Project Update

hrlc Breakthrough to hold Rio Tinto Accountable for Threats Posed by Panguna Mine.

july 2021

For over thirty years, the communities in Bougainville have lived with and suffered the consequences of Rio Tinto’s abandoned and deteriorating Panguna copper mine. In July 2021, with the support of SAGE-grantee Human Rights Law Centre, the communities achieved a major victory when they secured Rio Tinto’s commitment to participate in a process to identify the human rights and environmental impacts of and risks from the Panguna mine. HRLC and the communities stress that this long-overdue commitment is just the first step. They will hold Rio Tinto accountable until the mine ceases to threaten their health, livelihoods, and environment.  

From 1972-1989, Rio Tinto operated the Panguna copper mine in Bougainville, dumping billions of tons of mine tailings into local river systems and generating conflict amongst local landowners. In 1988-89, an insurrection by local people caused, in part, by these practices resulted in the company abandoning the mine without taking adequate remediation measures. Rio Tinto subsequently pressured the PNG Government into a military intervention, triggering a decade-long civil war that killed up to 20,000 Bougainvilleans. Pollution from the mine site continues to flow unabated into local rivers, chemical storage facilities are deteriorating, and levies built to contain hundreds of kilometres of mine tailings are at risk of collapse. These and other impacts were documented in the 2020 report by HRLC, After the Mine: Living with Rio Tinto’s Deadly Legacy.

This breakthrough came after the communities, assisted by HRLC, reinvigorated their international campaign with support from the SAGE Fund and stepped up pressure on Rio Tinto to remedy the impacts from the Panguna mine. The campaign, including documentation of impacts and direct engagement with Rio Tinto and its shareholders, culminated in a complaint to the Australian National Contact Point (AusNCP) in September 2020. The AusNCP, which is responsible for promoting the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and handling complaints about Australian companies that fail to respect them, mediated the agreement between the communities and Rio Tinto to assess the risks from the mine.

Traditional landowner and MP Theonila Roka Matbob, representing the communities involved in the complaint, said: “This is an important day for communities on Bougainville. Our people have been living with the disastrous impacts of Panguna for many years and the situation is getting worse. The mine continues to poison our rivers with copper. Our kids get sick from the pollution and communities downstream are now being flooded with mine waste. Some people have to walk two hours a day just to get clean drinking water. In other areas, communities’ sacred sites are being flooded and destroyed."

Theonila was elected in 2020 as one of Bougainville’s youngest and only female members of parliament and was subsequently appointed Minister for Education within the new Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) where she continues to speak out against human rights violations and advocate strongly for justice for the communities in her constituency impacted by the mine. For her work to hold Rio Tinto to account for its legacy of environmental destruction and associated human rights violations, Theonila was awarded the 2021 Gwynne Skinnner Human Rights Award by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.

HRLC was one of a set of grants that the SAGE Fund made in 2019 on responsibility and remedy for mining and tailings disasters. Too often, mining companies walk away from the devastation they cause, moving on to their next project and leaving communities to deal with the consequences. This victory offers a roadmap and some hope that it is possible to hold those companies responsible, even after 30 years.

We congratulate Theonila on her award and celebrate with the communities in Bougainville and our grantee, HRLC, on securing this commitment from Rio Tinto. SAGE is providing additional support and accompaniment to push for continued success in the process.

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