One type of strategy is one that doesn’t make an announcement. It doesn’t come with full-page newspaper ads or lobbyists in suits. It comes with a check for a cultural festival, a sponsorship logo discreetly sewn onto a banner for a local event, or perhaps a book written for an elderly person in need of assistance. The money has already served its purpose by the time anyone realizes what is going on.
At least that’s what critics in the Cook Islands think has been happening for more than four years. It is alleged that deep-sea mining companies, which are still in the exploration stage and years away from extracting a single nodule from the ocean floor, are conducting what amounts to a protracted, patient campaign to sway public opinion prior to the actual permit battle ever starting. It’s an influence that burns slowly. Additionally, some Cook Islanders claim that they didn’t realize it until they had already been won over.
The president of Te Ipukarea Society, the most well-known environmental advocacy organization in the nation, June Hosking, is blunt about what she observes. She claims that the businesses have practically permeated every aspect of local life. Te Rito o Taku Peu Tupuna, which roughly translates to “the richness of culture,” is a trust that one of them, CIC Ocean Research, established and has been covertly supporting regional projects throughout the islands. Te Maeva Nui, the yearly week-long cultural celebration at the emotional core of Cook Islands identity, is one of its beneficiaries. It takes more than just writing a check to sponsor that. It’s purchasing closeness to a sacred object.
Hosking remembered the moment she could no longer deny the strategy’s efficacy. Suddenly, people she had known as ardent opponents of deep-sea mining were speaking in a different way. “We are finally getting support for our culture,” they informed her. “They are actually helping.” Reading that makes you feel a little uneasy, not because the support is bad per se, but rather because of what it took the place of. The warmth of a corporate sponsorship softened skepticism that had been carefully nurtured over years.
Shona Lynch, the country manager for CIC, strongly disagrees with this interpretation. She contends that the company’s support of community events is no different from that of Vodafone Cook Islands or any other private company. In search of assistance, people knock on their door. When they can, they make an effort to assist. “If you do not do anything, you get accused,” she replied, “and if you do something, you still get accused.” It’s hard to completely ignore the weariness that permeates that statement. She might be right; in the Pacific and elsewhere, the distinction between strategic influence and corporate social responsibility has always been hazy.
Michael Tavioni, a cultural leader whose books were supported by CIC for publication, is unrepentant. He openly jokes that he wishes he were being bought off because his workshops need the money and claims he is not influenced by anyone. He maintains that his positive writing about deep-sea mining is just his contribution to a public discourse. Perhaps. However, influence rarely needs to be explicit to be effective in a small island community where relationships overlap frequently and the same faces show up at the same festivals every year.
The fact that the mining has not yet begun is what truly complicates the situation. In an effort to ascertain whether polymetallic nodules can be extracted without causing significant environmental harm, the companies are currently in year four of a five-year exploration phase. Deep-sea mining is dividing regional alliances throughout the Pacific, with Cook Islands and Nauru remaining cautiously open while Fiji, Palau, and Vanuatu call for a precautionary pause. No extraction regulations have been finalized by the International Seabed Authority. In that vacuum, the struggle for public opinion is perhaps the only actual conflict going on at the moment.
And for that reason, timing is crucial. These sponsorships, donations, and acts of cultural generosity did not follow the acquisition of permits. They were the first. Long after the exploration phase is over, Cook Islanders will continue to debate whether that constitutes astute community engagement or deliberate pre-positioning. However, many of them already feel that the answer is clear.
