MPI Mining Monitor – July 2013

Papua New Guinea Special

July’s mining monitor is a Papua New Guinea [PNG] special, inspired, or perhaps driven by the sudden focus on PNG due to the political crisis surrounding boat arrivals. But let’s start with some good news – MPI’s PNG documentary, Hidden Valley, has been selected for the Melbourne Environmental Film Festival and will premiere on Thursday 5th September. Congratulations to the production team with special thanks to Director and Cinematographer Jessie Boylan and Editor Anthony Kelly. We encourage everyone to attend the screening – see links below. For those who cannot make it, the documentary will be available on the web later this year.

Our first two PNG articles, both from respected researchers known to MPI, respond to Australia’s new PNG refugee resettlement policy. It is not often we cover  issues other than mining, but we felt these articles really address key issues from the PNG ‘solution’ and are relevant given our ongoing work in PNG.

The next articles assess reporting on mining; the  Development Policy Centre at ANU  make five recommendations for improving mining reporting in PNG, while the Reputation Report deals with human rights violations at Porgera and the disconnect between sustainability reports and reality, questioning the intent of corporate social responsibility [CSR] at Barrick. While MPI does support genuine CSR, including voluntary reporting, it is hard to find, mostly superficial and one-sided rather than a honest description of issues on the ground. Indeed, if anyone has seen an honest and accurate self assessment then please send it to us as we would like to have a ‘best practice’ example. In the meantime, glossy reports and coloured dot assessments are no substitute for effective and mandatory regulatory regimes

Finally there is a request for volunteers, particularly someone that could assist with a small river mapping project, if you can help, please contact us at charles.roche@mpi.org.au