Showing posts with label destruction of cultural landscapes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label destruction of cultural landscapes. Show all posts

Tuesday 20 December 2022

The fate of Banyam Baigham-the Sleeping Lizard (North Lismore Plateau) remains unresolved

 



An artist's impression of the 'Sleeping Lizard' goanna that forms the hills of North Lismore Plateau site.(Facebook: North Lismore Plateau Protection Group) - ABC News, 10 February 2022



ABC Premium News, 16 December 2022:


....Panel chair Paul Mitchell told a determination meeting that virtually every aspect of the $39 million housing proposal needed further work but he had not ruled out future development on the site.....


The development of the site has been discussed for many years, with Aboriginal heritage & biodiversity listed as the greatest concerns.


Developers urged to submit again


Lismore City Council general manager John Walker said there was support for flood-free housing on the plateau.


"It's disappointing because we do need land, but any approval for DA (development application) must be fully compliant," Mr Walker said.


"You can't expect councils & planning authorities to approve matters without the necessary studies & reviews."


A report from the independent flood inquiry recommended urgently moving people out of high-risk areas on flood plains.


Mr Walker has urged the developers to submit a new application.


"We would certainly encourage them to do so, the plateau was a really important part of the future of Lismore. We'd encourage them to work with us to get that development happening," he said.


Consultants speaking on behalf of the developer told the panel they will now consider starting proceedings in the Land & Environment Court.



ABC News-ABC North Coast, 16 December 2022:


Panel chair Paul Mitchell told a determination meeting that virtually every aspect of the $39 million housing proposal needed further work but he had not ruled out future development on the site.


"I'm sure we'll see some residential development on the plateau," he said.


"The issues are not insurmountable, but this development application wasn't complete in the sense that it didn't answer key questions, such as whether landslip issues could be managed."


Lismore City Council had previously supported development on the plateau but in a submission to the panel recommended the project be refused.



Northern Star, 16 December 2022:


Finding significant and unresolved issues with the development application, the planning panel unanimously voted down the $39 million housing development on Dunoon Rd in North Lismore on Thursday…..


Lismore ratepayer Dot Moller said a new nuanced plan for the development of the North Lismore plateau may be required.


There is a potential injustice to the population of North Lismore, our community badly affected by the devastating floods this year.


Many families are still homeless and living in substandard conditions right at the foot of our green plateau.


Folks have left as they‘ve been unable to find work or repair their homes. Social and affordable housing is desperately needed.


It is time to think about what we really need – not what a big Sydney development company thinks will work for them.”


Lismore resident Helen Robinson pointed out to the panel some of the land on the proposed estate had been identified as suitable to relocate up to 500 homes off the flood plain in North Lismore by the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation.


Those homes are suitable to move to the foothills of this estate where the people can maintain their communities,” she said.


(But) council maintains that it's not in the community’s interest. I wonder which part of the community they’re considering.


I don’t think they’re considering the people of the flood plain.”


Major concerns that sank the development included, environmental and wildlife impacts from land clearing, bushfire hazards, pollution of drinking water, increased stormwater run-off, noise from traffic and undue pressure on infrastructure.


But the elephant in the room – and the biggest obstacle facing the developers – is the outstanding Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment.


A significant shortfall with the application is a lack of consolation and documentation in regards to Aboriginal cultural heritage,” the council’s assessment reads.


The plan to build on the Northern Plateau has been banging around for over a decade, with the development hotly debated.


The council’s assessment found the DA as presented was in contravention of Aboriginal heritage conservation.


Known culturally as the ‘Sleeping Lizard’ because of the shape of the land, the site is said to hold significant cultural value to Widjabul Wia-bal traditional owners of the Bundjalung Nation.


Back in 2011, members of the Widjabul Wia-bal community protested after the council voted to allow the development because of the cultural significance of the site.


More than 10 years later, the issue of heritage conservation on the site is yet to be addressed by the prospective developers, the Northern Regional Planning Panel heard.


Tony Hart and Clyde Treadwell, consultants who represented land owners trying to develop the land, acknowledged the issues. They asked for a six-month extension for “specialist consultants” to resolve the problems.


Frustrated panel chair Paul Mitchell said: “The problem with that is that the application shouldn't have been lodged in the first place.”


Every aspect of this application that needs further work … virtually none of the fundamental issues have been finally resolved.”


Mr Hart and Treadwell told the panel landowners would proceed to take Lismore City Council to the Land and Environment Court for a determination if the extension and DA was refused.


We do not want to go to court but we will have to if there is no other avenue,” Mr Hart said.


Mr Mitchell said that would be “unfortunate” because it would be “an expensive burden” on Lismore residents.



BACKGROUND


NORTH COAST VOICES, Sunday, 11 December 2022:

Given the NSW Northern Regional Council is in the pocket of the Perrottet Government and that state government has passed law which allows it to facilitate landgrabs by professional property speculators, this matter is not going to end well for Lismore



Sleeping Lizard
IMAGE: displayed on change.org

Friday 17 July 2020

Will U.K. based multinational mining corporation Rio Tinto Ltd be stripped of its status as a human rights leader following its destruction of an Aboriginal sacred site showing evidence of 46,000 years of human habitation?


"The fact that nearly half of the companies assessed (49%) score 0 across all indicators related to the process of human rights due diligence is particularly alarming. These indicators focus on the specific systems the company has in place to ensure that due diligence processes are implemented to assess the real-time risks to human rights that the company poses, to act on these findings so as to prevent and mitigate the impacts, and to track and communicate those actions. Human rights due diligence is a fundamental expectation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The three companies that top the 2019 ranking (Adidas, Rio Tinto and Unilever) all score full points on the human rights due diligence indicators...Eleven [of the 56 extractive] companies score above 50%, with Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Freeport McMoRan and Repsol in the highest scoring band of 70-80%" [Corporate Human Rights Benchmark 2019 Key Findings]

The New York Times, 8 July 2020:

MELBOURNE — Aboriginal and human rights groups on Thursday called for miner Rio Tinto Ltd to be stripped of its status as a human rights leader following its destruction of an Aboriginal sacred site showing evidence of 46,000 years of human habitation. 

With state government approval, the world's biggest iron ore miner in May destroyed two sacred caves in the Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara region of Western Australia as part of a mine expansion. 

 Rio's response to blowing up the caves was "far from adequate", 35 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and human rights groups said in a letter requesting the miner be suspended from the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB). 

Netherlands-based CHRB is a public benchmark of corporate human rights performance. 

It lists Rio as the highest ranked extractives company globally on human rights issues, with a score in the second highest possible band.  

"We are calling on the Benchmark to ensure that the company's human rights ranking reflects the reality for people here on the ground," said Wayne Bergmann, a Kimberley Aboriginal leader and chief executive of Aboriginal charitable trust KRED. 

Rio apologised for the distress it caused to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people and launched an independent investigation into how the destruction occurred.

Thursday's letter disputed Rio's explanation of the incident as a "misunderstanding", saying that the indigenous land owners had brought to Rio's attention on several occasions the archaeological and ethnographic significance of the site. 

Rio declined to comment on the letter......

Prior to the November release of its Corporate Human Rights Benchmark 2020 CHRB issued this:

Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), media release, 9 July 2020: 

Due to the destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site by Rio Tinto at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia on 24 May 2020, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) have decided to append this statement to Rio Tinto’s latest CHRB results. 

It would be inappropriate for CHRB to continue to assess and rank Rio Tinto in one of the highest-scoring bands and as the top mining company without reference to this incident. 

The CHRB seeks to provide robust and credible information on companies’ actions to respect human rights across their business, and it would be misleading not to reference this severe impact as a complement to the latest results. 

The statement appears in the homepage banding table, in the company's latest scorecard and in the latest overall dataset.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It would be inappropriate for CHRB to continue to assess and rank Rio Tinto in one of the highest-scoring bands and as the top mining company without reference to this incident....The severity of the impact and the context in which it took place, including the process that led to it and allegations of other similar impacts involving the company, raise concerns that go beyond this specific incident and point to possibly more systemic weaknesses in the company’s approach to human rights." [CHRB response to the destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site by RioTinto at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia on 24 May 2020]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hopefully this statement means that Rio Tinto Ltd will get more than a small red flag next to its ranking with a brief one line explanation for ongoing human rights issues, such as was afforded to another extractive industry high flyer, BHP Billiton.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 5 June 2020:

Mining giant Rio Tinto was alerted six years ago that at least one of the caves it blasted in Western Australia's Pilbara region last month was of "the highest archaeological significance in Australia".  

Advice delivered to Rio Tinto and the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) Indigenous people of the region six years ago was never publicly released. The ABC has been given a summary of the contents of the report, as well as earlier archaeological survey work and excavations at the sites dating back to 2004. 

The documentation of the 2014 report by archaeologist Dr Michael Slack confirmed one of the sites that was blasted, the Juukan-2 (Brock-21) cave, was rare in Australia and unique in the Pilbara. 

"The site was found to contain a cultural sequence spanning over 40,000 years, with a high frequency of flaked stone artefacts, rare abundance of faunal remains, unique stone tools, preserved human hair and with sediment containing a pollen record charting thousands of years of environmental changes," 

Dr Slack wrote. "In many of these respects, the site is the only one in the Pilbara to contain such aspects of material culture and provide a likely strong connection through DNA analysis to the contemporary traditional owners of such old Pleistocene antiquity."....

Before and After
Juukan Gorge caves, BBC News, 31 May 2020