scholarly journals From Planning to Action: Forest Conservation and Management in Papua New Guinea

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy MacKinnon

Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and still boasts 33 million hectares of closed natural forest (77% of the country), home to numerous endemic species. Overall PNG is sparsely populated with some 700 distinct cultural/ language groups. Economic growth over the past two decades has been spurred by large-scale mining, petroleum and logging operations though the majority of the population continues to rely upon subsistence agriculture (swidden) and collection and utilization of forest products. Some 15 million hectares of forests are accessible for logging, of which 1.5 million hectares have already been logged, generally in an unsustainable manner. Of the over 6 million ha of approved timber blocks more than 1.5 million hectares have been located in areas of high biological value. Forest loss and degradation is now becoming a serious problem.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gino de Gelder ◽  
Laurent Husson ◽  
Anne-Morwenn Pastier ◽  
Denovan Chauveau ◽  
David Fernández-Blanco ◽  
...  

<p>Quaternary sea-level curves provide crucial insights to constrain tectonic and climatic processes, but require calibration with geological constraints that are particularly scarce for cold periods prior to the last glacial-interglacial cycle. To derive such constraints, we re-visit the Huon Peninsula in Papua New Guinea, which is a classic coral reef terrace (CRT) site that was used for the earliest relative sea-level (RSL) curves. We use digital surface models calculated from 0.5m Pleiades satellite imagery to improve RSL constraints, and unlike previous studies, we find that large-scale tilting of the terrace sequence is generally N-directed. This implies that RSL estimates are several meters higher than previously thought for most highstands over the past ~125 ka. We use the large-scale geometry of the terrace sequence to estimate sea-level highstands up to ~400 ka, and our results suggest that global mean sea-level curves derived from oxygen isotopes consistently underestimate sea-level during the relatively cold Marine Isotope Stages 3, 5a, 5c, 6, 9a and 11a, up to ~10-20 m. We use coral reef models to show that our age interpretation is consistent with the overall terrace sequence morphology, and fits between models and topography improve when adjusting sea-level highstands according to our findings.</p>


Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.


Viruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 482
Author(s):  
Alice Michie ◽  
John S. Mackenzie ◽  
David W. Smith ◽  
Allison Imrie

Ross River virus (RRV) is the most medically significant mosquito-borne virus of Australia, in terms of human morbidity. RRV cases, characterised by febrile illness and potentially persistent arthralgia, have been reported from all Australian states and territories. RRV was the cause of a large-scale epidemic of multiple Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) from 1979 to 1980, involving at least 50,000 cases. Historical evidence of RRV seropositivity beyond Australia, in populations of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, has been documented. We describe the genomic characterisation and timescale analysis of the first isolate of RRV to be sampled from PNG to date. Our analysis indicates that RRV has evolved locally within PNG, independent of Australian lineages, over an approximate 40 year period. The mean time to most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of the unique PNG clade coincides with the initiation of the PICTs epidemic in mid-1979. This may indicate that an ancestral variant of the PNG clade was seeded into the region during the epidemic, a period of high RRV transmission. Further epidemiological and molecular-based surveillance is required in PNG to better understand the molecular epidemiology of RRV in the general Australasian region.


Author(s):  
Victoria C. Stead

Although it diverges markedly from the vision of the Melanesian Way elaborated in the 1975 constitution, large-scale resource extraction has in recent decades been championed as the key mechanism for development in Papua New Guinea. In this context, forms of “middle-way” land reform are advocated as means of rendering customary land tenure commensurable with the requirements of modern, capitalist practices of production and economic activity. Principal amongst these are Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) and lease-lease-back arrangements. Ethnographic exploration of communities affected by the tuna industry in Madang Province shows how these land reforms transform structures and cartographies of power, privileging the agents of the state and global capital at the same time that they transform relations of power within communities. At the same time, however, forms of codification and the assertion of landowner identities allow communities to make claims against outside agents involved in resource extractive activity on their lands.


2010 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris O. McKee ◽  
Vincent E. Neall ◽  
Robin Torrence

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-148
Author(s):  
William K. A. Agyei

SummaryData collected on fertility, mortality and family planning in two surveys in Papua New Guinea are presented. The first survey was conducted in rural and urban areas between November 1979 and March 1980 in eight provinces of Papua New Guinea, and the second between late June and early July 1981 in the Lae urban area. The unadjusted total fertility rates suggest that fertility is lower in the Lae urban area than in the rural and provincial urban areas. However, the adjusted rates indicate that fertility is higher in the provincial urban areas than in the rural and Lae urban areas. The results also confirm a trend towards lower infant and child mortality over the past 15 years, as well as the existence of moderate differentials between rural, provincial urban and the Lae urban areas.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Glazebrook

In this paper I explore two related questions: how does a particular site come to be perceived as sacred, and what is the impact of the destruction of something sacred when it occurs in a place of ‘refuge’? This study is situated on the island of New Guinea, in the experiences of West Papuan people from the Indonesian Province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), living as refugees across the international border in Papua New Guinea. The inquiry is grounded in two instances involving a refugee population in a place of refuge. The first instance involves the burning of a church built by a refugee congregation, and the second involves the large-scale occupation by a refugee population of another people’s land. A doubling effect is intended here. Forced migration can simultaneously render refugees vulnerable to the violence of others, and in the process of resettlement, refugees may have no real choice but to engage in actions that violate the land of others.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang-Jian Shiau ◽  
Min-Te Chen ◽  
Steven C. Clemens ◽  
Chih-An Huh ◽  
Masanobu Yamamoto ◽  
...  

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