Papua New Guinea (PNG) has one of the most significant areas of tropical forest in the world. These forests are, however, under threat from commercial logging, clearing of land for agricultural commodities, mining or the expansion of small-scale agriculture to meet the livelihood needs of the country's largely rural population.
The Papua New Guinea Resource Information System (PNGRIS) is a micro-computer-based georeferenced database containing information on natural resources, population distribution, rural land use, small-holder economic activity and land use potential (Bellamy 1986). It is compiled at 1:500 000 scale for approximately 5000 Resource Mapping Units (RMUs) covering the entire land area of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
PNG has a diverse and rich resource base for plants, animal and aquaculture genetic resources used for food and agriculture. These resources suppor the livelihood of the majority of rural population in the country. The safeguarding, maintainence and sustainable uses of this genetic diversity is essential for the current as well as livelihood security
Over the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest and enthusiasm for biodiversity prospecting and the development of natural products throughout the world. The exploration of biodiversity for commercially valuable genetic resources has the potential to encourage conservation and to provide economic benefits to developing countries and their local communities. However, despite the interest and rapidly increasing number of biodiversity prospectors, there are no clear national policies or legislation in place to govern and regulate biodiversity prospecting in Papua New Guinea.
Food is made up of three major components – proteins, carbohydrates and fats – and each is necessary for growth and healthy living. Although all three provide energy, carbohydrates, which consist of starches and sugars, provide the highest proportion of the food energy (or fuel) that human bodies need to function. Protein, used for building and repairing the body, comes from animal products such as meat, fish, and milk, but also from grains and vegetable foods. Small quantities of fats and oils are also important in a balanced diet.
The history of agriculture in PNG is about 10 000 years old. This history is reviewed here in the context of 50 000 years of human occupation of the Australia – New Guinea region. 1 More is known about what has happened nearer to the present, especially since 1870, than about the distant past. Much of the early history (prehistory) of PNG was unknown until about 50 years ago, but since 1959 there has been a lot of research on the prehistory of PNG, with a major focus on agriculture.
Oil palm prices may hold up in the medium term, with strong demand from India and China. Yet, like other non-oil commodities, oil palm prices are likely to remain volatile, and to experience a long term relative price decline. (Chapter 3). World prices are not the main problem for small farmers in PNG. Three factors are likely to place a ceiling on the economic benefits for small farmers: (i) small farmers remain at the highly competitive end of a large grower market, with little market power, keeping them as ‘price takers’; (ii) a large monopsony (all
Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, is a tectonically unstable, uplifting shoreline ringed by emergent coral terraces.
We have dated corals sampled from the uplifted terraces of Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, that grew during the Marine Isotope Stage 3, to reconstruct sea-levels of the last glacial period from 30 to 55 ka (kiloannum). Mass spectrometric U-series dating methods resulted in high precision dates and could also be used to recognize diagenetically altered samples. The only quantitative test of open-systembehaviour of both uraniumand thorium isotopes involves the comparison of 234U/238U ratios, at the time of coral growth, with present sea-water values.
An analysis of cultural change and generation gaps in the local community of the Nungon ethnic group in the state of Papua New Guinea will be the subject of the study. This ethnic group came into contact with Europeans for the first time in the mid-1930s. The pace of cultural changes within the community has been gradually increasing.
Midway up the slopes of the Andogoro, Moirutapa, and Kundiman mountains that rise up from the surrounding floodplains and separate East Sepik Province from Enga and Western Highlands Provinces in Papua New Guinea, are the traditional settlements of the Upland Arafundi people (Roscoe & Telban 2004:94). Galleries of stencils adorn the walls of caves once used as spirit houses and shelters by the Upland Arafundi people. In the limestone caves they buried their dead, initiated young men, and sheltered from their enemies.
In days gone by some of the Motu-speaking peoples around Port Moresby used to go on annual trading expeditions to the Gulf of Papua. There they would exchange with the inhabitants of that area pots and other valuables for sago and canoe logs. These expeditions were called hiri, and were not only spectacular in terms of the number, nature and size of the sailing craft involved and the cargoes they carried but also very important economically and in other ways to the Motu and others directly or indirectly involved.
For over forty years, archaeologists working along Papua New Guinea’s southern coastline have sought evidence for early ceramics and its relationship with Lapita wares of Island Melanesia. Failing to find any such evidence of pottery more than 2000 BP, and largely based on the excavation of eight early pottery-bearing sites during the late 1960s into the early 1970s, synchronous colonization some 2000 BP along 500km of the south Papuan coastline by post-Lapita ceramic manufacturers has been posited.
How can linguistics contribute to our knowledge about human dispersals in the distant past? We will consider the case of New Guinea and surrounding islands, one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. This study is a follow-up on the Eurocores OMLL project Pioneers of Island Melanesia, reported in Dunn et al. (2005).