Australia can help ensure the biggest mine in PNG's history won't leave a toxic legacy & More News Here

The COVID pandemic slowed mining operations throughout the Pacific. But as financial exercise returns, an Australia-based firm is poised to pursue what can be the largest mine in Papua New Guinea’s history.

The huge gold and copper mission, often called the Frieda River mine, would additionally embody a hydroelectric plant and a dam with a storage capability for round 4.6 billion tonnes of mine tailings and waste rock.

The mission is awaiting approval by the PNG authorities. However, locals, conservationists and specialists say it may trigger catastrophic hurt to considered one of the world’s most necessary river methods and shouldn’t proceed as proposed.

Australia is PNG’s largest growth accomplice. As useful resource extraction expands throughout the Pacific, the new Labor authorities is effectively positioned to help our neighbours ensure mining exercise doesn’t hurt folks or the atmosphere.

Remote, unstable terrain

The Frieda River mine is proposed by Brisbane-based, Chinese-owned firm Pan Aust.

The mission centres on the Frieda River copper-gold deposit positioned in the tropical mountain ranges of northwest PNG.

The river flows into the Sepik River Basin, considered one of the world’s nice river methods. It’s the largest unpolluted freshwater system in New Guinea and amongst the largest freshwater basins in the Asia-Pacific.

The Frieda River deposit was found in the Sixties. It lies in extraordinarily distant terrain, alongside the Pacific Ring of Fire which is vulnerable to seismic exercise.

The mine would produce tailings (or waste supplies) containing sulphide, which turns into sulphuric acid when uncovered to oxygen. For this motive, the tailings have to be completely lined by water.

The proposed mine’s location, excessive in the mountains, means a tailings accident may devastate the total Sepik River Basin.

About 430,000 folks rely upon the Sepik River and close by forests for his or her livelihood. The proposal has galvanised huge opposition from each locals and others.

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Downplaying the dangers

In 2020, ten impartial specialists together with myself, have been commissioned by PNG’s Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights to individually assessment the mission’s “environmental impact statement”. The work was undertaken professional bono.

I’m an skilled gold exploration geologist and environmental scientist. In my assessment, I discovered the assertion downplayed or obscured the proposal’s extraordinary stage of danger.

First, it omitted a report by design engineers that analysed the excessive penalties of dam failure.

Second, the primary report failed to say the dam would want an intensive inspection and upkeep regime “in perpetuity”. In different phrases, a doubtlessly toxic dam in a distant a part of a very poor nation requires extremely expert and skilled professionals to keep up it – not only for the 33-year lifetime of the mine, however endlessly.

Our studies prompted a group of UN Special Rapporteurs to put in writing letters of concern to the governments of PNG, Australia, China and Canada, the place firms concerned in the three way partnership have ties.

The letters mentioned the mine’s growth appeared to “disregard the human rights of those affected … given the nature of the project it could undermine the rights of Sepik children to life, health, culture, and a healthy environment, including the rights of unborn generations.”

The Conversation contacted Pan Aust for a response to those claims. In a assertion, the firm mentioned it was “respectfully engaged in the Government of Papua New Guinea’s approvals process” and as such, it was inappropriate to offer a public remark.

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New safeguards are wanted

Inadequate consideration of a mine’s social and environmental affect is rife cross the Pacific. And PNG offers many examples of the catastrophes that can end result.

Tailings from BHP’s ill-fated Ok-Tedi mine, positioned in the similar mountain vary as the proposed Frieda River mine, severely broken close by rivers.

And environmental injury from the Panguna copper mine was a key issue in neighborhood unrest and the Bougainville civil struggle.

Recent analysis into governance of mining in PNG discovered authorities companies have been under-resourced, leaving “companies as effectively self-regulating”.

Proponents of mining in PNG steadily cite its contribution to financial growth. But for the advantages to be realised, assets have to be extracted in a method that’s environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

New legal guidelines are wanted to ensure useful resource extraction tasks in PNG don’t trigger long-lasting social and environmental injury. This ought to embody necessary, clear and impartial opinions of tasks.

Australia has intensive expertise with environmental regulation of mining tasks and can help in this regard. Such help ought to be delivered in a method that strengthens relations between Australia and PNG, and empowers and equips the smaller nation.

Sustainable growth for our Pacific neighbours is in Australia’s strategic pursuits. Australian firms usually profit considerably from useful resource extraction in PNG, creating an additional accountability to ensure higher outcomes.

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Read extra:
A brutal struggle and rivers poisoned with each rainfall: how one mine destroyed an island

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