massive development and represents one of the largest phosphate deposits in the world,” Woodborne said.

“It is capable of supporting production over a number of generations. This resource can support operations for up to 50 to 100 years,” he added.

According to Woodborne, the proposed mining project would only involve 32 square kilometres of land, despite NMP’s licence area covering 2 233 square kilometres.

“What we are actually looking at is a very small fraction of the actual mining licence that we are able to support operations itself for a period of up to 20 years,” Woodborne said.

Dredging fears dismissed

Woodborne also dismissed fears that proposed dredging of the marine phosphate resource would impact marine life, following a question from lawmaker Vincent Mareka, who was concerned NMP’s operations would harm the marine environment.

“The actual dredging operation is not a continual dredging operation like marine diamond mining. They dredge 24 hours, seven days a week, and the vessel stays on station. In this instance, there will be three cycles a week of approximately 14 to 16 hours on site; it does not occupy a site in a mining licence area continually,” he said.

Chairperson of the committee on natural resources, Tjekero Tweya, appealed to NMP to give the process time, despite the company applying for a licence as far back as 2016.

“Let us allow that process to run its course,” Tweya said.