Climate and Conflict: El Niño’s Ability to Magnify Tensions Between Companies and Communities

Mar 2, 2016 | Josh Fisher
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The Pacific island of Papua New Guinea has a long history of conflict and grievances among local communities and extractive industries like mining and oil and gas. Perhaps the most infamous of these conflicts was sparked by the costs that the Panguna mine placed on local communities, and the benefits that never materialized. While the resulting war in Bougainville is long over, I was recently reminded how the environmental costs of mining continue to fuel grievance and tension during my recent fieldwork in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Importantly, though, I also saw that climate change has the potential to foment those tensions, by multiplying the environmental hazards associated with mining. As climate variability increases over the next decades, we have to dramatically rethink how we govern extractive industry, water resources, and environmental permitting, or else face increased conflict in many resource rich countries.