Papua New Guinea: Some reflections on human- environment - PDF document

29/03/2013 Papua New Guinea: Some reflections on human- environment relationships Henry Scheyvens Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Satoyama Initiative expert workshop July 23, 2012, Pacifico Yokohama Location 1

29/03/2013 Basic facts and figures  Total land area of 46.17 million hectares (Japan, 37.8 million ha); Mostly mountains with coastal lowlands and rolling foothills  Population: 6.3 million (2011); population growth rate of 1.94%  Has several thousand separate large self-sufficient communities, most with only a few hundred people; divided by language (over 800 distinct languages), customs, and tradition  97% of the land owned by the people (not the state) through customary forms of tenure  87% of population is rural PNG forests  Forests cover about 60% of the country  Well-known for biological endemism and diversification; thought to hold more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity  Over 2,000 timber species 2

29/03/2013 Human activities modifying forests Shifting agriculture  Socio- economic Small-scale conversion by communities  production for their own commercial agriculture landscape? Selective logging of forests at industrial  scale by companies that have acquired timber rights from the communities (12 million ha) Conversion for large-scale agriculture by  companies that have acquired land rights from communities (5 million ha) Ecosystems services critical to survival and livelihoods 3

29/03/2013 Shifting agriculture also key to survival 4

29/03/2013 Industrial-scale logging – many problems, few benefits Conversion for large-scale agricultural development – many problems now associated with the “global land grab” 5

29/03/2013 Conversion by communities for small- scale agriculture – importance source of income IGES projects in PNG(1): Research to support small-scale, internationally certified, community- based timber harvesting 6

29/03/2013 IGES projects in PNG (2): Training community teams to monitor forest biomass Final observations Supportive policies and  frameworks to promote socio- ecological production landscapes needed Participatory land-use planning  key to sustainable rural communities in PNG 7