Negotiating Community Support for Closure or Continuation of the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

The Ok Tedi mine has some claim to be an extreme case of a large-scale mine whose closure is beset by politics. Ever since the mine began to operate in 1984, there has been ongoing political debate about whether its operations should continue and, if so, under what conditions. At several moments in its history—in 1985, 1989, 1996, 2001, 2006 and, most recently, 2013—the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Government has been obliged to confront this question directly, and on each occasion it has come down in favour of continuation. Nevertheless, the mining company has already begun to scale