1. The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) is an organisation created by the Georgetown Agreement in 1975. It is composed of 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific States, with all of them, save Cuba, signatories to the Cotonou Agreement, also known as the "ACP-EC Partnership Agreement" which binds them to the European Union. There are 48 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, 16 from the Caribbean and 15 from the Pacific. More information is available at 〈http://www.acp.int/content/secretariat-acp〉, accessed May 2016.
2. For more information about the main objectives of the SPC-EU DSM Project see Tawake A. Deep Sea Mineral potentials in the Pacific region: challenges and opportunities. Marine Policy [this issue].
3. An Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of Mining Deep-sea Minerals in the Pacific Island Region;Cardno, Inc,2016
4. Monte Carlo simulation is a problem solving technique used to approximate the probability of certain outcomes by running multiple trial runs (simulations) where inputs are randomly drawn from a distribution.
5. As detailed in Section 4, costs associated with environmental loss due to unplanned releases are identified as a cost borne by the host country citizens. Also, while it is recognized that not all releases would be fluid in nature (i.e. ore spillage, etc.), the analysis focuses on costs associated with oil spills based on readily available data and the likelihood that costs (both financial and environmental ) associated with such spills are likely to encompass the cost of ore related releases.