IN APRIL 1922, F. E. WILLIAMS (1893–1943) BEGAN HIS FIRST ASSIGNMENT AS THE AUSTRALIAN Territory of Papua’s assistant government anthropologist in the Purari Delta on the southern coast of what is now Papua New Guinea.1 During his eight-month trip, Williams obtained information on daily life, social relations, material culture, as well as religious beliefs and practices.2 As part of this research, he collected ethnographic specimens, made sketches and took some 96 photographs.
Rot bilong mipela. “Our road” in Neomelanesian Pidgin, or Tok Pisin. When starting my fieldwork in Papua New Guinea (PNG) on the politics of logging, I was aware of the political significance of roads that connect places – another interesting theme – with each other. Having read accounts of the political aspects of roads both in PNG and elsewhere (see Fajans 1998, Ferguson 1996, West 2006), I was still surprised how central a question roads really were.
Adding to the existing literature on the history of forestry policy and reform in Papua New Guinea (PNG), this paper focuses on the Malaysian Rimbunan Hijau Group (RH) – the largest actor in PNG’s forest industry. Rimbunan Hijau’s dominant presence since the 1980s has been accompanied by allegations of illegality, corruption and human rights
abuses. This paper outlines RH’s initial involvement in PNG’s forestry sector and discusses some of the more
controversial aspects of its engagement with concession acquisition processes and public policy, as well as its responses.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative now includes over USD 1 trillion of planned investments spanning the globe.1 Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of the newest members of this infrastructure and trade program, and its inclusion formalizes an increasingly substantial economic relationship between the two countries.2 China owns nearly one-quarter of PNG’s debt, and has recently announced plans to launch agriculture and roadbuilding projects worth billions that have the potential to transform PNG’s rural countryside.
This Timber Legality Risk Assessment for Papua New Guinea provides an analysis of the risk of sourcing timber from areas of illegal harvesting and transport. NEPCon has been working on risk assessments for timber legality, in partnership with a number of organisations, since 2007.
In many ways The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is already successfully implementing a great many of the imperatives of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries in their work in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. The following TNC platforms are much in line with the EAF: 1) The Marine Managed Areas / Marine Protected Areas (MMA/MPA)
In 2003 The Nature Conservancy (TNC) commenced a project titled “Protecting Coral Reefs from Destructive Fishing Practices: Protecting and Managing Reef Fish Spawning Aggregations in the Pacific”. The goal of this project is to significantly reduce the degradation of coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific region from destructive fishing practices,
Despite the importance of the sea cucumber trade in terms of foreign revenue generation for PNG and cash income for local fishers, stock collapse nationally led to a nationwide closure coming into force from 2009. There is now increasing interest in examining the role of locally based management strategies in sustaining sea cucumber populations.
In this article we describe the rapid uptake of technology that increases fishing efficiency in two parts of western Melanesia: Ghizo Island in Western Province, Solomon Islands, and Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea. We present evidence that demonstrates a disturbing lack of awareness among fishers of the finite nature of the stocks they are exploiting, and we argue that without corresponding systematic management interventions, the technological transformations we are now witnessing will accelerate the presentpattern of sequential overfishing of commerci ally valuable species.
Coastal and tuna fisheries in the Pacific Ocean feed Pacific Islanders and supply global markets, which are the biggest sources of foreign exchange for some of the mall Island Developing States (SIDS) in the region (Pacific SIDS). This makes the health and sustainable use of these resources critical both for the countries holding the solemn responsibility of managing their fisheries resources and for the rest of humanity, which relies on fish catches in Pacific waters.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has worked in Kimbe Bay, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea since 1992. This region is the major focus point for TNC’s Papua New Guinea Marine Conservation Program, and TNC is currently working with various partners and stakeholders to establish a resilient, fully functional, network of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in Kimbe Bay by 2008 (Green and Lokani, 2004).
Fish is a mainstay of food security for Pacific island countries and territories (PICTs). Recent household income and expenditure surveys, and socio-economic surveys, demonstrate that subsistence fishing still provides the great majority of dietary animal protein in the region. Forecasts of the fish required in 2030 to meet recommended per capita fish consumption, or to maintain current consumption, indicate that even well-managed coastal fisheries will only be able to meet the demand in 6 of 22 PICTs.
In the Western Central Pacific region, most sea cucumber fisheries have exhibited boomand-bust cycles since the late nineteenth century. Since the 1980s, elevated export prices and demand from Asian markets have been the catalysts for increased fishing. At many localities, high-value species have been depleted and previously unfished species are now exploited. The sustainability of these fisheries is of widespread concern.
In this paper we examine the strengths and weaknesses of state-supported Customary Marine Tenure (CMT) systems in two independent Melanesian states in the context of burgeoning commercial and subsistence fisheries. Both Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands can be categorised as “weak states” where access by foreign-owned fishing companies to state-owned resources (e.g. tuna) is typically easy to obtain by bribing the relevant politicians and bureaucrats at national and/or provincial level.
Many large commercially valuable species of reef fish aggregate in the hundreds or thousands at fixed sites during specific lunar and seasonal periods for the purpose of spawning (Domeier and Colin, 1997). Not surprisingly, fishers have often taken advantage of this predicable behavior, as exceptionally high catches can be made from spawning aggregations (Johannes, 1978). Although fishers have been aware of spawning aggregations for centuries, biological interest in them is far more recent (Colin et al., 2003).
Coastal fisheries are brought up for information in order to help address the complete portfolio of issues that Pacific Island Fisheries Ministers have to deal with in their everyday work, beyond the commercial tuna fisheries that FFC normally confines its business to.
Over recent decades it has become widely accepted that managing fisheries resources means managing human behaviour, and so understanding social and economic dynamics is just as important as understanding species biology and ecology.
This survey was conducted in the northern part of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville between 1st –2 5th of November 2008. The survey covered the western side and outer islands of Buka Island, the Saposa and Buka Town region and the Tinputz region on north eastern side of Bougainville Island. The survey team was comprised of marine scientists, conservationists and fisheries’ officers. The survey provided an assessment of the status of sea cucumbers, reef fish and corals in Northern Bougainville, with recommendations for their conservation and management.
Papua New Guinea has astonishing biological and cultural diversity which, coupled with a strong community reliance on the land and its biota for subsistence, add complexity to monitoring and conservation and in particular, the demonstration of declines in wildlife populations. Many species of concern are long-lived which provides additional
In 2008 we began intensive archaeological surveys at Caution Bay, located 20km to the northwest of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (Figure 1.1). We followed this with the excavation of 122 stratified sites in 2009- 2010, and detailed analysis of the well preserved and abundant faunal, ceramic and lithic finds has beencontinuing ever since.