Rio Tinto faces biggest test of environmental and social credentials since Juukan Gorge with response to former Panguna mine’s impacts

While shareholders gather in Brisbane for Rio Tinto's AGM, communities affected by pollution from the company's former Panguna mine on Bougainville are calling for Rio Tinto to commit to funding long-term solutions so people can live safely on their land again.

In response to a human rights complaint brought by 156 local community members, represented by the Human Rights Law Centre, Rio Tinto agreed in 2021 to fund an independent multi-million-dollar human rights and environmental impact assessment to identify and assess the impacts and risks caused by the mine and develop recommendations for what needs to be done to address them.

The first phase of that impact assessment, focused on the most serious impacts and risks to communities, will report in the coming months. Communities have reported widespread contamination of their land and water supplies, risks from collapsing levees and leaking tanks of chemicals and flooding due to mine waste build up in the rivers, putting lives and livelihoods at risk. Over 25,000 people live around or downstream of the mine.

Communities represented in the complaint have called on Rio Tinto to take responsibility for its legacy and fund clean-up and long-term solutions to the many problems they are facing from the mine, as well as participating in reconciliation as per Bougainvillean custom.

Rio Tinto has not yet made any commitment to funding solutions beyond the impact assessment.

Quote from Theonila Roka Matbob, lead complainant and member of parliament for the area where the mine is located:

“We are always worrying that the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe is not safe. We live with levees collapsing and mine waste flooding our lands and communities. Work to address the impacts identified by the environmental and human rights assessment cannot come soon enough.

“We welcome Rio Tinto's commitment to this process so far, but now we really need the company to commit to funding solutions and working with our communities long-term.”

Quote from Keren Adams, Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre:

"Rio Tinto’s response to the impact assessment is a critical test for its ESG credentials, and whether it will live up to its renewed commitment to be a global corporate leader on the environment and human rights following the company’s disastrous destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in 2020."

“While the impact assessment has been going on, local people have continued to live with the impacts and dangers from the mine every day. Communities urgently need access to clean drinking water and stabilisation of the levees to stop the vast mounds of mine waste continuing to erode into the rivers. Children need to be able to walk to school without having to wade through treacherous areas of quicksand created by the mine waste. This is what remediation means in real terms for people living with these impacts."

Background

Panguna was formerly one of the world's largest copper and gold mines. During its operation from 1972 to 1989, over a billion tonnes of mine waste tailings were released directly into the Jaba and Kawerong rivers. In 1989, an uprising by local people against this environmental destruction and inequities in the distribution of the mine's profits forced the mine to stop operating and triggered a brutal decade-long civil war.

No clean-up has ever been undertaken of the site. Rio Tinto remained the majority-owner of the mine until 2016, when it divested and passed its shares to the PNG and Bougainville governments, walking away from the disastrous environmental legacy and its impacts on local people.

The impact assessment of the mine is being undertaken by global environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech Coffey. It has been overseen by a multi-stakeholder Oversight Committee which includes clan and community leaders from the mine-affected areas as well as representatives of the Autonomous Bougainville Government and PNG Government, BCL, Rio Tinto, the Human Rights Law Centre and the complainants.

Media contact:
Thomas Feng
Acting Engagement Director
Human Rights Law Centre
0431 285 275
thomas.feng@hrlc.org.au