CURRENT TRENDS IN LANGUAGE SKILLS AND ETHNO-BIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE OF UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

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Language and culture

Papua New Guinea is linguistically and culturally the most diverse country in the world. PNG’s languages, as the repositories of ethnobiological knowledge and culture, play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. The current trends in cultural, social and economic changes in PNG are threatening the survival of languages and ethnobiological knowledge, but there are very limited studies done to assess the suspected decline of indigenous language and ethnobiological knowledge of Papua New Guinea.