Ishmael Toroama’s life has been dominated by a single ambition. The president of Bougainville, an autonomous island that is part of the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea, has for decades fought for his island to claim its sovereignty.
“Bougainville is for independence,” the president insists. “It is only a matter of time.”
Under an agreement signed with PNG, this year marks the earliest point at which Bougainville can claim full independence. Toroama, 56, says his island is entering “the last 100-metre race” of its long path to sovereignty.
Still, even to the most optimistic, Bougainville has far to go; a lack of political will from PNG and economic factors have continued to frustrate the process. But Toroama appears undaunted, even quietly certain.
“That is the aspiration of the people and that is why they voted [for] me as their president.”
The road to this moment has been rocky. Bougainville first declared itself an independent nation in 1975 but it was ignored, and incorporated into the newly formed Papua New Guinea.
Civil war, sparked in part by the iniquitous distribution of profits and environmental vandalism of the Panguna mine, claimed the lives of 20,000 people over a decade, before a peace agreement was brokered in 2001.
Nearly two decades later, in 2019, a referendum on independence was answered with a resounding “yes”: 97.7% of votes cast were in favour. A deal struck with PNG three years later, known as the Era Krone covenant, states that arrangements for Bougainville’s independence are to be implemented from 2025 and “no later than 2027”.
Toroama’s life has been bound to his island’s push for sovereignty. He was born in 1969 in Roreinang village, when the first scars of drilling appeared on the nearby mountain of Panguna, the mine that would come to dominate the island’s economy and politics.
He was a child when the island unilaterally attempted to declare its independence. When the war broke out he was a teenager and he joined the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. He rose quickly through its loose, autonomous ranks, earning a reputation as a fierce fighter, but also as one willing to negotiate for peace where possible.
Toroama became a key negotiator of the 2001 peace agreement that has led to Bougainville to this precipice. He won the presidency in 2020 – after three unsuccessful attempts at winning lesser public office – pledging to be “the change … people have been crying for”.
But since then, the poetry of campaigning has given way to the prose of governing. Progress has been glacial.
Timelines have slipped, deadlines passed, promises been broken. “There are sceptics all over,” he tells the Guardian, “continually suppressing” Bougainvillean self-determination.
“I can see that what has been done in the past, still now, it is continuing.”
The Era Kone covenant formalised the 2025–27 window on Bougainville’s independence, but with the key caveat that the referendum result is subject to ratification by the PNG parliament.
That ratification, despite commitments from Port Moresby it would happen in 2023, has still not occurred.
In September, a former governor general of New Zealand, Sir Jerry Mateparae, was appointed as a mediator between PNG and Bougainville to revive talks on the independence process.
Pressure is increasing on Toroama and his government. He will run for a second term in 2025, still on the promise to deliver independence, but the language, this time, more robust.
He insists his government is laying the foundations – economic, social, bureaucratic – for whenever independence might, perhaps suddenly, become politically possible.
His senior officials have undertaken professional development work with the University of Melbourne’s Initiative for Peacebuilding – “focusing on ethical leadership,” Toroama says.
And in the final months of last year, the Autonomous Bougainville Government released an economic roadmap, appointed a chief tax collector, and opened a law and justice centre: elements of the infrastructure of self-government.
“We are preparing ourselves, we are laying the foundations.”
James Marape, the prime minister of PNG, has said his government has a duty to address Bougainville’s independence aspirations “responsibly and compassionately”.
But he warned in December the island could not, at present, survive economically on its own: currently, Bougainville generates only 7% of its budget internally, he said.
“We start with economic independence as a fundamental basis, because once you have the money you are able to sustain.”
Oliver Nobetau, Pacific Fellow with the Lowy Institute, argues the 2027 timeline is an artificial deadline imposed by politicians, and one that could actually impede progress towards a sustainable Bougainville. He says slower movement towards independence could benefit the island.
“The truth is that ‘independence’ is not a panacea for all the issues that currently face the autonomous region. In fact, if done too quickly, it could exacerbate these already pressing challenges.”
Three decades quieted, Panguna looms large still on Bougainville. The abandoned mine remains the dominant economic and political consideration on the island.
Once one of the world’s largest and most profitable copper and goldmines, at one time Panguna accounted for 45% of all of PNG’s exports. But less than 1% of its hundreds of millions in profits went to Bougainvilleans, and landowners say the mine, owned and operated by a Rio Tinto subsidiary, left them only with political division, violence, and environmental degradation.
Almost a billion tonnes of mine waste were released directly into the Jaba and Kawerong rivers, flowing down across the broad river delta into Empress Augusta Bay.
In 1989, an uprising by the people of Bougainville against the mine forced it to shut – and helped spark the island’s decade-long civil war.
Panguna was abandoned, no clean-up of the site has ever taken place. In December, an environmental impact assessment found the abandoned mine remains an acute threat to people’s lives – from landslides, levee collapses, and floods – more than 30 years after it was closed. The river delta will stay polluted for a century.
Rio Tinto recently announced it had signed an MOU with the Bougainville government to discuss potential remedy of the Panguna site: “while we continue to review the [environmental assessment] report, we recognise the gravity of the impacts identified and accept the findings,” Rio’s Australia chief, Kellie Parker, said in a statement.
But for all its destruction, for many in Bougainville, Panguna is seen as the economic foundation for independence: re-starting mining is viewed as the only way to transform a mendicant island into a sustainable nation-state. There remain around 5m tons of copper, and 19m ounces of gold, reserves worth about $60bn at today’s prices.
Toroama is a supporter, announcing in June he had “made a critical decision to reopen Panguna mine”. He called on his fellow veterans of the civil war – who took up arms to shut the mine – to support his decision.
“We closed the mine because of oppression, today the mine is the key to our economic growth and settling all unresolved issues from the war,” he says.
“Panguna is a good opportunity to secure independence economically. For Bougainville, everything now is intertwined. You cannot separate politics from the economy.”
There is an inevitability about Bougainville’s journey to independence, whether Toromoa witnesses it or not, he says.
“My leadership has been to push for independence, because no one will stop our people getting independence. If the national government will not be granting it to us, then the next generation will take on that leadership.”
