Theonila Roka Matbob was born into what should have been a lush rainforest on Bougainville, the largest island in Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Region. Instead, the mountains around her home were mostly rock and sand. “You have to go miles — into another region and territory — to find the trees, the forest,” she says.
As a child she heard steady warnings from elders: don’t go near the water, don’t eat anything that falls to the ground. They didn’t explain why. Over time she learned the reason: pollution and contamination left by the Panguna copper and gold mine, developed by Rio Tinto through its Bougainville Copper Ltd. Between 1972 and 1989 the mine produced millions of tons of copper and hundreds of tons of gold and silver. Its operations and the social upheaval they provoked helped spark a bloody, decade-long civil war over outside labor and the removal of profits. The conflict left thousands dead, tore communities apart, and forced many into camps; Roka Matbob’s father was taken and later killed when she was nearly three.
When the mine shut down amid the unrest, there was no plan to remediate environmental damage. Roka Matbob says she was “born into that broken environment,” and growing up felt like living in permanent survival mode. After peace accords in 1998, the underlying issues — pollution, social harm, and residents’ denied access to a normal island life — went largely unaddressed.
Her activism began in high school with protests and deepened as she pushed for accountability and remediation. In 2019, local communities invited the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) to document their experiences. HRLC’s 2021 report, “After the mine: Living with Rio Tinto’s deadly legacy,” helped bring international attention. Roka Matbob became the lead complainant in a landmark human rights complaint against Rio Tinto. The company responded: it agreed to fund an independent assessment in 2021 and in 2024 signed a memorandum of understanding to work with impacted communities on remediation.
Theonila’s leadership was recognized in 2026 when she received the Goldman Environmental Prize for the island nations region. Ilan Kayatsky of the Goldman Prize praised her for leading “a historic effort to obtain justice for decades of environmental and social devastation because of the Panguna mine,” and for coordinating a coalition demanding accountability and better lives for Bougainvilleans.
In interviews Roka Matbob describes key moments that made her believe change was possible: the HRLC’s visit and report, getting a note from Rio Tinto acknowledging the findings, and the rapid response after lodging the legal complaint. Those milestones provided platforms to speak directly to the company and to represent her people’s voice. She recalls emotional relief in being able to speak where her grandmother could not.
Her motivation is rooted in identity and responsibility. She is Nasioi and part of the Basikang clan, where land and environment are inseparable from life. She cannot simply leave: moving to another tribal territory would be culturally unacceptable. Her work is also driven by motherhood; she does not want to hand a broken, contaminated environment to her children and future generations.
Roka Matbob was one of only a few women elected to Bougainville’s House of Representatives, where she continued her advocacy. She notes the tension of working within a patriarchal political culture but also points to women’s traditional roles as land guardians. In her language there is a proverb: it takes a woman to cry to start a fight, and a woman’s tears to broker peace. That idea frames her activism as both rightful and necessary.
The Goldman Prize comes with a cash award, but Roka Matbob says how it will be used is a community decision: “It takes a village to create a win. So it takes a village to make that decision as well.” She refuses to claim the prize as a personal windfall, instead emphasizing collective stewardship.
Asked when she will feel her work is done, she rejects the notion that restoring a green rainforest could fully erase the harm. “No. The damage caused is irreversible,” she says. Her goal is more pragmatic and immediate: to bring hope, to help people understand why their environment is damaged, and to move them from survival mode into thriving mode. She intends to keep working as long as the activism she leads brings that hope to her community.