Excerpt from The Guardian
There is perhaps nowhere in the Pacific where the costs of extractive industries are as heartbreakingly clear as Rennell Island.
The island, a tiny dot in the vast South Pacific that lies at the southern tip of Solomon Islands, is home to a few thousand people. And it’s starkly divided.
On one side is pristine East Rennell, a Unesco world heritage site, which offers a glimpse of Rennell unspoiled. But in the last decade, West Rennell has suffered the triple assault of logging, bauxite mining, and a devastating oil spill from when a bulk carrier, hired by a mining company, ran aground on a reef.
Logging companies arrived on the island about 10 years ago. Satellite images show extensive tree cover loss in the western part of the island and the scars of roads built to get the timber out.
Locals in West Rennell, like Ajilon Nasiu, say that since logging and mining began there, the environment has changed.
