Mining in Contemporary Solomon Islands

Abstract

This chapter analyses the contemporary politics of mining in Solomon Islands, organised around three case studies: Gold Ridge, proposed nickel mining on Isabel and Choiseul, and bauxite mining on Rennell. While all of the elements of the book’s conceptual framework are evident in these case studies, each emphasises a different configuration of the contingent interplay of governable spaces, islandness and the politics of scale. The Gold Ridge mine is a story of intense fragmentation and exclusion within the space of landownership; islandness and the politics of scale come through most clearly in Isabel and Choiseul; and the Rennell case demonstrates how the entrenched and pernicious political economy of logging is shaping and reproducing itself in the governance of the nation’s emerging mining industry.