Environmental Conservation and Mining: Between Experience and Expectation in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Since the 1970s the residents of Maimafu village, a rural settlement in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, have been affected by both an environmental conservation project and a series of gold mining explorations on their lands. The paper examines this history of conservation and mining and shows how residents of Maimafu have struggled to interpret the promises made by ecologists and miners. Using stories about a mining study tour some residents took to the Porgera mine, the paper also discusses how people come to imagine what their future might look like if mining begins taking place on their lands.