Minerals

It looks like Lihir Gold Ltd has discovered a new way to mitigate the social impact of its mining operations on the women of Lihir.  The caption to this picture, published in The National newspaper on 19 September 2008, reads as follows:

“Young ladies from Huniho village on Lihir Island, New Ireland province, this week learned to bake in an oven. Marilyn Tokwin (from left), Jennifer Ziksaranie, Michelle Kamas, Andrea Moki and Stella Aroh showing off the cakes that they had baked in a drum oven yesterday. The baking lessons were conducted by instructors from the Kabaleo Vocational College in East New Britain province under a University of Vudal integrated agriculture training programme (IATP). The three-day course was organised by the division of primary industry (DPI) on Lihir Island. Twenty-five women from Huniho and Mazuz villages attended the workshop, which ends today.”

Only in the context of a large-scale mining project would it take so long for village girls to work out how to use a drum oven!

Last week’s 11th International River Symposium heard how sulphur-laden tailings that have fanned out across the Ok Tedi floodplain pose a threat to animals and plants well into the future.

Rhithroecology Ltd consultant Ian Campbell, whose work on the Mekong River was recently blogged on New Mandala, told the ABC on Friday that if the sediments dry out and are exposed to oxygen, the sulphur will oxidise and create sulphuric acid, which dissolves toxic metals and creates a long-term toxicity.

From his conference abstract:

A mine waste tailings treatment project is being implemented to reduce sulphur content, and thus potential for acidification, in the tailings discharged to the river. However, potentially acid forming sediment from the mine has already been deposited over large areas of the middle Fly River floodplain.

While under water these sediments pose a low environmental risk, but if they are exposed to air they will oxidise and release water low in pH and high in metals potentially killing wetland plants and animals. The mine waste treatment project will dump the sulphide materials from the tailings in pits a few hundred metres from the river upstream of the Ok Tedi Fly-River junction. This material will be safe until river erosion cuts through to the pit releasing a pulse of the material into the river. The government and the company hope that some third party will intervene and re-mine the material before a catastrophe occurs.

A Middle Fly scene in 1994.

I am giving a presentation at 12 in Seminar Room C today in Gender Relations Centre Seminar Series. The title of the seminar is: ‘On the Question of a Right to Mine: Women, Gender and Work in Coal Mining in India’. I am sure it will be of interest to some RMAPpers.

The seminar illuminates the ‘difference/equality’ question in the area of women’s work, and explores a grey area in feminist theory – that of women’s specificity as workers in their biologically based attributes and ’sameness’ in terms of their demands for gender equity.

See details of this Workshop to be held at the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, on 11-12th August, 2008
http://www.cseindia.org/programme/industry/mining/joint_workshop.htm

Gender is indeed a multi-layered complex reality, and feminist scholars have been digging through these layers, to ‘unearth’ women’s contributions in various aspects of life. When gender confronts mining, many articulations of everyday life assume different - even metaphorical - significance. To get a glimpse of the complexities lying at the intersection of gender and mining, read the recently published article in Feminist Review (download here: period-leave-feminist-review.pdf).