The Porgera gold mine in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea is technically one of the most sophisticated and successful mines of recent times. In its second year of operations (1992) it was the third largest gold producing mine in the world. Socially, though, the mine has brought a range of massive changes for the local Ipili community-both positive and negative.Dilemmas of Development is a record of a series of studies of the social and economic effects of the Porgerta mine, commissioned by the Porgera Joint Vemture (PJV)
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In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage - sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called 'agro forestry' projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the 'agro foresters' have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been the site of a great deal of scientific work, and a fair amount of interdisciplinary debate, within the broad field of historical ecology, which encompasses the study of indigenous society-environment relationships over different time periods. However, this in itself provides no guarantee that scientists engaged in such debate will have a greater influence on the formulation of environmental conservation policies in a state where indigenous decision makers now hold the levers of political power. Five environmental policy paradigms which have emerged in the course of public debate about environmental conservation in PNG over the past half century; the wildlife management, environmental planning, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem assessment, and carbon sequestration paradigms. Each paradigm has framed a distinctive form of interdisciplinary debate about indigenous society-environment relationships within a contemporary political framework. However, a further connection can be drawn between the role of interdisciplinary debate in an evolving national policy framework and the history of scientific debate about the nature of indigenous society-environment relationships in the pre-colonial era. This connection places a distinctive emphasis on the relationship between indigenous agricultural practices and management of the national forest estate for reasons which are themselves a contingent effect of the nature of European colonial intervention over the course of the last century and a half. This particular bias in the relationship between historical ecology and environmental policy has lasted down to the present day. PNG's environmental policy problems are unlikely to have any rational or sensible solution in the absence of a better scientific understanding of the complexity of indigenous society-environment relationships. Scientists need to understand the complexity of the environmental policy process as a historical process in its own right in order to work out which policy problems offer both the scope and the incentive to sustain specific forms of interdisciplinary debate that are likely to produce better policy outcomes.
One part of the Australian colonial legacy in Papua New Guinea (PNG hereafter) is the Australian government's attempt to forge partnerships with foreign companies in different economic sectors in order to lay the economic foundations for rural development in the newly independent nation. American and Australian capital was invited to develop the mining industry, European capital to develop the oil palm industry, and Japanese capital to develop the forest industry. Nowadays, the Australian government seems to have forgotten its late colonial enthusiasm for this form of state capitalism, and its aid to PNG is largely framed by the neoliberal policy prescriptions which the World Bank was able to impose on the PNG government through a sequence of structural adjustment programs beginning in 1990. However, members of PNG's national political elite have persistently sought refuge from this economic orthodoxy through their engagement with Asian governments and companies. In this paper I examine the way in which changing political and economic conditions have affected the actual pattern of Asian investment in PNG's forestry and agriculture sectors, and the way in which different stakeholders have responded to this changing pattern of investment. Despite the prevalence of a policy narrative which holds Asian investors responsible for the corruption of PNG's political institutions when mineral resource booms liberate national politicians from the constraints of Western economic orthodoxy, I show that Asian investment in these two sectors has taken several different forms, and there is no simple sense in which PNG's national economy and political system are subject to a concerted takeover by Asian business interests.
In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage - sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called 'agro forestry' projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the 'agro foresters' have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.
One part of the Australian colonial legacy in Papua New Guinea (PNG hereafter) is the Australian government's attempt to forge partnerships with foreign companies in different economic sectors in order to lay the economic foundations for rural development in the newly independent nation. American and Australian capital was invited to develop the mining industry, European capital to develop the oil palm industry, and Japanese capital to develop the forest industry. Nowadays, the Australian government seems to have forgotten its late colonial enthusiasm for this form of state capitalism, and its aid to PNG is largely framed by the neoliberal policy prescriptions which the World Bank was able to impose on the PNG government through a sequence of structural adjustment programs beginning in 1990. However, members of PNG's national political elite have persistently sought refuge from this economic orthodoxy through their engagement with Asian governments and companies. In this paper I examine the way in which changing political and economic conditions have affected the actual pattern of Asian investment in PNG's forestry and agriculture sectors, and the way in which different stakeholders have responded to this changing pattern of investment. Despite the prevalence of a policy narrative which holds Asian investors responsible for the corruption of PNG's political institutions when mineral resource booms liberate national politicians from the constraints of Western economic orthodoxy, I show that Asian investment in these two sectors has taken several different forms, and there is no simple sense in which PNG's national economy and political system are subject to a concerted takeover by Asian business interests.
As a leading member of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a vested interest in proving to the international community that it could reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions from the process of deforestation and forest degradation if suitable financial incentives were to be provided for such action. An assessment of the baseline or 'business-as-usual' scenario for emissions from this process is therefore crucial to current debate about the relationship between national forest policy and measures taken to mitigate the impacts of climate change. This paper shows that the PNG government's own attempts to construct a baseline scenario for the contribution made to this process by logging and agribusiness companies have ignored a number of significant supply-side constraints on their economic activities, both in the past and in the future. This can be understood as the result of a perverse incentive for the governments of 'rainforest nations' to exaggerate the past, present and future rates of deforestation or forest degradation in order to claim a reward for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from a fictitious or exaggerated baseline to a level which approximates the real trajectory.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been the site of a great deal of scientific work, and a fair amount of interdisciplinary debate, within the broad field of historical ecology, which encompasses the study of indigenous society-environment relationships over different time periods. However, this in itself provides no guarantee that scientists engaged in such debate will have a greater influence on the formulation of environmental conservation policies in a state where indigenous decision makers now hold the levers of political power. Five environmental policy paradigms which have emerged in the course of public debate about environmental conservation in PNG over the past half century; the wildlife management, environmental planning, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem assessment, and carbon sequestration paradigms. Each paradigm has framed a distinctive form of interdisciplinary debate about indigenous society-environment relationships within a contemporary political framework. However, a further connection can be drawn between the role of interdisciplinary debate in an evolving national policy framework and the history of scientific debate about the nature of indigenous society-environment relationships in the pre-colonial era. This connection places a distinctive emphasis on the relationship between indigenous agricultural practices and management of the national forest estate for reasons which are themselves a contingent effect of the nature of European colonial intervention over the course of the last century and a half. This particular bias in the relationship between historical ecology and environmental policy has lasted down to the present day. PNG's environmental policy problems are unlikely to have any rational or sensible solution in the absence of a better scientific understanding of the complexity of indigenous society-environment relationships. Scientists need to understand the complexity of the environmental policy process as a historical process in its own right in order to work out which policy problems offer both the scope and the incentive to sustain specific forms of interdisciplinary debate that are likely to produce better policy outcomes.
One part of the Australian colonial legacy in PNG is the Australian government's attempt to forge partnerships with different groups of foreign companies in different economic sectors in order to lay the economic foundations for rural development in the newly independent nation. American and Australian capital was invited to develop the mining industry, European capital to develop the oil palm industry, and Japanese capital to develop the forest industry. Nowadays, the Australian government seems to have forgotten its late colonial enthusiasm for this form of state capitalism, and its aid to PNG is largely framed by the neo-liberal policy prescriptions which the World Bank was able to impose on the PNG government through a sequence of structural adjustment programs beginning in 1990. However, members of PNG's national political elite have persistently sought refuge from this economic orthodoxy through their engagement with Asian governments and companies. In this paper I examine the way in which changing political and economic conditions have affected the actual pattern of Asian investment in PNG's forestry and agriculture sectors, and the way in which different stakeholders have responded to this changing pattern of investment. Despite the prevalence of a policy narrative which holds Asian investors responsible for the corruption of PNG's political institutions when mineral resource booms liberate national politicians from the constraints of Western economic orthodoxy, I show that Asian investment in these two sectors has taken several different forms, and there is no simple sense in which PNG's national economy and political system are subject to a concerted takeover by Asian business interests. (Pac Aff/GIGA)
