Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

92 The Foi in Papua New Guinea
imagine how any of this could change. But in
the 1980s another hole was opened in the Earth,
releasing a different kind of flood. The discovery
of petroleum brought a tide of change that still
has not crested. Like the first flood, this one is
fraught with peril and opportunity. The oil consortium
has pledged to funnel resources into
efforts led by WWF to manage the change so that
the people who live in the area can preserve their
resource base and the richness of their own cultures.
Not all of these efforts have fared well, but
one in particular, focused on the rare fish that
inhabit the lake, has shown great promise as a
model that local people can build on and follow.
This case study examines that effort. To provide
context, it begins with a country and regional
overview of the land and its people. It then looks
more closely at how the Lake Kutubu Fish
Management Project evolved. It concludes by
drawing lessons that may be useful to others.
II. An Overview
Papua New Guinea (PNG) comprises the eastern
half of New Guinea, the world’s largest and highest
tropical subcontinental island; the islands of
Bismarck Archipelago; the northernmost part of
the Solomon Group; and some 600 smaller
islands. PNG’s 465,000 square kilometers
support a remarkable range of equatorial ecosystems—from
high alpine peaks that are periodically
dusted with snow, to extensive pristine tracts
of steamy lowland tropical rain forest snarled by
river deltas. And this landscape is home to one of
the planet’s most unique and diverse biological
endowments. PNG is estimated to accommodate
5 percent of the world’s biodiversity in less than 1
percent of its land area.
The mainland coastline is rich in species and
includes extensive mangrove swamps, lagoons,
wetlands, coral reefs, and atolls. Inland is one of
the world’s last frontiers with extensive stands of
tropical rain forest, totaling some 36 million
hectares, or roughly 80 percent of the country’s
total land area. The forest flora is one of the richest
on Earth and exhibits high endemism, about
53 percent.
This bounty has sustained human subsistence for
millennia and continues to provide for the more
than 85 percent of the population who reside in
rural communities. The incredible natural diversity
is mirrored by PNG’s unparalleled concentration
of ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity. The
population of 4.9 million people is divided among
more than 800 languages and nearly as many cultures.
This is perhaps the only country in the
world where indigenous peoples make up more
than 95 percent of the population and where more
than 97 percent of the land is still controlled by
indigenous landholders under traditional systems
of tenure. Indigenous communities are closely
tied to the ecosystems they inhabit. Renewable
biological resources are the mainstay of these
people and provide the foundation for sustainable
economic growth and new employment.
The forests provide people with remedies for illness
and material for traditional homes and clothing,
and are the domain of ancestral spirits that
extend far back in mythological time. Since traditional
tenure prevails, local people are the stewards
of the forests on which they depend.
Resource and ecosystem conservation is not only
essential to the well-being of communities, but is
also in their hands.
2.1 Land Tenure
Most land in Papua New Guinea is held in common
by kinship groups under customary laws
that generally set out permanent and absolute
rights. Knowledge of land rights and boundaries
has been passed orally from generation to
generation. There is no system of registration or
documentation to provide legal proof of ownership.
Past attempts by colonial administrators
and more recently by a World Bank/IMF-sponsored
“Land Mobilization Program” to register
titles in the name of “development” have met
with fierce resistance and failed.
Customary land is alienable under terms that
vary by group, although ownership is confined to
the biological resources within a given area and
does not govern subsoil usufruct. This is one of
the few areas in which the modern legal system
has jurisdiction over changes in ownership. Only
3 percent of all land has been alienated, most of
it held in government leases and the rest in freehold
titles granted before the early part of the
twentieth century. Any acquisition of territory by
the state is subject to provisions of the Land Act
that require an exclusively “public purpose” and
“a reasonable justification.”