Bougainville's Panguna Copper mine Photo: Supplied
A cabinet minister in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville is calling for the mining giant Rio Tinto to set "concrete commitments for remediation and clean up" of the Panguna mine.
Rio Tinto was the owner/operator of the copper and gold mine which has lain derelict for more than 30 years after it had sparked a civil war which claimed as many as 20,000 lives.
Periods of heavy rain lead to rivers being choked with mining waste, amid reports of compromised water supplies and food crops.
Theonila Roka Matbob, the minister in charge of community government and district affairs, is the elected member for Ioro, the district that encompasses the Panguna mine.
Born just a year after it was forced shut in 1989, she has been dealing with the environmental and societal impacts of the mine and civil war her entire life.
Hon. Theonila Roka Matbob Photo: RNZ Pacific / Tiana Haxton
Upon finishing university, Roka Matbob decided to advocate for the human rights of her people.
"We cannot keep accepting that what we're living on, which is tailings is something that, is normal, and it's natural."
"I come from a tribe that completely lost their land."
She worked with the Australian Human Rights Law Centre to file an official complaint with the Australian government which led to Rio Tinto committing to fund an independent environmental and human rights legacy impact assessment.
Roka Matbob said this is just the first step in the right direction, but the company needs to do more.
"There is still no concrete commitment to say, we will remediate, we will clean up."
"It causes a lot of anxiety, especially when people are expecting to know, what is it that the company is going to do?"
Over a billion tonnes of waste tailings were released directly into nearby rivers during the operation of the Panguna mine between 1972 and 1989.
The human rights complaint alleged that the massive volume of mine waste pollution is continuing to put people's lives and livelihoods at risk.
"As I speak, every single day, there's arable land areas been covered by the collapsing sandbags, as we speak, there are families that are continuously moving, but no one wants to talk about these as a violation against people and the environment itself."
Panguna town, Bougainville. Photo: RNZ / Johnny Blades
The minister said this problem was not caused by her people, and Rio Tinto, while it is no longer the owner of the mine after handing its shares to the PNG and Bougainville governments, needs to make a commitment to remediate.
"Rio Tinto coming onto the roundtable, making some real concrete commitments will only heal that people and when it heals the people it does, it's a win-win situation for companies' reputation, and my future generation as well."
Roka Matbob has been advocating for this for almost a decade.
She said she will continue to use her platform to put pressure on the company to publicly make a commitment for the betterment of the people of Bougainville.
The Bougainville government, which has now become the biggest shareholder of the defunct mine, has ambitions to re-open the mine.
It sees Panguna, once the biggest opencast gold and copper mine in the world, as the way to develop a viable economy, as it seeks independence from Port Moresby.
Many in Bougainville remain opposed to the mine re-opening.
