The Suva Office Arguing the Pacific Is Not a Mining Frontier

The Pacific Network on Globalisation, based in Suva, exists to defend Pacific peoples' right to economic self-determination, and for a decade its sharpest fight has been over the seabed. Deep-sea mining companies operate in the region by getting a single small state to sponsor them at the International Seabed Authority, which converts a global decision into a bilateral one; PANG's response has been regional legal and policy analysis, published in plain language, so that governments and communities can see the terms they are being offered. Its work fed the Melanesian Spearhead Group's 2023 moratorium covering five governments, and it convenes a Pacific civil society alliance of more than 20 organisations that has pressed the ISA for formal recognition of community participation. In 2026 it published a legislative and policy review arguing that regional pledges mean nothing without domestic law to implement them, and publicly challenged the ISA over excluding Pacific civil society from a workshop held in Fiji.