Papua

DTE works to supports human rights and ecological justice in Papua. This involves information, advocacy and capacity-building support work with partners to help local communities build sustainable livelihoods, in a deeply challenging context of global climate change, top-down investment policies and projects, a high level of militarisation and violence linked to the suppression of political dissent. [more]

Down to Earth No.80-81, June 2009

Operations at BP's controversial Tangguh gas project in West Papua are now underway. Serious questions over security, sovereignty, human rights, land rights, the impacts on indigenous communities and on the local environment will continue to be raised as the venture becomes fully operational and starts exporting gas to China, Korea and North America1 In this article we focus on a different issue: that of Tangguh and climate change.

Down to Earth No. 76-77 May 2008

Another year, another set of record profits from West Papua's mineral resources.

The Westminster conference centre just alongside the UK's Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey seem a long way away from the frontier town of Timika or, for that matter, the prawn fisherfolk of Bintuni Bay in West Papua. However, each year this is the scene of the Annual General Meeting of Rio Tinto PLC, a 40% joint venture stakeholder in the expanded Grasberg mine in the highlands of West Papua.

Down to Earth No. 73, May 2007


It has been two years since Down to Earth's last detailed report on BP's huge Tangguh gas project in Bintuni Bay, West Papua. Surprisingly little has changed.


From BP's point of view much has changed at Tangguh - the project is now well into its construction phase (70% complete as of March 2007) and is due to go 'onstream' in 2008. However, the same issues, the same concerns, the same doubts keep surfacing. How can this mega-project possibly fit into the realities of West Papuan life?