At investor forums and industry conferences, Papua New Guinea’s mining industry is routinely presented as a pillar of national development. Events like the upcoming PNG Investment Week, PNG Expo and PNG Resources Week provide platforms to highlight revenue, jobs, infrastructure and social development. Companies tout their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials and their contribution to the nation.
But a more basic question is rarely asked: what evidence supports these claims? Who is actually monitoring the social impacts of mining projects — and why does it matter?
Monitoring is not simply about collecting data. It shapes how impacts are understood, measured and managed. It determines whose grievances are recognised and whether harm is prevented or merely recorded.
Communities living around projects like Porgera and Ok Tedi know that conflict, inequality and environmental damage remain stubborn features of the sector.
PNG has never lacked ideas about how to manage these impacts. What it has struggled to sustain is the institutional capacity to monitor and govern them at a scale commensurate with the industry itself.
Nearly three decades ago, ANU anthropologist Colin Filer warned that “social impact mitigation strategies can only be successful if government agencies and mining companies agree to sustain the general institutional framework within which such strategies can be pursued.”
That warning has aged uncomfortably well.
In the years after independence, PNG adopted a regulatory framework that distinguished between environmental impacts and broader social and economic impacts. Environmental impacts were assessed through environmental impact statements funded by project developers under a “user pays” principle. Social and economic impacts, however, remained under direct government oversight, typically assessed through interdepartmental committees involving several state agencies alongside the developer. While companies funded environmental studies, the state retained responsibility for evaluating social and economic consequences.
This institutional balance shifted after the Bougainville rebellion erupted in 1988 around the Panguna copper mine. In response, the government introduced the development forum — a mechanism through which national and provincial governments, landowners and project developers negotiated benefit-sharing arrangements.
While development forums helped address the political problem of benefit distribution, they also marked a major shift in how mining impacts were governed. Responsibility for assessing and monitoring social impacts increasingly moved toward project developers themselves, as government officials recognised that the state could no longer sustain comprehensive oversight of both environmental and social impacts.
Today, project proponents spend vast sums producing environmental impact statements that include social impact studies. But the government agency responsible for evaluating these documents — now the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority — has limited capacity to verify whether commitments are actually implemented.
The result is a system that generates extensive documentation but has relatively weak follow-through. Reports are reviewed, but the resources required to ensure monitoring and mitigation commitments are carried out remain inadequate.
Much of the work involved in assessing social impacts has been outsourced to consultancy firms engaged by mining companies. In practice, social impact assessment (SIA) now functions less as a public governance tool and more as a compliance requirement for project approval.
As I have recently shown, the commercial determinants of the SIA process directly influence how impacts are described, which risks are accorded priority and what mitigation measures are proposed. As Filer once told me, he who pays the piper calls the tune. The risk is structural. When monitoring is conducted by consultants working for industry, incentives favour demonstrating compliance rather than critically assessing broader social consequences.
In the early 2000s, hopes were briefly raised that this imbalance might be corrected. Riding the momentum of the global Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project, the World Bank supported an effort to rethink how mining might contribute to sustainable development in PNG.
The result was the 2003 Sustainable Development Policy and Sustainability Planning Framework for the Mining Sector — the so-called Green Paper.
It acknowledged that mining dominated the national economy but had not delivered broad-based development and recognised deep failures in how social impacts were understood and managed. Its core message was clear: social impacts could not be left to company discretion. They required stronger state capacity and coordination across the mining lifecycle.
There were reforms. The Mineral Resources Authority, established in 2005, consolidated regulatory functions. But it was separated from the Department of Mineral Policy at the same time, creating a gap between policymakers and policy managers. Guidelines on mine closure and involuntary resettlement sought to address some of the most contentious social issues.
These steps reflected growing recognition of the impacts of mining.
But institutional capacity to monitor and manage those impacts has not kept pace with the scale and complexity of the sector.
At the same time, independent research on mining’s social impacts has dwindled. Since the opening of the Panguna mine in the early 1970s, anthropologists, economists and geographers have conducted long-term research around mines such as Misima, Ok Tedi, Porgera and Lihir.
Universities and policy research institutions — including the Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research (IASER), the precursor to the National Research Institute — produced analysis that fed directly into national debates on resource governance. The Australian National University played a central role in this ecosystem.
Over the past two decades that ecosystem has contracted.
Research priorities have shifted, access to project areas has become more restricted and long-term fieldwork has become harder to sustain. Mining, as Chris Ballard and Glenn Banks famously quipped, is no ethnographic playground.
Demand for social research has not disappeared — it has shifted into consultancy work, often conducted under tight timelines and within constrained project frameworks. Some studies are led by highly capable social researchers, others much less so.
Two consequences follow.
First, consultancy work appears to have largely replaced long-term independent research, reducing continuity and the ability to track impacts over time.
Second, much of the resulting knowledge does not circulate publicly. Reports prepared for regulatory approval or internal company use are often difficult to access.
The issue is not simply research quality. It is control.
When evidence about mining’s impacts is privately commissioned and privately held, policymakers, researchers and communities have fewer opportunities to interrogate the evidence base. This constrains evidence-based policymaking and weakens public scrutiny.
PNG has reaffirmed its commitment to mining-led development. New projects like Frieda River, Wafi Golpu and the reopening of the Misima mine will generate increasingly complex social outcomes.
Without stronger public capacity to monitor and manage social impacts, ambitious policy frameworks risk being implemented through compliance-driven processes rather than sustained oversight.
The problem is not a lack of governance instruments. Nor is it a lack of capable consultants in PNG. It is that the institutional capacity required for independent monitoring and public accountability has not expanded at the same pace as the industry itself.
Consultancy firms have stepped into this space — but they work for industry, not for the state.
Until that imbalance changes, the question remains: when mining companies claim social benefits, who is actually in a position to verify them?
Thank you for highlighting this important aspect in the context of monitoring and resolving social and environmental issues of extractive industry initiatives. Industry experience is clear on long term tracking down of social and environmental changes and impacts. This is undisputed and should be firmly in place within the sponsoring organization itself.
I would like to share some relevant issues in this note. As the article raised, the social assessment process is taking place shy of institutionalization of outcomes. More importantly, critical “social” issues are not followed up rigorously including the implementation of remedial actions. Conversely, it appears that environmental impacts identified are financed by the company itself. However, it is indeed questionable whether the strategy to identify environmental impacts is transparent and more importantly whether corrective actions are satisfactorily implemented by the sponsor under its user pay principle. Let me point out this issue the way I have understood from the article.
Quote “Communities living around projects like Porgera and Ok Tedi know that conflict, inequality and environmental damage remain stubborn features of the sector“(emphasis added). This statement reveals that environmental issues are not managed well either.
My second issue is the dichotomy in conducting social vis-à-vis environmental monitoring; the former is vested in consultants (with the implementation responsibility in government) whilst the latter is within the sponsoring company. Surely, the playing field here is unequal. Why is it not possible to entrust the responsibility of correcting social issues in the company itself in collaboration with community representatives? Third, whether results of social and environmental impacts of mine operations are accessible to the affected community? As is rightly stated in the article, reports prepared by consultancy teams are difficult to access. Most likely, the affected community is unaware of findings of social and environmental assessments and impacts. It is most probable that community stakeholders are not involved in monitoring and impact assessment.
Our experience in a few developing countries suggests that the implementation (and adoption of remedial measures) of social management plan through inter departmental committees does not work well. Like environmental assessments, the social assessment and implementation of recommendations should rest within the company itself. The assessment responsibility lies in a team of specialists who are site based with a strong community knowledge. It is better if the assessment unit has community representation. The team works independently with the responsibility of sharing its findings with the parent company and the top government bureaucracy entrusted with mining supervision. It is important that results of assessments and impacts should be disseminated and not safely stowed away to prevent dust gathering. The dissemination of information is important that will make affected communities get to know the status of mine, the direction social and environment issues are unfolding and what mitigation measures are required. Making information public offers a two-pronged advantage. The community will pressurize the company to implement mitigation actions if the sponsor has failed to address critical issues. In parallel, it will educate the community about the benefits and impacts of the mining operations and the way companies are supporting their livelihoods, which is to the advantage of the company itself.
Another issue to ponder in this context is where the Corporate Social Responsibility is? Most mining companies have a de facto social responsibility to put part of their profits back into the community by way of social support program. Apparently, this is not working as desired in the mining sector.
It is also necessary to conduct continuous monitoring of the state of social and environmental issues. Continuous monitoring is different from cross sectional research or assessments conducted by consultants at specific points in time. Monitoring on long-term basis helps track changes and impacts of social and environmental management and community’s response to implementation issues. It will also monitor response to mitigation measures adopted. Information that we currently gather through a continuous monitoring program installed within the Dasu Hydropower, a mega project in Pakistan, is unparallel. The program continues to isolate all impacts and its direction at the early stage of emergence, making ample opportunities to correct as issues are unfolding. Some issues are unlikely to be identified through cross-sectional research and certainly not through cross-sectional consultancies.
Finally, long-term research and continuous monitoring of mining operations cannot be compromised which are becoming industry’s best practices. The sponsoring organization should take ownership for assessment as well as the execution of corrective actions in a transparent manner.
Hello Nicholas,
“Communities living around projects like Porgera and Ok Tedi know that conflict, inequality and environmental damage remain stubborn features of the sector.”
I would suggest you could add any mine site in PNG to that list including your old stamping ground in the picture. And when it is not outright conflict or hostility there are the less overtly obvious impacts of the HIV that follows Mobile Men with Money along with a dearth of essential health, education services or sustainable economic development. I wonder how the people of Bwagaoia feel about the prospect of Misima being re-opened under Ok Tedi. I understand OTML has entered into a five year 2026-2030 consultation process to address lingering grievances or will the words of their current Member on the sale to OTML being ” the final insult” return to haunt them.
As Uni Melbourne my SIA&Eval Masters level class trains upwards of 200 SIA practitioners a year (and we are not alone). Some have gone on to great consultancy and academic roles. But few go into government regulatory systems, I guess for the reasons you explain. And when they do, providing negative appraisal and monitoring of a government-supported mine, for example due to finding social vulnerability or environmental injustices, can be difficult.