Theonila Roka Matbob grew up where a rainforest should have been, on Bougainville, the largest island in Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Region. Instead of trees, the slopes around her home were largely 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 learned caution from elders: avoid the water, don’t eat what falls from the trees. Those warnings had no explanation at the time. Later she learned the cause — pollution and contamination left by the Panguna copper and gold mine, developed by Rio Tinto through Bougainville Copper Ltd. From 1972 to 1989 the mine extracted millions of tons of copper and hundreds of tons of gold and silver. Its environmental destruction, and the social and economic strains it created, helped trigger a brutal civil war over outside labor and the removal of profits. The conflict killed thousands, displaced many, fractured communities, and even claimed members of Roka Matbob’s family: her father was taken and later killed when she was nearly three.
When operations ceased during the unrest there was no plan to clean up the damage. Roka Matbob says she was “born into that broken environment,” and her childhood felt like constant survival. After the 1998 peace accords, the root problems — toxic pollution, social harm, and the denial of a normal island life — largely remained unresolved.
Her public activism began in high school with protests and community organizing, and it deepened as she pushed for accountability and cleanup. In 2019, communities invited the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) to document what they had lived through. HRLC’s 2021 report, After the mine: Living with Rio Tinto’s deadly legacy, amplified local testimony and drew international attention. Roka Matbob became the lead complainant in a landmark human rights complaint against Rio Tinto, which led the company to fund an independent environmental assessment in 2021 and, in 2024, to sign a memorandum of understanding committing to work with impacted communities on remediation.
Her work was recognized in 2026 when she received the Goldman Environmental Prize for the island nations region. Ilan Kayatsky of the Goldman Prize highlighted her role in organizing a historic push for justice for decades of environmental and social devastation tied to the Panguna mine, and in building a coalition demanding accountability and better lives for Bougainvilleans.
Roka Matbob points to a handful of turning points that convinced her change was possible: the HRLC investigation and report, a formal note from Rio Tinto acknowledging findings, and the company’s swift reactions after the legal complaint. Those moments opened channels for her to speak directly to the company and to lift her community’s voice on an international stage. She recalls the relief of being able to speak where her grandmother, who bore the consequences of the damage, could not.
Her motivation is rooted in identity and responsibility. She is Nasioi and of the Basikang clan, where land and environment are bound up with culture and survival. Leaving for another tribal territory would not be culturally acceptable, so stewardship is not optional. Motherhood deepens that responsibility — she does not want to hand her children a contaminated, broken island.
Elected as one of the few women in Bougainville’s House of Representatives, Roka Matbob continued to press for remediation and justice from inside the political system. She acknowledges the difficulty of working within a patriarchal political culture, but also draws strength from women’s traditional roles as guardians of land. In her language there is a saying: a woman’s tears can begin a fight and can also broker peace. That belief frames her activism as both necessary and rightful.
The Goldman Prize includes a cash award, but Roka Matbob insists any decision about its use will be communal: “It takes a village to create a win. So it takes a village to make that decision as well.” She rejects treating the prize as personal gain and emphasizes collective stewardship.
Asked when the work will be finished, she refuses to promise a full restoration of what was lost. “No. The damage caused is irreversible,” she says. Her goals are more modest and immediate: to bring hope, to explain to people why their environment is damaged, and to move families out of survival mode and toward thriving. She intends to keep leading as long as that activism delivers hope and progress for her community.