The National Court sitting in Madang last week refused to lift an injunction preventing the Chinese Metallurgical Construction Company (MCC) from constructing a marine tailings disposal system for its Ramu nickel mine.

The Ramu nickel mine is just one of several large mining projects under construction in Papua New Guinea and is the first major Chinese investment in the country.

Others major mining developments include the Frieda River copper and gold mine owned by Xstrata, which is expected to start production in 2012, and the Solwara 1 undersea mine owned by Nautilis Minerals and located off the west coast of New Ireland.

At the same time PNG is also trying to manage the development of two huge new liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, the first of which, managed by Exxon-Mobil, will bring an investment of $18 billion (ten times the size of the investment for the Ramu nickel mine).

But although the mining sector in PNG has a chequered history with Bougainville, Ok Tedi and Pogera in particular notorious for their environmental damage and negative impacts on local people, it seems that in developing new mining and petroleum projects the lessons of the past have not been learnt and that the advice of PNG’s own founding fathers is still being ignored.

Papua New Guinea’s Constitution sets out five National Goals that should guide all persons and bodies. These goals are integral human development, equality and participation for all citizens, political and economic independence, conservation of natural resources and the environment and the primary use of Papua New Guinean forms of social, political and economic organization

None of these goals seem to have guided the development of the Ramu nickel mine and it is that failure of leadership that has led to the situation where a group of disenfranchised landowners has been able to plead their case successfully in court.

The government and mine proponents have failed to correctly identify and ensure the participation of all landowners who will be impacted by the mine operation. Thus there has been a failure to ensure equality and participation for everyone. These same issues have already appeared in relation to the Exxon-Mobil LNG project, which is threatened by landowner disputes.

In the case of the Ramu mine, the government has handed over control of the mine construction and operation to a foreign company whose resources far exceed the ability of the PNG government to monitor and regulate its operations. This means the mine company is able to operate almost as it pleases as evidenced by the many claims of human rights and workers abuses, the large number of poorly qualified and non English speaking Chinese workers brought in to construct the mine and the use of the PNG police as an armed guard to protect the foreign company against local landowners.

The government has also failed to ensure that the operations of the mine will not have a serious negative impact on the environment and therefore the daily lives of local people. Independent scientific evidence suggests the marine tailings disposal could be an environmental disaster. This prompted the government to seek its own independent advice through the Scottish Association of Marine Science, but those finding have never been released and the government gave its environmental approval before the report was even commissioned!

It appears the government has decided the development of the Ramu nickel mine is more important than the people of Madang, more important even than Papua New Guinea’s own Constitution and has allowed an investment which threatens not only an environmental disaster but a social and political one as well.

PNG as a nation is being crippled by corruption, unfettered globilization, a widespread disregard for the views and interests of local people who are trampled underfoot in the rush to grab resources, and the destruction of its natural environment whether by mines, logging, oil palm or overfishing.

All these negative impacts are being felt because PNG’s own National Goals have been forgotten in the rush by a few to get rich quick.