Environmentalist Chris Brown says he doubts that other consultants doing the Environmental Impact Assessment study on proposed seabed phosphate mining would have reached a different conclusion. Ministry of Environment issued an environmental clearance certificate to Namibia Marine Phosphate’s (NMP) based on an environmental consultant’s advice. Responding to a challenge by a member of the public, Doctor Brown stressed that no laws were changed to make the phosphate mining project possible. Public concern over the mining possibility has sustained, ever since the secrecy surrounding the issuing of the former clearance certificate to the NMP company became known. Concerned members of the public again packed a room at the Scientific Society of Namibia on Wednesday and posed a barrage of questions to environmentalists on the panel. People reminded the environmentalists that Nauru island in the Pacific was irreversibly destroyed because of phosphate mining. They referred to another on-land phosphate mine in South Carolina in the United States which was closed down after just a few months because international markets had become quickly over-saturated with phosphate.