Working with Bougainville communities to hold Rio Tinto to account
KEY PROJECT | Corporate Accountability
The Human Rights Law Centre is supporting communities in Bougainville to compel Rio Tinto to fund solutions to the environmental and human rights impacts of its former Panguna mine.
For 45 years, the Panguna copper and gold mine on Bougainville was majority-owned by Rio Tinto. In 2016, Rio divested from the mine, leaving behind more than a billion tonnes of mine waste. People living near and downstream from the mine are suffering from polluted water, flooding and land destruction, food shortages, and illness.
Our Corporate Accountability team exists to hold Australian companies to account for their actions here and overseas, and to work with communities to pursue justice. In 2020, our team worked with communities on Bougainville to lodge a human rights complaint against the mining giant for the environmental destruction the Panguna mine left behind. The complaint called on Rio Tinto to take responsibility for this legacy and to commit to funding an environmental assessment and clean-up.
In 2021, we secured our first win when Rio committed to fund an independent environmental and human rights impact assessment of the mine. That impact assessment started in 2022. We are continuing to work with local communities to document and highlight the risks they face. In September 2022, our team returned to Bougainville to meet with clan leaders and chiefs, the Autonomous Bougainville Government and Rio Tinto, the first time the company had returned to the island in more than 30 years. Community leaders stressed the urgency of the risks they are living with, showing us areas where disintegrating chemical storage tanks left by the mine are threatening their food supplies and pollution from the mine continues pouring into local rivers.
An independent report released in September 2022 by a global environment firm in preparation for the impact assessment underscored these concerns. The report warned of major risks to local people posed by unstable mine infrastructure and flooding caused by rivers filled with mine waste.
In mid 2023, heavy rainfall resulted in flooding that has impacted local communities. The flooding has inundated peoples’ homes, water supplies and food crops, causing food and water shortages and damage to roads and the environment. Up to ten villages are reported to have been affected.
Phase 1 of the assessment is due to report in mid-2024. Community leaders are calling for immediate funding from Rio Tinto for tangible action to address urgent health and safety issues in their communities, as well as a commitment from the company now that it will fund long-term solutions after each phase of the impact assessment.
Watch the ABC News story from June 2023 on the deadly impacts of the Panguna mine.
Rio Tinto would have just walked away had it not been for local community leaders fighting for justice. We will continue to work alongside them to compel the company to fund the solutions that are so urgently needed.
Traditional landowner and MP Theonila Roka Matbob, who is representing the communities involved in the complaint, said:
“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. These problems need to be urgently investigated so solutions can be developed and clean-up can begin.”