Tonga's Churches and NGOs Take the Seabed to the King

Tonga is a sponsoring state at the International Seabed Authority for Tonga Offshore Mining Limited, a subsidiary of the Vancouver-based Metals Company, giving it access to polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — international waters thousands of kilometres from Tonga itself. On World Oceans Day in June 2020 the Civil Society Forum of Tonga, an umbrella body of Tongan NGOs and churches, issued a statement calling on its government to review that sponsorship and to join Fiji and Vanuatu's call for a ten-year moratorium in both national and international waters. Successive governments dismissed the objections, and in January 2026 the Forum said it would petition the King directly. Its members have also demonstrated at the Pacific People's Forum, arguing the risks to fisheries, livelihoods and cultural practice fall on Tongans while the returns do not.