PNG needs more community-based resource management areas

 

Great Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare
launched The TURTLES RETURN book in
June 2018 after it was published by
Sir Peter Barter.

By WENCESLAUS MAGUN 

There is a much greater need in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to establish and sustain adaptive community-based resource management areas in light of the PNG government's failure to establish a sand mining policy and legislative framework.  

PNG has a land area of about 462 840 square kilometers with a small population of about 7 million people.  It occupies 1 percent of the world‘s land area and has about 6 to 7 percent of the world‘s total biodiversity which is equivalent to 400,000 to 700,000 species from an estimated 14 million species on earth thus globally recognized as one of the four mega-diversity areas of the world. It has 5,000 lakes, extensive river systems, 5,000 miles of mangrove swamps (1.5 % land area), and 8,000km² oceans, including 4,000km² coral reefs (NBSAP, 2007).

Madang Land Use Plan courtesy of TNC

Located within the Coral Triangle, a region recognized for its unparalleled coral reef biodiversity, PNG boasts of some of the most unique, endemic, and also endangered marine habitats, invertebrates, vertebrates, coral reefs, seagrass, and mangroves.

It boasts to have the second-largest nesting site of the critically endangered Leatherback Turtles located on the Huon Coast in Morobe Province with sporadic sites in Madang and other maritime provinces.

To ensure that these resources remain intact, PNG had signed the Treaty on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)  in 1992 and ratified it in March 1993.  Under this obligation PNG must fulfill 3 CBD Objectives which are:

1.    Conservation of biological diversity.

2.    Sustainable use of its components; and

3.    Fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources

This means that PNG, like most countries of the world, has committed to a number of binding obligations in the Articles of the Convention. 

Of most direct importance to the Policy is Article 8 on ‘in-situ biodiversity conservation, which commits PNG to establish and manage a system of protected areas, and to ensure that traditional lifestyles linked to the land are also protected.  Many of the other Articles are relevant to protected areas in PNG, including those about monitoring and identification of biodiversity values (Wickham et al., 2010).

Target 11 of the Aichi Biodiversity Target under CBD’s Objective calls for all governments who have signed the CBD treaty and ratified it to ensure that: “By 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystems services of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures are integrated into the wider landscape and seascape;” 

In 2014, Yamai villagers in Rai Coast District, Madang
Province released this leatherback to sea following
MAKATA's advocacy efforts. Picture by Simon Warr.

In addition, Target 12 points out that: “By 2020, the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained.”

Target 12 is MAKATA’s core business in light of saving, protecting, and restoring populations of the critically endangered Leatherback Turtles in ways that also improve the lives of indigenous local communities who share the beaches these gentle creatures come to nest.

PNG also ratified the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITIES), in 1976 which meant that Papua New Guineans are forbidden to trade endangered species such as sea turtles.

Achieving these obligations is not easy in PNG.  This is because 97% of PNG land is customarily owned and only 3 to 4 % is State owned.  The traditional customary tenure system in PNG is recognized by the country’s constitution and national laws.  This gives landowners freedom to determine how they wish to manage or give access to others to use their land, water, and sea resources upon which they are heavily dependent.