The Nature of the Human Threat to PNG's Biodiversity

***********************************************

PAPUA NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

5/2/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

The following article was originally printed in the Papua New Guinea

Country Study on Biodiversity by the PNG Department of Environment and

Conservation, but I found it posted on the internet at

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/lien/PNG/pngbcs.html . It details the various

threats to biodiversity. The article's last half is not properly

formatted, thus paragraph breaks are missing.

g.b.

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN THREAT TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA'S BIODIVERSITY

ENDOWMENT

Colin Filer

August 1994

Published in N.Sekhran & S.Miller (eds), Papua New Guinea Country

Study on

Biodiversity, pp.187-199. Boroko: PNG Department of Environment and

Conservation, Conservation Resource Centre.

In this chapter we consider the main threats which human activities

pose

for Papua New Guinea's biodiversity endowment, and we attempt to trace

the

origin of these threats to a specific combination of cultural,

economic and

political factors which are at work in contemporary PNG society.

1 Classification of Activities

A classification of human activities which threaten biodiversity

values in

Papua New Guinea needs to combine the distinction between different

types

of impact on the natural environment and the distinction between

different

types of economic or productive activity. -

From the impact point of view, we may begin with a distinction between

terrestrial and aquatic impacts, and then sub-divide each of these

categories by asking whether the impact consists of habitat

degradation,

environmental pollution, over-exploitation, or the introduction of

alien

organisms. -

From the economic point of view, we may begin with a parallel

distinction

between the activities of corporate and individual human agencies, and

then

sub-divide each of these categories by allocating each activity to one

the broad economic sectors recognised in official descriptions of the

national economy. Papua New Guinea's National Report to UNCED

(Unisearch

1992) provides most of the information required to establish this

double

classification, and some of the information required to determine the

relative size of the threat posed by different types of activity.

There is

general agreement that the most significant threat currently posed to

PNG's

biodiversity values stems from the degradation of terrestrial habitats

total or partial removal of natural forest cover. This type of threat

takes

three main forms: -

Between 20,000 and 30,000 hectares of natural forest are cleared

totally

and permanently each year for a variety of economic purposes. The most

important of these are: commercial agricultural operations, which

account

for about 10,000 hectares of clearance; industrial logging of 5-6,000

hectares by the only timber company (Jant) which currently holds a

clear-fell permit logging; and the construction of economic

infrastructure

(including large-scale mining facilities), which may account for

another

10,000 hectares. -

A much larger area of natural forest is being damaged in varying

degrees by

'selective' but possibly 'unsustainable' logging of prime timber

species.

It is difficult to calculate the area affected each year, partly

because of

inadequate official supervision of the industry and partly because of

arguments about the definition of 'sustainability', but current

estimates

are reaching up to 100,000 hectares. -

Local villagers in different parts of the country are extending their

practice of shifting cultivation to portions of natural forest not

previously cleared for this purpose, including those recently subject

'selective logging' and those which have been 'opened up' by the

construction of new roads. Even in areas of secondary vegetation,

which

have already been incorporated into the shifting cultivation regime,

there

are tendencies to reduce fallow periods or extend cultivation periods.

One

estimate is that 200,000 hectares are cleared for subsistence

gardening

each year, but it is not clear what proportion of this is primary

forest or

what proportion represents a process of intensified cultivation. The

other

main threats to national biodiversity values are not so easily

subjected to

a single standard of measurement, even if more data were available to

indicate the extent of each one: -

Some aquatic habitats are being degraded by domestic or industrial

waste

products. The most notorious of these are the waste materials

discharged by

Ok Tedi Mining Ltd and, to a lesser extent, Porgera Joint Venture,

which

are polluting parts of the Fly-Strickland catchment. Industrial

logging,

agricultural processing, and urban sewage disposal are responsible for

most

instances of water pollution outside of the mining sector. -

Various marine species are threatened by the combination of dynamite

fishing on coastal reef formations and damage caused to coastal

mangroves

which function as important fish breeding areas. It is hard to gauge

the

extent of these threats because most of the relevant activities are

undertaken by local villagers or urban squatters, and it is not hard

understand why the most widely publicised cases of dynamite fishing

are

those which occur in the vicinity of major urban centres like Port

Moresby

and Rabaul. -

Rural villagers in most parts of the country are probably guilty of

exploiting some species in ways which are unsustainable in their own

right

and have negative side-effects on other species within specific

habitats.

Some of these activities are confined to the subsistence sector while

others are primarily oriented towards the global trade in rare

species.

Direct corporate involvement in this type of activity is concentrated

the fisheries sector, where prawns, trochus and beche-de-mer are the

species most obviously at risk. -

Despite the relative stringency of national quarantine regulations,

there

are several well-known examples of the deliberate or accidental

introduction of alien organisms which either attack and consume native

species directly or else cause damage to their habitats. Cats,

tilapia,

starfish, and salvinia molesta are amongst them. However, little is

known

about the overall range and impact of such alien intrusions. If

attention

is concentrated on the distinction between 'modern' and 'traditional'

sectors of the national economy, it is immediately evident that nearly

all

the activities listed above are normally conducted on land or in water

which is still subject to customary ownership, even if it has been

leased

to the state for some specific economic purpose, and such activities

are

therefore undertaken with the consent or approval of the customary

owners.

This fact lends a peculiar flavour to the problem addressed in this

part of

the report. If the customary owners largely retain the power to say

how

their resources shall be used, it is necessary to ask why some or all

them are apparently unable to manage those resources in ways which

accord

with the noble goals and principles of the National Constitution.

Popular

answers to this question proceed along two main lines: -

those which assume that the relationship between customary landowners

and

their natural resources is a very close one, perhaps even a condition

mystical harmony, and thus conclude that the answer lies in some

combination of external forces which have broken this form of

association;

and -

those which proceed from the observation that landowners want nothing

than 'development', and then argue that the intensity of this desire,

and

the frustration of its non-fulfilment, have caused a willingness to

sacrifice anything which they control in order to achieve their goal.

Answers which proceed along the first road then vary according to the

way

in which they allocate the blame between various external agents -

e.g. the

colonial administration, national politicians, or foreign logging

contractors - while those which proceed along the second road vary

according to their assessment of the options available to landowners

their pursuit of 'development'.

2 The Problem of Regional Diversity

Academics exhibit greater caution in their approach to the question of

how

customary landowners deal with their natural environment, because

academics

are more likely to recognise that no account of human impacts on PNG's

biodiversity endowment can ignore the traditional cultural diversity

which

has developed in this same environment or the continuing extent of

regional

variation in the pattern of human activity. There are two main

academic

approaches to understanding these human forms of diversity: -

the geographical approach, which maps the spatial distribution of

enduring

features of the cultural or economic landscape; and -

the historical approach, which portrays a process of uneven spatial

development through the period of colonialism and its aftermath. The

contrast between these two approaches runs parallel to the contrast

between

the two general answers to the question why landowning communities

fail to

act as guardians of the nation's biodiversity endowment. The first

approach

tends to emphasise traditional and internal factors in its explanation

human activity, while the second tends to emphasise the external

constraints of an evolving global or regional political economy. The

first

approach tends to locate the major threats to PNG's biodiversity

endowment

in the variable dynamics of village society, while the second tends to

find

them in the locally variable relationship between urban and rural

sectors

of the national economy. Many academics recognise the need to combine

these

two approaches. The normal starting point for any analysis of PNG's

traditional cultural landscape is the Pacific Language Atlas (Wurm &

Hattori 1981) which shows the spatial distribution of vernacular

languages

and indicates the degree of similarity between them. Anthropologists

continue to argue about the extent to which this picture of linguistic

diversity also serves to distinguish between traditional 'cultures' or

'culture areas', but people who speak languages of the same 'family'

(as

linguists define this term) normally do recognise the existence of

cultural

affinities and historical relationships which are associated with

their own

perception of this fact. If 'culture areas' are equated with 'language

families' in this way, then PNG has approximately 180 of them, which

certainly a more manageable figure than the much quoted, and

constantly

increasing, number of individual languages. On the other hand, there

still a wide range of variation in the size of these areas, and an

even

wider range of variation in their local population. For example,

languages

of the Central and West-Central families are spoken by almost a

million

highlanders, while no less than ten different families of languages

are

spoken by the 25,000 traditional inhabitants of Nuku District in the

West

Sepik Province. Part of this variation may result from differential

rates

of population growth or the incidence of physical barriers to

communication

between neighbouring communities, but part of it may be due to the

fact

that there are some areas in which people place an unusually high

value on

the deliberate creation and reproduction of cultural difference. An

alternative geographical approach to the question of cultural

diversity,

and the starting point for any analysis of the traditional and

contemporary

economic landscape of Papua New Guinea should now be the map of local

agricultural systems which is being produced by a team of scholars

based at

the Australian National University (Allen et al 1993). This is the

first

time that a truly systematic attempt has been made to document those

enduring variations in human activity which are most directly relevant

the future of the natural environment in rural areas. This work is

providing an invaluable counterpoint to the earlier synthesis of

linguistic

research, firstly because it is likely to delineate a number of

subsistence

systems which is roughly comparable to the number of 'culture areas'

distinguished by the language family criterion, and secondly because

there

is a partial, but by no means total, coincidence between the

boundaries

drawn on the two sets of maps. This contrast between linguistic and

agricultural perspectives in the geographical approach to the problem

regional diversity is matched by the contrast between religious and

political perspectives in the recent history of colonial and national

development. In other words, the contrast between church and state as

instruments in the transformation of rural society and cultural

ecology

runs parallel to the contrast between language and production as clues

keys to traditional forms of cultural diversity. On the one hand, it

may be

argued that regional variations in what rural villagers think and do

with

their natural environment have been conditioned by the length and

quality

of their experience of government control, especially the success or

failure of agricultural experiments which government officials have

forced

or persuaded them to undertake in the name of 'development'. On the

other

hand, these variations also stem, at least in part, from the changing

allegiance of individuals and communities to a bewildering array of

'cargo

cults' and Christian denominations which have not only carved out

their own

local spheres of influence for variable periods of time, but which

have

also differed widely in their relative tolerance of 'traditional

culture'

and their relative devotion to millenarian fantasies. In light of

these

considerations, great care must always be exercised in the selection

local case studies to illustrate any general proposition about the

relationship between customary landowners and their natural resources.

There is no immediate prospect of defining a framework of social

indicators

within which a representative sample of communities or cultures could

selected for this purpose. However, the small army of anthropologists

and

other social scientists who have undertaken intensive studies of rural

PNG

communities have also had a natural tendency to disperse themselves

between

'culture areas' or 'development zones', as they perceive them, and

many of

these scholars have written extensively about traditional forms of

human

interaction with the natural environment or about the relationship

between

'tradition' and 'development' - though few have given equal attention

both these topics. From this body of work it is possible to construct

succession of relevant contrasts between individual cases, and then to

ask

which of the two is more typical of the country as a whole or of some

smaller area within it.

3 Evidence of Pre-Colonial Ecology

Archaeological evidence from the Huon Peninsula (in Morobe Province)

shows

that human settlement of the main island of New Guinea dates back at

least

40,000 years. The Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands seem to

have

been occupied for at least 30,000 years. The central highlands of New

Guinea have probably been occupied for at least 20,000 years, and this

where prehistorians have found evidence of an agricultural tradition

which

dates back 9,000 years or more. Within the last 4,000 years, the

aboriginal

population has apparently been joined by an influx of Austronesian-

speaking

peoples who introduced a variety of new manufacturing techniques and

some

new species of domesticated plants and animals. In the 400 years

preceding

direct European contact in the 1930s, the social and economic life of

the

ancient agricultural communities in the central highlands has been

considerably transformed by the introduction of the sweet potato,

which was

carried across the Pacific from America by the early Spanish

colonists. The

central highlands contain the most obvious evidence that traditional,

pre-colonial forms of production were not always favourable to the

conservation of biodiversity, for the broad highland valleys, once

densely

forested, contain most of PNG's four million hectares of man-made

grasslands (Unisearch 1992:43). It is hardly surprising that

prehistorians

and anthropologists working in this part of the country have been the

first

to recognise that some features of traditional Melanesian society

posed an

actual or potential threat to the natural environment. In this

particular

case, there is little doubt that the introduction of the sweet potato

facilitated a process of indigenous economic expansion which was still

underway when Europeans first arrived in the highlands, yet the rapid

diffusion of this crop is only one historical example of an apparent

predisposition to agricultural innovation in highland communities,

which

has been described by some authors as a form of 'primitive capitalism'

(see

Finney 1973). It is now generally acknowledged that the institutions

competitive gift exchange so characteristic of this area required the

production of a 'social surplus' which sometimes encouraged

unsustainable

forms of shifting cultivation and thus exaggerated the negative

environmental impact of population growth (see Allen 1988, Allen &

Crittenden 1987, Bowers 1968, Wood 1984). A distinction needs to be

drawn

here between those forms of production which presupposed some initial

loss

of biodiversity, mainly through permanent forest clearance, and those

which

were positively unsustainable, in the sense that they entailed a

vicious

circle of environmental degradation. Even after the introduction of

the

sweet potato, many highland communities clearly possessed a complex

and

sophisticated array of resource management techniques which were not

only

sustainable in their own right, but also seem to have included a

positive

recognition of biodiversity values through the maintenance of 'sacred

sites' which might readily be compared to European botanical gardens.

the other hand, it is equally clear that some highland communities

have

long since passed beyond the geographical limits within which their

traditional highland economy could be practiced without causing

cumulative

environmental degradation and ultimately threatening the survival of

their

human population. Outside of the central highlands, the remarkable

variety

of environmental conditions and cultural formations in Melanesia has

precluded the construction of any general model of traditional human

ecology. Most communities practiced some form of shifting cultivation

within a fairly well-defined area of secondary vegetation, with a

variable

expanse of primary forest separating the gardening zones of

neighbouring

groups, but there were many exceptions and variations to this rule

(see

Allen et al 1993). There are substantial stretches of grassland (like

the

Sepik plains) which have resulted from the unsustainable economic

activities of populations which have since departed, while others

(like

those of the Goilala District in Central province) are still occupied

groups which have only recently begun to encounter the ecological

limits of

their economic customs. On many small islands, in some coastal

habitats,

and along the lower reaches of the major rivers (notably the Sepik and

the

Fly) we find communities in which the practice of cultivation played a

relatively minor role in the traditional system of subsistence, and in

which some other speciality (like fishing or craft production) had

been

developed as part of a regional trading system. Even in those areas

where

cultivation has long been the dominant form of productive activity,

other

traditional activities (like hunting) may have contributed to the loss

biodiversity within those stretches of primary forest whose continued

existence appears to prove that local people lived in harmony with

their

natural environment. Anthropologists continue to debate the

circumstances

and the sense in which this state of harmony or symbiosis formerly

existed

in Melanesia. Answers to this question should enable us to determine

where

and how the development of modern forms of conservation might be

assisted

by appeals to customary attitudes or practices. But even if we can

come to

terms with the wide variety of material circumstances in which these

attitudes or practices were once adopted, we still face the

intractable

problem of deciding the relative significance of what people once

thought

(or what they now say they once thought) about their natural

environment

and what they actually did (or now do) to it. Several Western

anthropologists have produced detailed ethnographic accounts of the

way

that local people traditionally perceive and evaluate different

components

of their natural environment (e.g. Hyndman 1979, Kocher Schmid 1992),

but

it is hard to say whether or how these perceptions and evaluations

relate

to the Western ethics and politics of nature conservation. Some

anthropologists have argued that certain features of traditional

social

organisation, like the small size of corporate groups (Bulmer 1983) or

the

periodic slaughter of domesticated pig herds (Rappaport 1986), would

have

had the unintended effect of preserving scarce natural resources or

restoring some form of ecological equilibrium, but it is hard to say

whether or how such 'accidental' outcomes might now be used to justify

specific conservation strategies in the minds of customary landowners.

One

of the main reasons for this kind of difficulty is the sense of

ambivalence

which Melanesians generally seem to have displayed towards the wild or

undomesticated elements of their physical environment. The 'bush

spirits'

associated with significant natural species or unusual natural

phenomena

(known as masalai in Tok Pisin) were normally regarded as erratic,

dangerous, and amoral creatures, worthy of fear but not respect. This

complex of attitudes may help to explain how people who set great

store by

the observation of animal behaviour, from a combination of utilitarian

and

spiritual motives, can sometime exhibit what seems, to Western

sensibilities at least, a wanton disregard for the well-being of these

same

animals, both as species and as individuals. It may also help to

explain

how villagers who fully understand the relationship between forest

fallows

and soil fertility are nevertheless prepared to sell their timber

rights

and permit the desecration of their 'sacred sites' for a relative

pittance

(see Allen 1988). Instead of inheriting a state of mystical harmony

with

their natural environment, landowners may well be accustomed to regard

it,

at least in certain contexts, as a source or form of evil power,

especially

if there is now a way to turn it into money and thus 'sacrifice' it to

the

spirit of 'development'.

4 Attitudes towards 'Development' and 'Conservation'

Whatever connection may once have existed between the thoughts and

actions

of Melanesians in respect of their natural environment, the fact

remains

that dead men tell no tales. Since Melanesians seem to have a special

talent for inventing new 'traditions', it is now very difficult to say

whether 'traditional' perceptions and evaluations of the natural

environment were themselves affected or constrained by ancient

variations

in the cultural ecology of specific communities, or whether they have

now

come to reflect the locally uneven experience of colonialism and

'development'. The progressive alienation of rural communities from

'traditional values' may be regarded as a bad thing in its own right,

but

is only relevant to the business of nature conservation if the arts of

traditional resource management have the capacity to mitigate new

threats

to biodiversity when they are recollected or revived. The question is

not

what the ancestors actually thought or did, but whether and how

today's

villagers can be persuaded to associate their own ideas of sustainable

development with a sense of cultural autonomy or local pride. Some

notable

attempts were made to produce comparative studies of Papua New Guinean

'attitudes to development' in the period preceding Independence (e.g.

Finney 1971, Moulik 1973), but these have not been pursued in the

post-colonial period, partly because they were seen to be part of the

old-fashioned 'modernisation paradigm', and partly because there are

serious methodological difficulties in the measurement of people's

attitudes to anything in rural village settings. It is therefore

necessary

to rely on the large but shapeless body of ethnographic and anecdotal

evidence about particular social groups in order to assess the

constant and

variable features of what Papua New Guineans now think about the

relationship between development and conservation. Despite the current

promotion of various 'integrated conservation and development

projects' in

Papua New Guinea, there is little doubt that the vast majority of

Papua New

Guineans regard 'conservation' and 'development' as alternative

pursuits

and will normally express a preference for the latter over the former.

there is any significant variation between local communities on this

score,

it seems to be connected to the split between orthodox (mainly

Catholic)

and more radical forms of Christian belief. The more radical

Christians, of

whom there are now many varieties, are generally more active in their

pursuit of 'development' than their more orthodox neighbours, whose

pursuit

of the same goal is apparently constrained by a variety of customs

which

they have not wholeheartedly rejected (see Albert 1989 for an example

this contrast in New Ireland Province). But conservatism is not to be

confused with conservationism in a context where the customs tolerated

the orthodox are not invariably friendly to the natural environment.

religion does have some relevance to beliefs about 'development', a

further

complication arises from the continued existence of what is still

called

the 'cargo cult mentality', although such millenarian ideas are now

normally dressed in the clothes of some recognised Christian

denomination

rather than the type of 'cargo cult' for which Melanesia became famous

during the colonial period. Such millenarian beliefs have long

flourished

amongst those sections of the population which think they suffer from

excessive political isolation or economic backwardness, but have

recently

come to reflect a more general sense of dissatisfaction with the pace

and

direction of national development. Such beliefs are obviously

inconsistent

with the principles of planning for sustainable development in any

form.

Once people's desire for 'development' is so thoroughly detached from

what

is feasible in practice, their impossible dreams may actually hinder

those

limited forms of material progress which are most likely to swing the

balance of rural opinion towards an understanding of the need for

nature

conservation. On the other hand, the recent history of mineral

exploration

on Lihir Island (also in New Ireland Province) seems to show that

small

amounts of economic development induced by external forces can provide

fairly rapid, though perhaps temporary, antidote to millenarian

fantasies.

Such fantasies can themselves be seen as one form of response to those

feelings of powerlessness and frustration which seem to be remarkably

widespread amongst Papua New Guinean villagers, perhaps more so now

than

they ever were in the colonial period. The simple explanation for such

feelings is that the rural population really is excluded from all the

important decisions affecting their lives and really has experienced

the

stagnation of material living standards in the period since

Independence.

There surely is some truth to this. But part of the explanation may

also be

found in the psychological displacement of traditional attitudes

towards

the 'powers' of the natural environment, so that these are now

reconstructed in a latter-day sense of ambivalence towards those

corporate

monsters, in both public and private sectors, who control and withhold

the

forbidden fruits of 'development' (see Gewertz & Errington 1991). In

the

Western conception of development, power is one of those variables or

factors - like wealth, health or education - whose distribution

between

human agents is both the outcome and the explanation of their relative

success, but Melanesian villagers may be accustomed to think of power

something which is fundamentally alien to human beings like

themselves, as

an intractable property of their natural or (now) their organisational

environment. It may seem that customary landowners possess as much

power as

they need in order to control whatever process of development takes

place

on their land, but landowners themselves may deny their own capacity

engage in the rational management of their own natural resources until

they

reach that general condition of 'development' which may itself remain

forever locked in the closed and hostile world of 'companies' and

'politics'. Although this complex of attitudes appears to be a

pervasive

and enduring feature of village life in many parts of Papua New

Guinea,

there are also reasons to believe that it is primarily a masculine

phenomenon. This is because village women have been excluded from many

the activities and decisions which men regard as central to their own

pursuit of 'development', in much the same way that men traditionally

excluded women from the dangerous business of dealing with

supernatural

powers. While anthropologists continue to debate the question whether

such

exclusion was or is to be regarded as a form of patriarchal

domination,

less attention has been paid to the question whether village women now

possess a gender-specific set of attitudes to 'development' which is

conducive to the practice of nature conservation, and whether they

also

have the capacity to put these ideas into practice without the active

collaboration of their menfolk. Although the values of feminism and

ecology

are closely linked in current Western political discourse, there is no

obvious reason why this connection should now be made in the rural

villages

of Papua New Guinea, especially when their inhabitants have become

increasingly frustrated by their own failure to find the right 'road

development'. Such connections are more readily made by the growing

'middle

class' of Papua New Guineans whose urban occupations have given them

some

freedom from the claustrophobia of village society and whose level of

education has given them the capacity and the motivation to absorb

Western

political ideas. In this respect there may be nothing unusual about

the

social context in which this country is acquiring its own ethic of

conservation. The difference is more likely to be found in the

relationship

between the moral and political values of Papua New Guinea's emergent

middle class and those of a rural population which has so much nominal

(if

not real) control over the use the nation's natural resources but so

little

effective contact with state institutions responsible for planning the

rational management of those resources. In practice, there are many

middle

class Papua New Guineans who retain strong links with the rural

communities

into which they were born and where they spent a substantial

proportion of

their childhood, and these individuals commonly do have an input into

major

decisions taken in their home communities, regardless of the position

which

they may happen to occupy in the formal sector of the economy. The

'educated elites' of New Hanover, in New Ireland Province, have played

prominent role on both sides of recent factional disputes about the

merits

of a local logging operation, and examples like this suggest that the

voice

of middle-class conservationism is beginning to make a genuine impact

those rural areas where educational standards have been relatively

high for

some time and schooling itself is seen to bestow some additional

authority

in the conduct of community affairs. On the other hand, middle-class

Papua

New Guineans have their own distinctive ways of denigrating the

stupidity

of their country cousins, including the use of pejorative terms like

'kanaka' or 'native village', even when they maintain an active and

authoritative role in village affairs. Such attitudes are illustrated

the (probably apocryphal) story which circulated amongst the public

servants of Milne Bay Province after a visiting team of

environmentalists

had told the people of Woodlark Island about the rarity of an endemic

species of cuscus: the islanders are said to have concluded that they

would

now need to eradicate this creature completely because it had become

the

major obstacle to their 'development'. One point on which rural and

urban

Papua New Guineans are very likely to agree is also one of the main

reasons

why it is so hard to generalise about their attitudes to

'conservation' and

'development' - and that is their deep-rooted scepticism about the

value of

abstract ideas as guides to actual behaviour in concrete situations.

All

ideologies are 'merely talk' (tok tasol), and the absence of such talk

has

long been a puzzle to students of PNG's parliamentary democracy.

Political

behaviour is apparently based on the assumption that everyone (except

perhaps oneself) is motivated entirely by some form of material

self-interest, without reference to any general values or principles.

This

means that political issues which are initially framed by reference to

such

values (like the value of 'biodiversity') are constantly being

transformed

into forms of competition or mediation in which the individual

protagonists

have no consistent point of view beyond the strategies which they

adopt to

reach some temporary settlement. What this means, in practice, is that

'grassroots' disputes about the use of natural resources are not

conducted

like battles between small armies of 'developers' and

'conservationists',

but rather like protracted accounts of people's material wants and

needs.

5 Population Growth, Migration and Resettlement

Land is probably the most important single object of desire which

figures

in local debates about the environment, and this in turn means that

disputes about the use of natural resources are liable to invoke a

variety

of ideas about the basic needs of rural households under various

degrees of

population pressure. In light of the financial resources which are

currently being directed towards the resolution of Papua New Guinea's

'population problem', it may be thought that this constitutes the most

significant and most easily recognisable threat to Papua New Guinea's

biodiversity values. However, some experts would argue that this

threat has

been considerably overstated (see Hayes 1993). The current (1994)

population of Papua New Guinea is estimated to be 4.1 million, with an

average crude density of nine persons per square kilometre. Comparison

national census data from 1980 and 1990 indicates an annual population

growth rate of 2.3 per cent. If this rate of growth persists, the

population will double over the next thirty years, reaching a total of

8.2

million by 2024. Although much of the land surface of approximately

463,000

square kilometres is unsuitable for human settlement or cultivation,

and

there are some parts of the country in which the crude population

density

greatly exceeds the national average, population pressure can hardly

considered as an adequate explanation of current threats to the

conservation of biodiversity throughout the country, since the local

population consumes a very small proportion of the raw materials whose

extraction currently poses the main threat to the natural environment.

Most

Melanesian communities lost a proportion of their population to the

ravages

of new diseases in the years following their first major experience of

European intrusion. The extent of the decline and the period of

recovery

was normally reduced with each successive stage in the process of

colonisation, as medical knowledge and practice began to catch up with

the

problems caused by this encounter. As a result, people in some coastal

areas, where the decline was fairly marked and can still be

recollected,

have some reason to be sceptical about claims that they need to limit

the

growth of their population, whereas people in the central highlands,

who

were not brought under effective colonial administration until after

the

Second World War, are more likely to regard their current rates of

population growth as part of an uninterrupted process of expansion

which

predates any specific historical event but which may yet have some

natural

or economic limit. As previously noted, the central highlands contain

some

of those areas in which the human population already exceeds the level

which it poses a continual threat to the reproduction of various

natural

resources. In these cases it can be argued that the dynamics of human

ecology are part of a pre-colonial social legacy which is 'closely

associated with individuals and groups attempting to maintain economic

and

political equality under conditions of unequal opportunity and

resources'

(Allen 1986). In lowland and coastal areas it is more plausible to