Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court has quite literally opened the floodgates for 100 million tonnes of toxic waste.
In a controversial two to one decision last week, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by indigenous landowners to stop the Metallurgical Corp of China (MCC) from using the Bismarck Sea as a dumping ground for the Ramu Nickel mine.
The 1083 landowners who filed the appeal last September, argued that MCC’s plan to dump 5 million tonnes of waste a year into the coastal waters would decimate their livelihoods. The judges who dismissed their claim alleged that the landowners failed to prove that the Submarine Tailings Disposal (STD) plan was a Public and Private nuisance.
“This ruling makes a very sad christmas story for us”, said one of the plaintiffs in the case. “We fought to save some of the last remaining pristine waters in Papua New Guinea and this is what they give us.”
On the other hand, MCC and Highlands Pacific (a Canadian company that owns a small stake in the Ramu mine), couldn’t be happier with the Supreme Court’s move. After all, they and their shareholders can now look forward to reaping the benefits of the Ramu mine at the expense of the environment and the people who will be hammered by it.
Read the Supreme Court decision at Papua New Guinea Mine Watch.
For a close look at the risks and impacts of the Ramu mine, here is the documentary film, UPROOTED, narrated entirely by landowners.
Also see
Ethnic conflict flares over Chinese nickel mine pollution
Mine tailings: A christmas gift for Raikos people
To Bismarck’s Children of 2050
Petition: Pacific Islanders Oppose Experimental Deep Sea Mining
John Ahniwanika Schertow is an indigenous rights activist of Mohawk (Kanienkehaka) and mixed-European descent. For the past 8 years, he has served as the e... 
No, the Courst decision is not “amazing” at all.
Its so so obvious.
The reason why the majority of the court in the Ramu matter only needed 5 pages of comment to explain their reasons was because the Respondent’s Appeal was so poorly conceived that all it took was just that.
Obviously, that also reflects on very poor legal thinking the trail judge’s decision in the first instance.
Davani got it wrong hence her ramblings and non sequiter logic, which took 35 pages of confused non legal reasoning to explain her (illogical) position.
Putting in in simple words, nearly all of the argument put by the Plaintiff’s Lawyer at trial in the first instance was wrong.
The trial judge, being, apparently, an emotional man, and seeing himself as something akin to the Lord Denning of The Islands, compounded the problems, but no one is perfect.
So for over a year we have been listening to Tiffany Twaddle crowing like a demented little rooster over this matter but in reality there never was anything to crow about.
No toxic waste has been proven.
No public nuisance.
No basis for an injunction.
However the plaintiff’s lawyers allso lost the advantage of being in a position to make substantial changes to the DSTP system by insisting on engaging in grand standing for the purposes of blogs like this rather than rolling up their sleeves and actually implementing some seriously positive changes and improvements to all aspets of what the Ramu mine is currently proposing to do.
Its as much the fault of the plaintiffs as the developer
Pingback: Who’s going to save them. | We Are Anti Mining Inc.
Pingback: 'Draconian' Environmental Amendments dropped in Papua New Guinea