Theonila Roka Matbob: The Bougainville story is a result of Australia’s political decision through the Papua New Guinea government, now implemented on Bougainville and leaving behind a toxic legacy that has already been kind of fenced out, not to have a forum to talk about. So my intention is for us to start telling this story.

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal Land. Today on the Newscast, we speak with Theonila Roka Matbob, an Indigenous Nasioi woman from Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea.

Mike: Roka Matbob grew up next to what was, at the time, the world’s largest open-pit mine, operated by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, an Australian-British mining company. The mine wrought environmental and social devastation on the community around Panguna. Roka Matbob explains to me this was largely the reason for the Bougainville Civil War, which left up to 20,000 people dead. But the toxic legacy of the Panguna Mine continues to this day, with social and environmental consequences. In 2020, along with 156 community members, Roka Matbob filed a legal complaint against Rio Tinto with Australia’s National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. And in 2024, Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bougainville government to remediate the mine’s environmental impacts, including access to clean water. For this legal achievement, Roka Matbob was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize. However, for her and her community, the fight for justice is far from over. I sat down with Roka Matbob on the University of Sydney campus to ask her whether she had any faith that remediation would be completed, and she told me quite candidly that she did not. Late last year, the Bougainville government signed another memorandum of understanding with an Indian metals company, Lloyds Metals, to redevelop Panguna Mine. Roka Matbob tells me there is no waste management plan included in this memorandum, and she fears the mistakes of the past are simply being repeated. Theonila, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Theonila: Hi, Mike. Well, thank you also for inviting me to do this interview. I’m more than happy to be part of it.

Mike: So you grew up in Bougainville in the shadow of what was the largest open-pit mine in operation at the time, by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. And I understand that this can be a bit of a sensitive topic, and I don’t want to elicit painful memories for you. But for our listeners who don’t know about your story, can you tell them what it was like to grow up near this mine and the impact that it had on your life?

Theonila: I mean, it may be seen as sensitive, but I think it is an important agenda, really, or an important issue to talk about because this experience is not isolated. It may, on a customized basis, be identified with me and my people, but such an experience is not isolated to people like us, right? It is equally faced by other Indigenous people in other pockets of the world. So on that note, I think it hits differently, especially when you just hear from stories that you had such a beautiful life, a balanced ecosystem and everything. But then, in reality, you are born into sort of a broken devastation or a toxic legacy that you inherit, that demands your full attention as a guardian of the land to start doing something. Because while it may be your pride, your identity, it is not normal as it’s supposed to be, right? So, on that note, it’s a lot of energy-draining work to be from that kind of environment.

Mike: And so this mine dumped 150,000 metric tons of waste per day into nearby rivers. I mean, that’s per day. It’s a lot. And this was from 1972 to 1989. Can you describe the pollution and the impact from this pollution on your community?

Theonila: It’s so layered, I’d say, because on record it says it’s 1972 up to 1989 or something, but in actual practice, it started way back in 1968 when the razing and the unrecorded harvest of minerals was happening, and also the use of chemicals like Agent Orange to kill the environment, really, the forest that was sort of stubborn to be easily burned out. So a lot of pollution, and even the social studies that were done in 1964 under the Australian National University and given to Rio Tinto said that it was okay to dump waste into the river because there were only 20 people living along the river. So you can imagine all those crafted lies to say there were 20 people. And the dumping was not just the tailings, but even fuel, the diesel they were using. Because my great-grandmother and my grandmother, and my mom, who was four years old at that time when the whole thing started, three generations saw fuel being poured onto the environment to kill it. So you can imagine the dumpings, and it’s not from the cone of the pit into the ocean. It’s only 10 miles. But geographically, it is so much of a valley system and then a spread along the coast. So the further down the dumpings and all of these things went, in the lower part, the coastal area, it literally spread across, and it’s massive. It’s massive. I currently live on land that is about 15 meters above what was the natural land.

Mike: And this is a really large question, and obviously there’s a big response, but can you describe how your community responded?

Theonila: Believe me, no one knew what was happening because extracting part of a soil structure is not something that is known to our community. So when the clearing was happening at what is now the epicenter of it all, and then a lot of it came out as a pit, people, in our very harmonious thinking in those days, thought, “Oh, that project is isolated to the people up top.” And no one understood and imagined that the waste was going to impact us, that it was going to start going wider as it went down. So no one understood, really comprehended what was going to follow. They were sort of enjoying their life until they started seeing the color of the river changing from crystal white to black, completely black, and losing all the catch from the river, the fish, the eels, all these other catches, proteins, food out of the river. That was when questions started coming. And a lot of people died at that time, but it is not recorded. They were eating the fish that died, eels that died crawling out, and they thought that was feast time. But it is a permanent disaster that is irreversible now.

Mike: And when you say it’s irreversible, what parts of it are irreversible?

Theonila: Physically, the environment is not at a level where we’re capable of fixing it with our own hands. Socially, I would say that confidence got irreversibly damaged because we’re who we are because of our identity to the land, to the environment. I always use this term that most times we humans behave like we are the house. We don’t realize that we’re just part of the house, part of the whole ecosystem. So socially, at the human level, all of those pockets of significance to our identity, they were all buried. And with that, if you are broken, what would make you show up when you lose confidence? So the social impacts created irreversible social behavior such that people are not confident, there is mistrust, and there is this silence, abnormal silence, where they can even let you talk for two hours and no one will respond to you. That’s the kind of new social pattern that has been really institutionalized now through generations as well. It’s not going to take a decade to fix. It’s a generational thing. But the question is, amid all of these new social patterns that are very, very irreversible, disengaging, and so disheartening to the deepest core of it, how are we sure that we will be able to give birth to a generation that will carry confidence to start undoing the damage, fixing or weaving back to reconciliation, all these broken pieces of the ecosystem? So that’s how detrimental the whole breakdown and the collapse of the society’s order is.

Mike: So in 2020, you were the lead complainant in a human rights complaint filed against Rio Tinto with the Australian National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. When was it that you decided to launch this complaint?

Theonila: It was actually a long, long sort of thinking to get to the place where, or get to the point where, we could be able to launch or register a legal complaint because, at the institutional level, as a country, we do not have such platforms or forums within our institution that would easily get you to come out there and be the voice. So it took a lot of people. It took a lot of discussions. It took the church as well. It took our previous leaders or political leaders, who were advocating for justice. But the thing was there were no details in understanding what justice would look like in practice. It would have been a lot easier if we had forums as such. So one thing led to another when, in 2013, Jubilee Australia really came and showed up to say, “Okay, let’s collect stories and let’s hear from people. Are people really interested in reopening the mine?” And that was also the first time, being a university student, I had no idea. You’re working toward a course that you want to graduate from and live a life. But when we went and started interviewing people, I realized that out of 105 people we interviewed, 98 of them were completely, “No, we don’t want to talk about this. We want justice.”

Mike: Mm.

Theonila: But the thing was, it was still hard to frame it and find a forum to handle that kind of situation. And also, there was no willing counsel or lawyer in-country who would be willing to engage. We had Bougainville lawyers, but who would want to talk about these kinds of things if it’s not going to pay them? I’m not sure, maybe that’s not the right way to put it. But the suffering was there. We were living, waking up, breathing all of these things, but no one was willing until there was a Misereor-funded project. They came into Bougainville and had a project called the Panguna Listening Project. That was when Rio Tinto sold all its shares and walked away. So that project then came in, and eventually, when the Human Rights Law Centre came in, willing to engage, that was the opportunity. But it took 156 people to really come together to make that happen.

Mike: Hello, listeners, and thank you for tuning in. As I always like to mention, Mongabay is a nonprofit news organization. We rely on funding from listeners like you. So if you’d like to support the podcast, head to patreon.com/mongabay to become a monthly sponsor of the show. If you want more information about Theonila Roka Matbob and the Panguna Mine, please see my sources linked in the show notes. Can you detail the process of what it was like working with the Human Rights Law Centre?

Theonila: I would say that working with the Human Rights Law Centre was, at first engagement, we were kind of made to think that nothing is free, right? All of that. And I was fearful as well, like, how are we going to compensate the service that’s going to be given to us? Because we already had two failed attempts at engaging with lawyers from other countries, I think in the Netherlands, and then in the U.S. as well. So there were failed attempts at litigation over that issue. But when the Human Rights Law Centre came in and did the interview, I saw that from reading books on the previous attempts, the engagement that the Human Rights Law Centre took was completely facilitative. They wanted to listen to the people, and that was what we did. We walked around with Karen into communities, and we were basically talking and listening, and that’s rare for legal counsel. I was like, “Okay, this looks interesting. Maybe we can talk.” But it was also at a time when our hope had already slimmed, and I was already at the point of giving up because I was already creating a lot of enemies within the government institution as well, making the headlines internally for all the wrong reasons, or yelling at government officials, all of that. So when the Human Rights Law Centre came in, they took this very unique approach in documenting the stories, which Rio Tinto then said, “No, I’ve not been on the ground for 30 years, or 26 years, so I have no idea what happened.” So they made that excuse to be avoidant of the fact that the report was in front of them. And the Human Rights Law Centre did not give up on us when Rio Tinto kind of pushed it aside. They said, “Okay.” I asked, “What would the other way be?” I knew that litigation was not our way because we never had that money to do such a thing. So the recommendation and the option of going the legal complaint route, which was the first time I heard that there was such a forum in Australia, this is not something we have in Papua New Guinea. So for me, that was a window of opportunity, but I was not confident. We said okay because there was legal counsel telling us, “Let’s give it a try. Even if we fail, so long as we ticked off the box that we did make an attempt.” So it was in that kind of mind that we engaged, and then we got 156 people. It was actually easy to get them to sign as well because everyone wanted a solution. They wanted to see a solution in their generation, which was not straightforward, but yeah.

Mike: And so can you describe then what happened when the complaint was finally filed?

Theonila: When the complaint was finally filed, Rio Tinto responded in 24 hours.

Mike: That’s quick.

Theonila: Very unusual. But they did. I think there was also a situation in Australia that gave us a really good context for entry. It was the blasting of the Juukan Gorge cave, which is a sacred site to the First Nations people. And Rio Tinto was already up there with headlines that were already bubbling toward the left.

Mike: Here, Theonila had turned to her colleague to ask the name of a cave containing ancient Aboriginal rock art that was 46,000 years old and was blasted by Rio Tinto in Western Australia in the Pilbara region, and that is Juukan Gorge. The traditional owners of this region filed a legal complaint that is similar to the one that Roka Matbob filed. There’s a whole lot more to the story about Juukan Gorge that I recommend you look into, but that’s the legal route she was referring to.

Theonila: So it was an opportunity for us to strategically engage at that time, and that’s why it took them just 24 hours to say, “We’re okay to come to the table and talk.”

Mike: Mm. So Rio Tinto has now promised the Bougainville government that it will commit to remediation. So what exactly are they committing to doing? Because you mentioned that you traveled here to have a meeting with the CEO of Rio Tinto. What happened in that meeting?

Theonila: Interestingly, yes, I was supposed to travel here, but the CEO was not available.

Mike: I see.

Theonila: Yeah, he was not available. So we were not able to do that. So you can see, the commitment is there. For me, on behalf of the people, I welcome that statement. But will I trust that statement? No. Because if you can promise and then avoid, it is not an honest engagement. And on that note, they’re doing the funding on the ground, but I will say this process is highly cross-cultural. What will look like a solution to Rio Tinto may not be seen as a solution to the Indigenous people in the communities living and waking up with this. And also, on the legislative front as well, we have the government on the table, and the forum that is at the moment making decisions on the resources to be invested does not reflect the representation of the people on the ground living with a toxic legacy.

Mike: And so what sort of pathways do you have to cleaning up that toxic legacy? How are you going to ensure that Rio Tinto actually addresses the pollution that they’ve caused?

Theonila: Well, that’s the thing. This is not something we can be able to fix with our bare hands, and this is why engaging at every level and ensuring that representation of all three parties is reflected in there is important, so that we’re trusting the process, and we know that every discussion is transparently inclusive of everyone in there because there’s no other way. For me, giving up is not an option, even though at the moment, just looking at it, I can already see on the horizon that there are a lot of questions, especially with a lot of turnovers that’s happening on the Rio Tinto side. It’s not something that I can say is going in the right direction. I mean, the process has agreed to go in that direction, but when you keep changing, the turnovers, and we are then expected to build a relationship, break it, build a relationship again, that is challenging.

Mike: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you won a seat in the Bougainville legislature, right? Can you describe what inspired you to enter public service and politics?

Theonila: You see, the Bougainville story is, I always say Bougainville has two conflicts: the conflict of politics and independence, which I don’t like to delve into, and the conflict of Panguna. That is the human rights and environmental destruction conflict that demands accountability. And that was at the epicenter of the history of Bougainville. The civil unrest that cost the lives of more than 15,000 people did not come out because of independence. It came out because of the destruction of the land and the environment and the displacement of the people. But interestingly, after the civil war, the Papua New Guinea government and Bougainville government reached a peace agreement. No single line in the peace agreement reflects the conflict of human rights and environmental destruction. And for me, that was already playing one agenda conflict into another conflict to avoid delving deeper. It’s the conflict of politics of development being played into the politics of economics, and no one wanted to talk about that in the peace agreement. So that was the motivation for me. I wanted to be a political figure to ensure that it becomes a policy of the government because if no one’s going to go in there, no one will talk about this, and it wouldn’t have reached the stage that we are in right now.

Mike: So the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reported that in November of last year, it appears that the Bougainville government signed a memorandum of understanding with Lloyds Metals in India and ordered Bougainville Copper Limited to pursue a development partnership with them in January. What can you tell me about this, and do you have any concerns about those plans?

Theonila: The concern is completely ripe and is in the air. Not even in the air, it’s in front of me, in a sense that although the agreement has been signed to go on, what concerns me is there is absolutely, on record, no waste management plan. And for me, it’s like not learning from the past.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Theonila: And trying to repeat the past, but in a more destructive way, where our government is engaging with Lloyds Metals to run a project without governance. What can give us the confidence? But obviously, it now goes back to crafting the narrative. When you get one conflict to be played into another and you do not have better understanding, you end up repeating the same old thing. So it is a very chronic, recurring pattern of destruction. I do not know. It’s all about ensuring that all the nuts and bolts of what you would imagine to be a thriving nation at this most contested time are in place before engaging at the project level.

Mike: I would think that it would be concerning also because remediation from the destruction of the Rio Tinto mine hasn’t yet occurred, and yet they’re already planning on reopening the mine. Does that concern you?

Theonila: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s the thing. I’m saying there’s no waste management plan, and then they want to reengage. So it’s indirectly saying that we fought, it’s okay, but we will also help Rio Tinto as a government to cover your mess by engaging another company to do that. So it’s like defeating ourselves. That’s the practice I see.

Mike: So the ABC also reported that local residents, or at least some of them, were not consulted by the Bougainville government’s decisions, and they fear there’s a lack of agreement that could lead to conflicts just like the ones you described.

Theonila: Very much, yes. There’s never been wide consultation, or not even, I think it’s just consultations in three or four locations, and that’s it.

Mike: Hmm. And how many people would you estimate?

Theonila: People came in numbers, 200, 300, but it was all about hearing. There was no engagement. It was all speeches to say, “We will drill your land again.”

Mike: But no feedback?

Theonila: No feedback. The only feedback that was welcomed was strategically from the people who want reopening of the mine.

Mike: Mm-hmm. So you’re here in Australia now for a conference on mining accountability. Can you tell our listeners what your purpose for being here is, at this conference or generally in Australia?

Theonila: For me, I think my very personal interest in engaging in this conference that Jubilee Australia is running in partnership with the Human Rights Law Centre and hosted here by the University of Sydney is really to get the story out there because the Bougainville story is a result of Australia’s political decision through the Papua New Guinea government, now implemented on Bougainville and leaving behind a toxic legacy that has already been kind of fenced out, not to have a forum to talk about. So my intention is for us to start telling this story because it is nothing anyone can fix with our bare hands, and it’s a creation of the second most powerful company in the world.

Mike: Theonila likely meant that Rio Tinto is the second-largest mining and metals company in the world.

Theonila: It’s very easy. They have all the resources to cover their footprint and go, but that does not mean that covering the footprint and going will bring a solution and healing to the people because it is an ongoing wound that people are living with.

Mike: Is there anything that I haven’t covered that you want people to know or anything you’d like to ask listeners to be aware of?

Theonila: No.

Mike: That is always… I’m glad I covered all the bases there. You did mention in your Goldman acceptance speech that Cyclone Mila had devastated Panguna, exacerbating the impacts that were already felt by the community. What’s the status currently over there?

Theonila: The infrastructure keeps deteriorating. It’s worse than it was previously, only because now, post-floods and landslides, while people are in the recovery stage from a disaster that landed on a disaster of the past, we have already been warned to be prepared for El Niño, and you can already imagine what’s happening at the fundamental level with food security, access to clean water, and even the dust, winds, and everything impacting the gardens and all. It’s worsening every single day as we speak. Yeah.

Mike: Well, Theonila Roka Matbob, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and congratulations on your Goldman Prize, and I wish you well.

Theonila: Thank you.

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