The chairperson of Rio Tinto, Sir Robert Wilson, told an mining industry conference in 1999 that a "pressing concern for the mining and metals industry is the need to overcome its poor public perceptions of our industry's performance in relation to the environment".
This "poor public perception" of Rio Tinto has perhaps been earned by the company's activities at a number of its mines around the world, including Freeport, the Bougainville copper mine (now closed), the Lihir gold mine in Papua New Guinea, and the Jabiluka mineral lease (closed under a 10-year moratorium).
Freeport's gold and copper mine in West Papua is 12.5% owned by Rio Tinto, and is one of the "best"-documented environmental and human rights disasters that corporate culture has created.
The mine drops about 200,000 tonnes of contaminated tailings into the Ajkwa river every day. The sediment levels have killed much of the river's fish and plant life is dead. In 1992, the people living downstream of the mine were directed by the mine staff to stop eating sago palm, the staple of their diet, because it was contaminated.
The mine sits on the traditional lands of the Amungme people and has forced massive relocations. These relocations have caused hundreds to die of malaria as they resettled on the boggy lowlands away from the mountainous region they are used to.
Those who have stayed on their land have suffered under the mine's appalling human rights record. In 1995, the Australian Council for Overseas Aid released a report detailing the dozens of local people killed and tortured by the Indonesian military because they were suspected of protesting against the mine.
Rio Tinto's record does not end in Indonesia. Its Lihir gold mine will dump 89 million tonnes of cyanide-contaminated tailings and 330 million tonnes of waste rock directly into the ocean over the next 36 years, in an area described by ecological studies as one of the richest areas of marine biodiversity on Earth.
In Bougainville, Rio Tinto still technically owns one of the world's largest copper mines. So devastating was its effect on the local environment and culture that, in 1988, the people of Bougainville forced the mine to close.
Rio Tinto, like many of its fellow transnational mining giants including BHP Billiton and AngloAmerican, have massive financial, political, and even military power to continue their exploitation. Yet, despite the David and Goliath battle facing them, local indigenous people, NGOs, unions and progressive political leaders refuse to be quiet and have sought to identify and exploit the vulnerabilities of the corporation.
For Rio Tinto, these vulnerabilities have been revealed in local confrontation in Bougainville, in investor-, financier- and consumer-focused opposition in their "home" territory of Australia and the United Kingdom, through a long-term, multi-pronged union campaign on their mine sites and at their annual general meetings, and now through a multi-billion dollar legal challenge by Bougainvillean landowners.
In a positive spin on globalisation, struggles against exploitation by Rio Tinto across the world are intertwining labour struggles with environmental campaigns against resource exhaustion and indigenous peoples' struggle for survival. These alliances match the mobility and reach of the agents of corporate globalisation, and start to corrode away at its corporate armour.
BY NINA LANSBURY
[The author is the research coordinator for the Mining Policy Institute. This article is based on Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation, the latest book from the MPI, available from its web site .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 12, 2001.
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