Academic responsibilities and representation of the Ok Tedi crisis in postcolonial Papua New Guinea

Since the start of the Ok Tedi mining project in Papua New Guinea in 1981, Broken Hill Proprietary has operated it. Weak environmental protection laws and a series of ecological disasters have endangered the greater Ok Tedi a nd Fly River socioecological region. A grassroots indigenous popular ecolog ical resistance movement made an out-of-court settlement with the mining co mpany in Melbourne in 1996. Early in 2000 the indigenous movement took Brok en Hill Proprietary back to court in Melbourne to block the company's attem pt to abandon the Ok Tedi mine. Research started with Wopkaimin subsistence ecology in the 1970s. Later the political ecology of the Ok Tedi crisis wa s evaluated, as was ecological change in social terms; both are illustrated through the politics of cultural and ecological representation. After the successful convergence of radical environmentalists and indigenous popular ecological resistance against the Ok Tedi mine, research shifted to liberat ion ecology to study the emancipatory potential of struggles and conflicts against environmental degradation. The responsibilities of academics conduc ting research in the Ok Tedi crisis are examined. The Ok Tedi crisis challe nges the proposition that academics can act as honest brokers through minin g companies to negotiate deals for local communities. Academics engaged by mining companies as consultants or employees must work according to managed science and circumscribed briefs. The approach of critical liberation ecol ogy, which directs research to community empowerment, represents a freedom of critical inquiry only available in the academy.