ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the ways in which different 'stakeholders' in the Melanesian mining sector have developed or applied the concept of corporate social responsibility in a social and political environment. The leading instigator of the Global Mining Initiative (GMI) was Sir Robert Wilson, then chairman of Rio Tinto, who went on to chair the Mining Minerals and Sustainable Development Project Sponsors Group and the International Council on Mining and Metals. In 1990, before the acquisition of his knighthood and chairmanships, Bob Wilson visited Papua New Guinea (PNG) in order to make his own assessment of what had happened on Bougainville. The Indonesian state confronts centrifugal regional forces that also threaten a process of political fragmentation, albeit at a larger scale than anything observed in PNG. Placer Dome was the only member of the GMI club formed in 1998 that seems to have retained a belief in its capacity to demonstrate corporate social responsibility while operating a large-scale mine in PNG.
