http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201102/s3148224.htm
Updated February 24, 2011 18:16:46
Big corporations have a crucial role to play in building and maintaining peace on Papua New Guinea's island of Bougainville, according to an Australian academic who's involved in research there.
Bougainville is still trying to rebuild its infrastructure and economy after the civil war in the 1990's.
The Rio Tinto subsidiary, Bougainville Copper, is hoping that will mean the re-opening of its Panguna copper and gold mine.
It was landowner grievances over benefit sharing from the Panguna mine that ignited the civil war.
Kylie McKenna, a Phd student at the Australian National University, has just completed her research on how major resource companies can avoid conflict with landowners.
She says companies need to look at their project through the eyes of the local community.
Presenter: Jemima Garrett
Speaker: Kylie McKenna, from the Australian National University
MCKENNA: Often in major resource development projects the emphasis is on what the state thinks, what the corporation thinks, but I think the key aspect is really to get behind what the local community see that they want to get out of the resource project, the broader fears or concerns that they might have for that project and then how the company might respond to those fears and concerns.
GARRETT: Well, Bougainville Copper has said nothing is off the agenda for the negotiations. How do they actually get down and find out what the people are really thinking?
MCKENNA: In Bougainville, it's quite easy at the moment, because everybody is keen to talk about the mine, everybody has a view or a perspective on what happened before the conflict arose, so everybody now is quite excited, but a bit concerned about what might happen with the mine. I think for a company it would be quite easy to go in and get the perspective of a lot of different people in Bougainville. But probably the biggest concern for the company might be how are they going to decipher what voices to listen to and who to leave out of that negotiation. Obviously that was a big concern before the conflict occurred in terms of different landowners and generation disputes within the landowner organisation, so that would probably be the biggest problem for the country going in.
GARRETT: What's your assessment so far, is it possible to see how they're doing on that at this stage?
MCKENNA: From what I hear, the autonomous Bougainville Government is doing quite extensive work in terms of trying to set up representative bodies for the landowners, so that different landowner organisations in different vicinities to the mining project will have a voice in what happens, but also what is going to need to be reconciled as well is getting the voices of Bougainville as a whole, not just those landowners, so that the company and also the government itself can contribute to equal development on Bougainville and not just those landowners.
GARRETT: You'll never get 100 per cent of the people behind the big project, especially something like a mine, and there still are some strong opponents among landowners. How can the company deal with that?
MCKENNA: Well, I think what the company really needs to do is as much as it can to go into Bougainville and to reconcile with the local people and clearly state what they have learnt from the past and what they hope to bring to Bougainville into the future. So I think there's always going to be people who are going to be opposed to the mining project, and rightly so. It's a major part of Bougainville's history and you could never guarantee that something like that isn't going to happen in the future. But I think for me what I learnt from my time on Bougainville was that there's a deep wish for something, a very rest odious ? about the mine coming into reopen in terms of the James Tanis argument about reopening the mine, because it's taking the conflict back to where it started. So I think if that's the model they're going to reopen the mine through, then the company needs to be very clear about the lessons they have learnt from the past.
GARRETT: You argue that in fact material benefits, concrete things are not as important as some other approaches the company can take, tell us a bit more about that?
MCKENNA: Well, my research is partly on Bougainville and partly on some resource projects in Papua and what I find is that companies like Bougainville Copper in Bougainville. The company could have been commended for many of the community projects that the company had the time that the mine operated. It was also quite a leader in terms of those projects, but despite that, things went terribly wrong. And what I've been finding through my research is that some of the concerns that local communities have are much deeper than what material benefit like schools and hospitals, although they are really important resources aren't going to solve those broader grievances. So that might be about how a company might symbolise colonial oppression in Bougainville, so when you've got an Australian company going in there, doing a colonial agreement, then that's something that can't be solved through the creation of a hospital or a school. It's much broader and deeper than that.
GARRETT: The Bougainville autonomous government has yet to develop all its mining rules and regulations. Can those be used to try and solve at least ameliorate that sort of problem?
MCKENNA: Oh well I think the people that I spoke to within the ABG Government are now thinking in terms of reconciliation with landowners and Bougainvilleans generally. I think so far the peace process has been between Bougainvilleans and Papua New Guineans and then between Bougainvilleans and Bougainvilleans themselves and now there are some people within the government thinking how are we going to do that between the mining company and Bougainvilleans. So that's part of a strong argument for why Bougainville Copper Limited might be a preferred company to come into Bougainville, as opposed to a Chinese company or one of the smaller companies that have been suggested, is that strong sense that we can bring a company in, we could invite them to participate in local reconciliation ceremonies and do it our way.
GARRETT: How important is it that executives, top executives of the company get out on the ground and talk to Bougainvilleans themselves regularly?
MCKENNA: I think it would be very, very important, particularly in a place as small as Bougainville and the cultural misunderstandings, the grape vine, I think would be really important for the company to go in with a clear message about what they want to do and how they want to do and then to be backed up on that by the ABG Government.
GARRETT: When you talk about reconciliation, often the people involved, the individuals are very important. Does that make it more important that you do see those top executives down there on the ground?
MCKENNA: Definitely, definitely and even if those executives are not executives who are involved in the mine when the mine was still operating obviously. Some of those executives might have passed away or have retired now. But I think the importance of what they might represent as individuals of that company is important for them to go into and some people are also expecting the same in terms of the Australian Government, whether people from the Australian Government could go alongside those executives and say hey look, we've made these mistakes and we recognise them and want responsibility for them. |
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