***********************************************
PAPUA
NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
The
Nature of the Human Threat to PNG's Biodiversity
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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
of
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
by
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
to
'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
to
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
in
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
of
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
of
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
more
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
in
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
of
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
is
certainly
a more manageable figure than the much quoted, and
constantly
increasing,
number of individual languages. On the other hand, there
is
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
to
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
of
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
or
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
of
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
be
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
to
both
these topics. From this body of work it is possible to construct
a
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
is
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
of
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.
On
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
by
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
of
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.
If
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
of
this
contrast in New Ireland Province). But conservatism is not to be
confused
with conservationism in a context where the customs tolerated
by
the
orthodox are not invariably friendly to the natural environment.
If
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
a
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
as
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
to
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
of
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
more
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
to
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
a
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
in
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
by
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
of
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
be
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
at
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
argue
that
pockets of unsustainable population density result from the
colonial
destruction
of various customary mechanisms for maintaining some state
of
ecological
equilibrium. But whatever the origin of the problem, the
solutions
now available for the alleviation of such population
pressure
are
clearly
constrained by the politics and the institutions of modern
society.
In
pre-colonial times the institutions of tribal warfare and
spontaneous
migration
provided some sort of safety valve for any surplus
population,
even if
(as Allen says) the safety valve was sometimes blocked by
other
institutions.
The colonial regime removed this safety valve by fixing
and
policing
the territorial boundaries between rural communities, but
then
created
another by initiating a series of agricultural resettlement
schemes
which
were partly intended to shift numbers of people from high-
density
to
low-density
areas (see Valentine 1979, Hulme 1984). In the period
since
Independence,
there has been a rapid growth of parochial resistance to
the
idea of
state-sponsored transfers of rural settlers across provincial
boundaries,
especially when this entails their movement from the less
developed
to the more developed provinces. It seems the government has
not
only
lost the capacity to lease customary land for this purpose, but
has
even
lost control over much of the land previously leased by the
colonial
regime.
The function of the safety valve has thus been transferred to
the
process
of urban migration, which was tightly controlled during the
colonial
period, and which some provincial authorities are now seeking
to
resist
in their own way by the forced 'repatriation' of urban
'squatters'
from
other provinces. However, the scarcity of land in some rural
areas
is
only on
of the many factors which explain the overall growth of the
urban
population
over the last three decades, and there is as yet no
evidence
that
current moves to reverse this general trend will add to the
existing
problem
of population in those particular areas.
6 New
Technologies and New Consumption Patterns
In
Boserup's well-known thesis on the stages of agricultural
development,
shifting
cultivators are supposed to find another outlet for their
excess
population
by inventing new techniques of cultivation which enable
them to
raise
the productivity of their land by raising the total amount of
labour
which
each worker expends on it. As we have seen, this argument can be
used
to
explain the pre-colonial process of horticultural intensification
in the
central
highlands, albeit with some allowance for the peculiarities of
local
social organisation as an independent variable, and there are
some
respects
in which this process has continued down to the present day.
But
the
process of agricultural innovation is only one compartment in the
Pandora's
box of industrial technologies which now afflict the
Melanesian
environment.
From shotguns, dynamite and chainsaws to the humble
safety
match
or plastic bag - there is a huge array of manufactured
commodities
whose
use or abuse has serious environmental implications.
Unfortunately,
many
anthropologists and other social scientists who have observed and
analysed
the process of 'development' in PNG have not paid much
attention
to the
differential social and environmental impacts of specific
instruments
of work or objects of consumption, possibly because they
have
assumed
that these are all explained by some general model of
technological
dependency.
Anthropologists have concentrated most of their attention
on
the
destruction or loss of traditional technologies, regardless of the
social
and environmental impact of their modern counterparts.
Subsistence
gardening
and other forms of cultivation have not been markedly
affected
by
this
substitution because they have always been undertaken with a
large
amount
of technical knowledge but a small number of rudimentary tools.
It
is
mainly in the sphere of arts and crafts, ceremonial performance,
and
therapeutic
practices that material products and technical skills have
been
seriously
and simultaneously eroded. As a result, there has been a
very
substantial
reduction in the range of natural resources which were
formerly
valued
and consumed as the raw materials for these forms of work. This
reduction
must obviously be regarded as a major threat to the
maintenance
of
biodiversity, and some of the anthropologists now gathering
additional
ethnographic
information about the many large collections of
Melanesian
artifacts
in Western museums have correspondingly begun to perceive
their
work as
a way to develop local interest in nature conservation
strategies.
Salisbury
(1962) has provided the classic ethnographic account of the
way
that
technical innovation figures in the earliest stages of the
colonial
encounter,
and his analysis does focus attention on the practice of
shifting
cultivation because it is mainly concerned with the way that
a
highland
community adapted to that rapid substitution of steel tools
for
stone
tools which seems to have occurred in all PNG communities within
a
few
years of their first contact with Europeans. Salisbury showed how
the
scale
of traditional feasting suddenly expanded as Siane men took
advantage
of
their sudden productivity gain in the masculine work of clearing
new
gardens
by devoting more of their time and effort to the masculine
pursuit
of fame
and honour through the institution of competitive gift
exchange.
In
one
sense, this can be seen as a negative confirmation of Boserup's
argument,
since the Siane (like most other Melanesian communities)
were
not
experiencing
the sort of population pressure which would have
motivated
them to
put more time and effort into food production. On the other
hand,
it now
seems clear that the way in which the Siane expressed their
preference
for a state of 'subsistence affluence' was only the first
phase
of
their adaptation to Western technology, and while it may still be
the
case
that labour-saving technology enables some people to invest more
time
and
effort in traditional forms of 'leisure', this does not mean that
everyone
continues to forgo the use of such technology to cause
additional
environmental
damage in the name of 'development'. The social history
of
the
shotgun provides an interesting illustration of the way that new
technologies
are first adapted for use within a traditional framework
of
economic
activities, but subsequently 'liberated' from such
constraints
in
ways
which are likely to exaggerate their destructive impact on the
natural
environment.
Towards the end of the colonial period, shotgun licences
were
issued
to rural villagers at a rate (normally one per one hundred
people)
which
was partly intended to preserve the local wildlife from
excessive
depletion.
As a result, hunting often became the specialised
occupation
of
the
licence-holder at the same time as traditional hunting techniques
(which
had their own specialists) generally fell into abeyance.
However,
this
new species of professional hunter (known in Tok Pisin as a
sutboi)
commonly
practiced his craft under traditional forms of magical
regulation
which
had the effect of limiting his catch and ensuring its equitable
distribution
amongst the other members of his community (see Mitchell
1973
for a
Sepik example). Such men rarely, if ever, thought of using their
weapons
to threaten or wound other human beings, but in the period
since
Independence
it is this form of abuse which has been taken as the main
reason
for government to impose further restrictions on the issue of
shotgun
licences. In some areas these restrictions have been
reluctantly
accepted
while in others, most notably the central highlands, they
have
been
extensively ignored. There are now substantial regional
variations
in
the
numbers and types of guns which villagers possess, as well as the
uses
to
which they are put, but in most areas and for most purposes their
use is
no
longer regulated by traditional beliefs. In areas where shotgun use
has
been
reduced, the local wildlife may not suffer from the fact that
people
are now
more carefree in their use of those which remain, but in areas
where
large numbers of imported or home-made weapons have been
accumulated
for
criminal or military purposes, there is o reason to suppose that
their
owners
would avoid their use as hunting weapons unless they saw this
as a
waste
of valuable ammunition. In other cases, the threat posed by an
alien
technology
may be limited, at least for a time, by the lack of
indigenous
expertise
or determination to make full use of its destructive
capacity.
It
is
sometimes said, for example, that the great virtue of the portable
or
'walkabout'
sawmill lies precisely in the likelihood that it will
break
down
and be left to rust before its operators can do too much damage
with
it. The
other side of this particular coin is that some 'appropriate'
or
'intermediate'
technologies, which really do offer the prospect of
environmentally
friendly forms of rural development, may also fail for
lack
of
fairly fundamental technical or mechanical skills. In the minds of
many
villagers,
the acquisition and application of such skills does not
appear
to rate
too highly by comparison with the attractions of sitting
behind
a
desk in
smart clothes and talking on the telephone, or better still,
standing
on a platform in very smart clothes and making speeches
through
a
megaphone.
7
Social Differentiation and Political Authority
To
judge by letters written to the local newspapers, there are many
Papua
New
Guineans who believe that the process of economic and social
stratification,
combined with the corruption of the most wealthy and
powerful
members of their society, is not only a radical and
deplorable
departure
from Melanesian custom, but also constitutes a distinctive
threat
to the
natural environment. This threat is understood to derive from
the
way
that certain 'leaders' have lined their own pockets, and thus
funded
their
rise to power, with rents, fees or bribes collected from the
lease
of
land or
sale of natural resources to wicked foreigners. This
understanding
of the
situation is certainly supported by many of the findings in
Barnett's
(1989) Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Aspects of
the
Forest
Industry, and there is evidence that some forms of malpractice
continue
to flourish in this sector. On the other hand, the corrupt
behaviour
of certain individuals in some spheres of economic activity
is
only
one, and not necessarily the most important, part of the problem
posed
by the
current pattern of economic and political inequality in Papua
New
Guinea.
There is no doubt that a class or stratum of wealthy and
powerful
Papua
New Guineans has emerged quite rapidly since the Australian
colonial
administration
first allowed 'natives' to become businessmen and
politicians.
Some of these individuals have used their wealth to
purchase
electoral
support and political office, some have used their
possession
of
political
or bureaucratic office to advance their accumulation of
personal
wealth,
and some have made most of their money by participating, one
way or
another,
in the commercial exploitation of the country's natural
resources.
On the
other hand, it would be hard to demonstrate that these three
forms
of
behaviour, taken together, serve to define a single class of
powerful
national
capitalists, let alone to demonstrate that they now function
as
the
ruling class of Papua New Guinea. Practitioners of political
economy
may use
disparities in the size and source of personal income to
measure
the
extent and direction of class formation in this country, but the
language
of class still largely fails to describe the reasoning behind
political
behaviour and political debate (see May 1984, Turner 1990,
Thompson
& Macwilliam 1992). One obvious reason for this lack of class
consciousness
is that most Papua New Guineans, including the plurality
of
individual
'elites', do still belong to that single social class which
is
objectively
defined by the ownership of customary land, whose members
like
to call
themselves 'grassroots'. This has important implications for
the
politics
of nature conservation. Very few Papua New Guineans are
driven
to
degrade
their natural environment by the kind of landlessness or land
hunger
which is encountered in many other developing countries. And if
such
damage
or destruction still occurs, the motives and behaviour of the
humble
villager
are just as questionable as the antics of a few bent
'leaders'.
When a
nation of gardeners becomes a nation of customary landlords, it
is
perhaps
understandable that many people would begin to believe that
the
royal
road to 'development' is found in the collection of natural
resource
rents
from foreign operators, regardless of the actual incidence of
such
behaviour
amongst the wealthier sections of the community. When
individuals
or
communities really do come to depend on this form of income, one
might
suppose
that they are rapidly locked into some unsustainable form of
resource
extraction, because the market in logging or mining licences
produces
a continual adjustment of prices which allows for continued
economic
access by the operators. However, Papua New Guinea markets
are
remarkable
for the rigidity of their pricing mechanisms and the
absence
of
any
overt form of bargaining between buyers and sellers, and
experience
in
the
mining industry (especially the origins of the Bougainville
crisis),
suggests
that local gatekeepers sometimes contribute to the
conservation
of
their
resources by raising the entry fees to the point which deters
all
potential
customers, either because their expectations of
'development'
begin
to exceed what can feasibly be realised from some particular
economic
activity,
or else because they are pricing themselves out of the
market
in
order
to achieve non-market objectives. Chief amongst these objectives
is
the
maintenance or restoration of social and economic equality between
individuals
or communities. The local version of the 'tall poppy
syndrome'
explains
much of the resentment and many of the accusations which are
directed
at those who demonstrate unusual success in the acquisition
of
wealth
or power. It may be argued that the politics of envy is a major
obstacle
to social solidarity and economic progress, but it can also
be
argued
that the same egalitarian ethos which traditionally caused some
communities
to degrade their land in an effort to keep up with their
neighbours
in the business of competitive gift exchange may now have
the
unintended
effect of limiting the damage done by the industrial
exploitation
of natural resources as political conflict over the
distribution
rental incomes eventually renders the exploitation
uneconomic.
Nevertheless,
the fact remains that the deep sense of distrust which
formerly
separated the hundreds of autonomous Melanesian communities
has
not
only persisted down to the present day, but has also become
characteristic
of relationships between individual leaders and many of
their
notional clients or constituents, and thus of the general
relationship
between the village and the state. Such widespread lack
of
trust
militates against the conscious implementation of collective
nature
conservation
strategies. It also tends to function as a self-
fulfilling
prophecy.
It is not difficult to construct an explanation of
'political
corruption'
which emphasises the traditional norm of reciprocity and
the
'vulgar
materialism' of traditional culture. But it is not clear what,
if
anything,
distinguishes the resulting portrait of political patronage
from
that
which is commonly painted in so many other parts of the world,
and in
that
case its traditional cultural content is either redundant or
serves
only to
excuse (rather than explain) what would otherwise be
inexcusable.
Unlike
those countries in which networks of patronage, bribery and
corruption
are longstanding features of the political system, such
excuses
still
seem to rankle with the majority of Papua New Guineans, and the
current
upsurge of Christian sectarianism might even be seen as part
of
their
desperate search to establish some new form of moral community
as a
defence
against the essential sinfulness of secular politics.
Remembering
the
ancient mutual distrust of neighbouring communities, a distinction
still
needs to be drawn between the general alienation of the 'shoe-
socks'
from
the rural population as a whole and their continuing attachment
to
their
place of origin, where their authority, as we have seen, may be
effectively
exerted in defence of conservation values. Within the so-
called
'wantok
system', one should hardly be surprised if leaders show a
preference
for making economic gains at the expense of other groups,
and
the
distinctive threat which is then posed for the maintenance of
biodiversity
is precisely the opportunity which a democratic political
system
and a bureaucratic system of administration provide for
politicians
and
government officials to wage war on other people's resources in
order
to
enhance their reputations in their own backyards. Those politicians
and
officials
who manage to resist local expectations of favouritism may
still
find
themselves obliged to adopt an attitude of arrogance or apathy
when
confronted
by the fractious and claustrophobic nature of rural
society.
In
this
respect, their problems may be said to derive equally from their
lack
of
familiarity with the impersonal organisational culture of the
Western
world
and their own personal proximity to the villager's own
understanding
of the
world. Their failures to engage landowners in the pursuit of
worthy
causes
need not be the result of incompetence or corruption, but may
simply
reflect
the difficulty of exerting any kind of effective leadership in
a
social
environment which is riddled by fear, jealousy and suspicion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
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