In Papua New Guinea: the Bismarck Ramu Group

PACIFIC ECONOMIC BULLETIN

Challenging integrated conservation and development in Papua New Guinea: the Bismarck Ramu Group

Tim Anderson

This paper examines the Bismarck Ramu Group’s challenge to Tim Anderson is a models of integrated conservation and development through a lecturer in Political distinct Papua New Guinean model of community partnerships Economy at the and self-reliant strategies. Strategies that empower indigenous University of Sydney. communities and increase their self-reliance are central, as is engaging indigenous communities in the process of deciding on conservation measures.

People in Papua New Guinea are very communities and failed to control the much connected to their land—it’s onslaught of natural resource industries. their guarantee of survival—it is like This has led some indigenous groups to money in western society…it is like a reclaim the process, and to redefine mother to a baby (John Chitoa, Bismarck conservation and development in their own Ramu Group Co-coordinator). terms. Where development has been linked to The Bismarck Ramu Group (BRG) in the conservation, there has been huge controversy Madang region of Papua New Guinea is one over the setting of priorities, the authorship such group. It has created a model that is of projects, and the nature and meaning of attracting national and international both ‘conservation’ and ‘development’. attention. In 1999 the group split from a Integrated conservation and development United Nations Development Programme projects (ICADs) have been established for (UNDP)-sponsored ICAD project and many years around the world, yet in Papua focused instead on programs of villager New Guinea their history has not been a mobilisation, led by indigenous workers, and happy one. They have consumed enormous with no material incentives. Some successes resources yet have often both alienated local in establishing wildlife management areas

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and a range of other village-level achievements, including the Oro Butterfly Project, backed combined with a popular approach that makes by the PNG Department of Environment and links with traditional practices and local Conservation and AusAID (Oro Province); histories—and so resonates well with local the Kikori Basin ICADP, run by World Wildlife people—have led other Papua New Guinea Fund-USA (Gulf and Southern Highlands and international groups to seek training and provinces); the Lak ICADP, backed by the PNG contact with the Bismarck Ramu Group, so Department of Environment and Conservation as to learn and adopt some of its methods. and the UNDP (New Ireland Province); and the Bismarck Ramu ICADP, backed by the PNG Department of Environment and Rejecting the ICAD model Conservation, the Christensen Research Institute and the UNDP (Simbu and Madang ICAD projects began in Africa and India in Provinces) (McCallum and Sekhran 1997). The the 1980s (after the failure of many simple Bismarck Ramu Group sprang directly out ‘development excluding’ nature reserves) of the failures of the Lak ICAD and with the aim of ‘building linkages between frustrations with the Bismarck Ramu ICAD. the welfare objectives of local communities However, the Kikori Basin ICAD and the Oro and biodiversity conservation goals by Butterfly Project illustrate some typical providing communities with development problems with ICADs. support’ (McCallum and Sekhran 1997:4). The Kikori ICAD set out to develop small They generally involve some form of material income-generating activities for Southern incentive for local communities to agree to Highlands communities in a resource and protect natural areas. The incentive for some biodiversity rich area. The World Wildlife form of development is seen as compensation Fund was backed by the giant oil company for forgoing exploitation of the natural Chevron and, later on, the World Bank and environment that is to be protected. These the US State Department. The World Wildlife protected areas are usually linked to Fund claims that the project has successfully biodiversity ‘hotspots’. However the integrated conservation with community compensation model tends to assume that capacity building, education and eco-forestry local poor people are likely to be driven to (World Wildlife Fund 2000). Chevron said it destroy the natural value of their locale, and considered its money well spent, because have few of their own indigenous resources ‘WWF will act as a buffer…against for environmental management. Large international environmental criticism’ of its international non-government organisations, oil operations in the area. When village- such as the World Wildlife Fund and based eco-forestry operations collapsed, the Conservation International have committed project sourced ‘eco-forestry’ timber from a heavily to ICADs, often in collaboration with company that was logging sensitive resource corporations and development mangrove areas (Rowell 2001:np). banks. They maintain that such projects have The Oro Butterfly Project arose from been successful in promoting both rural concern over land clearing for oil palm, which development and biodiversity conservation had endangered the habitat of the world’s (World Wildlife Fund 2000). largest butterfly, the Queen Alexandra From their origins in Africa and India, Birdwing butterfly. AusAID funded a several- ICAD projects spread to Papua New Guinea. million dollar ICAD project to research the By the late 1990s there were many different butterfly, prepare education and conservation types of projects in Papua New Guinea, plans, and offer economic and social

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incentives to local communities. These ICAD than from the loggers, so their incentives included support for cash cropping expectations were high. But the project came (coffee and cocoa), rainforest products, eco- to Lak after logging was underway, and did forestry, captive butterfly breeding, school not have the resources to compete with the support, water supplies and health services logging company, which had tactically (AACM 1995:5–6, 38–43). One year into the slowed down its use of incentives, and set project, the local community had expressed up its own ‘landowner companies’ (Cooke concern over basic infrastructure, particularly 1997), while the ICAD used up its own roads and health centres. The project staff resources. The planned eco-forestry, small- had installed some water tanks, assisted with scale logging projects did not work, as the some health contingencies, and was ‘lobbying’ community saw them as a poor alternative to improve the roads into the area (Papua to established payments (albeit short term) New Guinea 1996:2–4). When malnutrition from the big loggers (Chitoa 2003b; McCallum problems were discovered in the plateau area, and Sekhran 1997). a rabbit breeding program was introduced, The Lak Project (1993–95) was assessed but this was poorly conceived and ended up by the UNDP as a failure, but lessons were a failure. The final report to AusAID suggests documented in two books: Race for the a successfully completed project, but Rainforest (McCallum and Sekhran 1997) and independent investigators found disillusion- Race for the Rainforest 2 (Ellis 1999). The ment, poverty and failure in its wake project was said to have failed because a large (O’Connor 2003). bio-diversity conservation area was not The Bismarck Ramu Group built on the created, and logging followed the delivery of experience of the Lak ICAD. John Chitoa, now a range of incentives to landowners, intended co-coordinator of the group, worked in the to help them stop the logging (Chitoa 2003b). Lak ICAD. He says that it set about trying to The lessons included an awareness that compete with logging companies, offering an ICADs and their material incentives could ‘early reward scheme’ to groups already create dependency and passivity on the part receiving royalties from logging. The idea of landowners; that cooperative endeavour, was to get villager-landowners to agree to ‘partnerships’ and ‘participation’ are easily leave certain trees still standing, and still spoken of but may often be superficial; that have access to royalty equivalents. The landowner attitudes towards conservation project began in 1992. are critical; and that logging companies had a comparative advantage (that is, facilitated But we found out later, towards the access and no real regulation) in dealing with end of 1993/1994…basically people local communities in the PNG political were confused, they thought that climate (McCallum and Sekhran 1997:51–77; the integrated conservation and GEF 1998). development idea was just like another The second UNDP report noted that there developer coming, it was just like were many problems with the ‘material another New Guinea Lumber incentives to compensate communities for Company (Chitoa 2003b). opportunity costs’ approach used in Lak, The project was run by the PNG Department including the generation of unrealistic of Conservation, backed by the UNDP. expectations of ‘cargo’ (western goods and Because there were hundreds of thousands services) amongst local people, and the fact of kina in the project, the villager-landowners that ‘ICAD projects cannot compete with thought that they might get more from the mining or logging companies…in the

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provision of immediate material benefits to It’s difficult to preach conservation… communities’ (Ellis 1999:6, 64–65, 68). Long- there were other things on people’s term education and landowner awareness minds—health and education. We was required. John Chitoa says that one of would help them look at their village— the big lessons learned from Lak was that problems that they faced. As we built [w]e should not play the same game as trust with them, as the relationship the loggers…the company’s strength is grew, we could possibly talk about money and assets…that stuff was looking at the environment (Lalley raising expectations in the field…[and] 2003a). we are not in a position to compete…our Several changes took place before strength lies with information, members of the Bismarck Ramu ICAD finally knowledge and skills (Chitoa 2003b). broke from the UNDP. First, community entry, The Bismarck Ramu ICAD Project (1995– which involved listening (without previously 99) began in an area that was more protected fixed conservation agendas) to villagers’ from the imminent threat of logging (and concerns, was regarded as the first step in a large-scale cash cropping) but suffered from community development process. This was many of the same problems. Members of the not to say that community organisers had Bismarck Ramu project were dissatisfied no agenda; their own social and conservation with the ICAD design, which separated concerns were simply accorded a more conservation and development (Ellis 1999). deferential place. Such an approach, it was said, could not be The Bismarck Ramu community-entry truly driven by the landowners. As a result, strategy…did not aim to push several of the project team departed from the conservation, but rather through a ICAD method and eventually created the gradual process of trust building, local Bismarck Ramu Group, breaking away from problem analysis and an emphasis on the PNG Government and the UNDP. self-reliance [aimed] to find out which Flip Van Helden, who worked with the communities in the area of interest could Bismarck Ramu ICAD, says that a change in have a potential interest in resource approach was driven by team members management issues, and would during this project (Van Helden 1998; Van therefore be suitable partners for further Helden and Schneemann 2000). Discussions project work (Van Helden 2001:270). within the team in 1996 led to the recruitment Second, all material incentives were of a community development specialist, and abandoned. No money or ‘cargo’ (for example, a shift to a more ‘people-centred approach’, motor vehicles and tinned food) were to be where the biologists were eventually associated with their entry into a community. ‘marginalised’ by the social scientists (Van Helden 2001:242). Yet a shift away from the The Madang project staff sincerely use of material incentives and towards came to believe in this new ‘non cargo’ ‘community entry’, where the priorities of approach, treating conservation as a local communities were factored in, was said self-help rather than a lack-of- to be ‘fundamentally incompatible with the economic-incentives problem (Van underlying economistic premise of [the] ICAD Helden 2001:247). idea’ (Van Helden 2001:245). One effect of A third major change was that all inter- this was that the ICAD, in the later days of national workers but one (the trainer, Barry UNDP funding, was no longer primarily a Lalley) had left the project by 1999 (Lalley conservation project. 2003c); no international workers were

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involved in community entry. This was not people…BRG wants to help people to because the group disliked or did not have decide what is important for their lives good relations with foreigners. It simply was and future generations—and to see the a product of Papua New Guinea’s post- relationship between the environment colonial history (including the ‘aid’ and and how their ancestors have lived for resource industries) that foreigners are centuries (Guman 2003a). always associated with influence and the However, when looking at the Melanesian allocation of ‘development’ moneys, including features of this approach, it should be bribes. BRG Finance Manager Tamana recognised that there are also international Tenehoe, a Bougainvillean woman and core influences. The Bismarck Ramu Group’s group member, explains initial community development trainer, Barry …if we have a foreigner in the team, Lalley, who still sees himself as an ‘outsider’, the first picture that people in the says village will get, they will expect [t]hey wanted to try to make the something from outside…Whereas organisation as Melanesian as when we have our own local people possible… But it’s been interesting going into the communities I don’t to watch these influences because think it raises their expectations as they try to keep the organisation (Tenehoe 2003). Melanesian, they also adopt outside thinking—they really can’t help it in this globalised world Community development and (Lalley 2003c). landowner support One such outside influence was the writings on ‘participatory democracy’ of Ann After the break from the UNDP, the ICAD Hope and Sally Timmel. Referring to some members formed the Bismarck Ramu Group, African cultural practices, they drew which was located on the same premises but attention to the broad community-level with new funding links. Funding was consultation, the ‘weaving together of a social secured from two European foundations (the fabric’ and the importance of women’s roles Interchurch Organisation for Development in a process of development. Even research Cooperation and Bread for the World), which within indigenous communities required have generally taken a ‘hands off’ approach, community consent, developmental ‘aid’ knowing and trusting the group and its work. that benefited only élites should be rejected, The Bismarck Ramu Group developed a and the ‘trickle down’ effect of broad group of eight full-time staff and 16 part-time economic growth was worse than useless community organisers (Chitoa 2003a). (Hope and Timmel 1996:4–6). The PNG BRG members generally stress the experience of the 1980s and 1990s seemed to Melanesian nature of their approach, and prove their points: that economic growth indeed in their village work there is constant would not help marginalised peoples, and emphasis on the value of customary that policy formulation without community relationships, on building self-reliance, and input was ‘a recipe for disaster’ (Hope and on environmental management based on Timmel 2001:214). Since independence, traditional principles. As one member stressed Papua New Guinea has seen record export …BRG is basically a mobilisation of performance, coupled with very poor social local people—to empower local indicators (see Anderson 2003:15–16), and

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large mining developments that had led to companies and development agencies, such war and massive social disruption. as the World Bank, to defend customary land This emphasis on ‘process’ has its roots title. in indigenous practice, but also has a Finally, the focus on self-reliance is an structured counterpart in western thinking. indigenous feature, which builds on support A lot of time is taken in the Bismarck Ramu for customary land title, which is in turn Group’s internal meetings, which last almost linked to kinship systems. Everyone in Papua a week, every month. Barry Lalley says that New Guinea has access to land, and a means the length of meetings is ‘strictly of survival—until kinships and land systems Melanesian…because relationships matter, are broken. The Bismarck Ramu Group people matter’ (Lalley 2003c). The implied constantly stresses self-reliance, in part ‘inefficiency’ point is not lost on BRG because of the disastrous consequences members. But they say this practice represents observed for some who have alienated their a deliberate focus on relationship building, clan landholdings, and have therefore rather than the quick cut to a desired outcome. rendered their children and grandchildren Yanny Guman says that the Bismarck Ramu destitute. Life and unemployment in the Group is many settlements around Papua New Guinea’s cities is precarious. Helping …a process-oriented organisation… develop self-reliant strategies is seen as being we build relationships…we value at the core of the BRG approach to community people’s time. We don’t talk about all development. the tangible things that will happen after, the relationship building is the Our version of community develop- first part…a lot of criticisms actually ment…is basically self-reliance of the come up, saying that well ‘it’s process people...[we are] helping to organise the driven—it’s time consuming, a lot of people so that they can do things on resources—it’s just wasting time’ and their own, without sitting down and of course to some extent it is; but in waiting for outside assistance (Paol order for good community 2003b). development to take place…people Yanny Guman points out the stark reality of [must] identify their own outcomes lack of government services that also lies (Guman 2003b). behind the strategy of supporting self- The respect for small landowners in reliance. Papua New Guinea is a clear indigenous People out there—they’re rural, they’re feature of BRG practice. The group places isolated—they expect a government land custodianship at the heart of a strategy official or someone from the church to of self-reliance and ecological management. go in and provide all the things they Not all developing or indigenous need, but they will never get it…so we communities have this advantage, but in believe the key and the most important Papua New Guinea the land is very fertile part of any process of community and over 95 per cent of land is owned by development work is to get people to small groups under customary title. However realise they have the answers within logging and mining companies regularly themselves (Guman 2003b). subvert community decision-making However, the group recognises that processes, and the Bismarck Ramu Group communities often do need resources, and has joined landowners’ ongoing battles with money, regardless of the BRG approach.

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Basically we are not against money, Community Development Team (CDT) we’re not against cargo…but you do facilitated community assessment of their not start with money…we know that own strengths and weaknesses. The analysis times are different now, people are (step four) began with negotiations over a pressured to have money for school further meeting in which solutions and an and health fees…but we want to help autonomous way forward might be planned. them get up on their own two feet and This would be followed by planning, which use their own resources (Chitoa involved a CDT assessment of the 2003b). community’s plans, discussion of the community’s vision, prioritisation of the problems to address and development of an Indigenous partnerships action plan. The sixth stage of mobilisation involved the community putting their plan Engagement with a community was initially into place. The role of the CDT followed over seen in seven stages: entry, education, into a seventh, follow-up phase, where there assessment, analysis, planning, mobilisation would be monitoring, encouragement and and follow-up (Table 1). Entry to a community further facilitation. Each stage began with involved meeting with the elders, exchanging meetings with community leaders to ensure stories (‘story-ing’) with community people, that it was all right to hold another meeting and the community development team (Bismarck Ramu Group 1997:4–15). These meeting to assess the community. Education steps were discussed intensively at BRG meant holding community meetings on PNG meetings, and later simplified into a history and culture, and on the theme of self- four-step process (Table 1). The Community reliance, exchanging stories with community Development Teams were renamed people and arranging a time to return. Community Organisers; then in 2004 they Assessment involved community mapping were called Community Facilitators, to give (by the community), an exchange of stories greater recognition to the fact that village which link to the previous visit, and a communities are really doing their own

Table 1 Steps in the BRG community organising process

Initial (7 step) model Revised (4 step) model …with options Entry Entry Education PNG timeline Assessment Village timeline Analysis Community mapping Planning * Choice of six options ———————>EXIT Mobilisation Network Follow-up Planning Land use planning Problems Matrix (conservation) process

Sources: Bismarck Ramu Group, 1997. Bismarck Ramu Group (BRG), Guide for Community Development Team Members, Bismarck Ramu Group, Madang; Sinemile, G., 2003. Interview with the author, Madang, 9 December; Lalley, B., 2003c. Interview with the author, Madang, 5 December.

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community development (Chitoa 2003b; Paol Companies are here for profits and no 2003b). matter what they will wheel and deal Importantly, conservation was not and manipulate the people for their introduced by the community organisers as own end. So our bias has been against an initial or central theme, a clear break from big development, if there is any kind of the ICAD approach. The Bismarck Ramu development it has to be from the Group maintains that people and planned by them and …any attempt at conservation must be normally it would be small develop- done in a real partnership with the ment at their own level—manageable community…We have chosen to begin by them (Paol 2003b). from where the people are—not in There were a few short-term benefits from big terms of conservation or the environ- corporate projects (cash, vehicles), then the ment, but in terms of their lives, their hard reality of long-term dispossession and problems, their struggles and their environmental degradation bit hard. dreams. From here we can eventually Companies in Papua New Guinea want to get to conservation (Bismarck Ramu get their hands on land and cheap Group 1997:26–27). resources—they are almost all natural That is, the Bismarck Ramu Group them- resource plunderers. If villagers make it clear selves value environmental protection, but they want to do business with a big company, as a matter of community organising process and do not want the Bismarck Ramu Group, they will not seek to set an agenda or lead the community organisers will just leave. with their values. In addition, the community The steps of the organising process are a guide for the community organisers, and not organisers make it clear that they have not a structured process for the villagers to come to deliver any ‘cargo’ (outside goods), ‘progress’ through, or qualify in. Never- money or to impose a predetermined project. theless, as a method, they are taken seriously Their task is to help the community organise, by the Bismarck Ramu Group. Trainer Grace and to empower itself, using its own resources Sinemile points out (Bismarck Ramu Group 1997:22–39). However the Bismarck Ramu Group …we only guide them; [for example] if makes it clear that they seek to promote self- they want better water in the reliant strategies including communities community, if the water source in the holding and properly managing their own community is not good, we find some land, ‘good’ cultural values including resources, but not from outside…they ‘recognising the strength and value of themselves have to [make it happen] women’, and explaining ‘the negative impacts (Sinemile 2003). of large-scale development and the tricks used In 2002 the seven steps were reduced to four, by companies’. BRG workers made it very with six different pathway options (Table 1; clear (see, for example, Sinemile 2003, Paol see also Sinemile 2003; Lalley 2003b). The 2003a, Caspar 2003) that they saw only losses, main difference in the first four steps was an not gains, for local people who had alienated emphasis on local village ‘story-ing’, that is, their land to loggers, miners, cash croppers learning the lessons of their own history. and other big companies. There is a clear BRG New features in the six options were, first, view against corporate development. Grace recognition that the community organisers Sinemile (2003) says ‘[t]he companies come may not have anything to offer the villagers and get whatever they want, so I don’t see (leading to their exit); second, that network any betterment…from the companies’. connections might be immediately useful;

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third that planning might not always involve People…have health problems which land use planning; and, finally, a selection of they need to attend to, they have land conservation options—National Park, education problems—so we decided Fauna Sanctuary, Protected Area, Nature that we will do community develop- Reserve, Conservation Deed, Conservation ment first…[As] it turned out we Area and Wildlife Management Area—from achieved our [conservation] objective which communities can choose. These …by salvaging two wildlife manage- options all have some legal status, but each ment areas with the people…So by the has different combinations of community or processes that we use, people were able state control. Communities typically choose to conserve those areas without us an option which reserves greater community using money or cargo (Chitoa 2003b). control, and minimises the potential The current BRG Chairman, Poin Caspar, government threat to take over their land was one of the BRG community organisers (Caspar 2003). The BRG conservation team at Foroko and Sepu during this time. He now has the technical skills to help with explains that, before conservation, the developing a community’s chosen conserv- communities focused on their education and ation option. health needs. The BRG ‘model’ of community develop- The first two issues that they identified ment might be summed up as were education and health. So we took • developing indigenous partnerships with them through the [BRG] process…they villager-landowners (which involve a prioritised problems they were going well thought-out process of ‘community to address with their own resources entry’) …[and] decided to address the issue • assisting villager-landowners to develop of education first. As a result of that, a self-reliant strategies based on customary person in their community developed land tenure an elementary school in the community • assisting villager-landowners in …[in addition] they have an aid post community planning, including resource set up and [now] they have a health management and conservation options. worker in the community too (Caspar 2003). Later, a second large protected area was Conservation by other means created by eleven clans from Wanang Village. After BRG community organisers had spent Even though protected area options only two years with the community, the come at the end of a long process, the conservation team went in and took the Bismarck Ramu Group’s indirect approach communities through another process. to conservation has nevertheless produced Concerned that their area would be logged, results; after the communities’ needs have as an adjoining area had been, these 11 been worked through. John Chitoa describes landowner groups signed an agreement to the way in which, in 1999, the Bismarck not allow any big extractive ‘development’ on Ramu Group helped communities in the their land. Now, for any change, or for any Foroko and Sepu areas (in Madang Province) form of small development, every one of the create two Wildlife Management Areas of 11 groups has to agree to it (Paol 2003b). This some 80,000 hectares. Wanang Conservation Area covers 18,570.4

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hectares of primary forested land of the Upper The highly protected areas had spiritual as Sogeram region of the Madang. The Wanang well as conservation significance, and were agreement is a ‘conservation deed’, as distinct not just protected, but (in a hunter society) from a ‘wildlife management area’; but both were exclusion areas. mechanisms are amongst the options The spirits in that sacred site only presented by the BRG process (Paol 2003b). know me…and I know the stories that Both the Foroku-Sepu wildlife management involve that sacred site. So it was area and the Wanang Conservation Area are strictly forbidden [to enter the area] in the big river valley between the Adelbert …Very sacred sites are forbidden to Range and Bismarck Range. even [others] in the community, except The BRG conservation process begins for the immediate owners of the land with the traditional concept of conservation, (Caspar 2003). which people have been engaged in for many In the end, Poin believes that the Foroko and years, and leads up to the choice of Sepu people were very happy with the mechanisms, including community manage- outcome. ‘The people say now that “it’s our ment and traditional penalty systems. WMA”, they seem to own the WMA’ (Caspar In wildlife management you have to 2003). Whatever form of conservation plan have laws and penalties, and so that is chosen by a community, there needs to be is how we incorporated the traditional some combination of agreements and deeds, concept of conservation. So for access arrangements, boundary mapping, instance, we had a law that if someone laws and penalties for transgressions and from another clan goes into my land…I community surveillance and management of can lay a penalty on him, a western the area. The BRG conservation team is able type of penalty and also a traditional to assist with setting up these arrangements. form of penalty…you give me a certain The high profile achievements—80,000 amount of money and on top of that and 18,000 hectares of protected areas— you need to give me maybe a pig…they attract attention, but the Bismarck Ramu decided themselves—the landowners Group remains focused on community (Caspar 2003). development goals and confidence-building The highest levels of protected areas (probably processes that may result in a wide range of the equivalent of IUCN categories 1 and 2) outcomes. were linked to traditional sacred sites. Naturally there are taboo areas that are Group process strictly sacred sites which is out of bounds…in the language of some Two remarkable features of the Bismarck conservation people, they are like Ramu Group’s internal workings are the ‘wildlife banks’… But from the amount of time spent in group activities and traditional times…there have always the very low-key approach to expected been sacred sites. They serve as areas outcomes from their work. Both features reflect for wildlife to breed. And then when the emphasis on relationship building. The there are many of them, [wildlife] come Bismarck Ramu Group also declares itself as out of the conserved areas and people a non-promotional organisation, having no can kill them outside; but not inside pamphlets or visions of expansion. It sees its (Paol 2003b). community organisers as hybrid part-time

workers and volunteers—people who are as an important central aim in their regularly and necessarily taking their work in the communities (Eagles and practices back into the communities in which Jones 2002:21). they live. On gender, the group has developed While there are efforts to increase the policies that include a two-to-one mix of men proportion of women in the BRG manage- to women in community organiser teams, ment group, a decision was taken some time and a women-only policy of managing ago that only women should manage the finances. group’s finances, both in patrol teams and The entire group meets every month for at the group’s offices. five days to discuss group activities. One such meeting is associated with a briefing I think our people trusted the women before sending out the community organiser more than the men, and they trusted field patrols, and another after the patrols the women to take care of the money return, associated with a debriefing. Each when they went out on patrol…and patrol lasts about three weeks, and after the not so much the men…[this was] debriefing the workers go back to their because I think the women are wise— villages to practise at home what they wise spending the money and not the practise in their work. This is considered an men. That’s how we see it here (Tenehoe essential part of BRG work: that it is 2003). replicated in the workers’ home villages. So This policy recognises well-established in practice, community organisers spend findings, in many countries, that women almost half their time in their home villages; spend money more according to family they have another life. needs, while men use money more for The week-long meetings involve many ‘discretionary’ spending. reports, as well as trust exercises, group planning and role-playing. As a result of this intensive group contact, good group under- Lessons from the Bismarck Ramu standing and a strong sense of trust is built Group up between members. As far as possible, community organisers Four broad lessons can be drawn from the go out in teams of two men and one woman. Bismarck Ramu Group and its approach to This to some extent reflects the gender community development and conservation. composition of the group, but is also a The first two—the self-reliant model and deliberate design to ensure the security of the indigenous community empowerment— group in remote areas, the logistical strength have greatest direct relevance to indigenous to carry out certain field work and cross communities and developing countries. The rivers, and to ensure that there is a woman second two—the challenge to ‘desocialised’ in each group to talk with the women of the conservation and certain elements of group village. Bismarck Ramu Group’s evaluators process—have much wider relevance. said that The self-reliant model BRG is honest about its work with women…[they] continue to struggle The BRG model could be summed up as with ways they can improve their work developing indigenous partnerships with and its impact to ‘help people recognise villager-landowners, assisting villager- the strength and value of women’ landowners to develop self-reliant strategies [BRG aims] and that they recognise this based on customary land tenure, and finally,

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assisting villager-landowners in community The self-reliant model is therefore planning, including resource management contingent on a region where there is secure and conservation options. How widely title to productive land, and is subject to some applicable is this model? competitive pressures. It addresses the other This approach clearly relies on villagers end of the spectrum to liberal ‘employment having recognised title to land; land that is building’ policies, which demand intensified rich enough to support their communities in investment and commodification, and which most of their basic needs, and certainly as typically fail in regions with large informal regards food and housing. This is not the and subsistence sectors—often mainly case in many indigenous communities and adding to landlessness and poverty (Mazoyer developing countries, in post-colonial areas, 2001). But the self-reliant approach is also a where dispossession and marginalisation survival technique, which does not set itself are widespread. However, in Papua New up as a universal model. Yanny Guman says Guinea almost all people have kinship access the BRG approach simply fills a gap between to some customary title, there is a lot of highly very limited government services, church productive land, and only in some areas charities, and other community develop- (particularly in some crowded islands) are ments (Guman 2003b). there serious resource constraints and overcrowding. Indigenous community empowerment However, even in the Madang Region, The BRG approach to indigenous community Flip Van Helden raised questions about empowerment is a broader theme, with possible partisanship in BRG activities. He broader relevance. It is also a ‘Melanesian argued that the organising successes in synthesis’ of international influences and Foroku and Sepu were due to BRG organisers traditional practices. Structured facilitation offering a voice to Upper Ramu clans against processes seem to have been valuable, the encroaching Jimi migrant community particularly in a context where a wide range from the Highlands. He suggested the of outside activities, including aid, have been Bismarck Ramu Group may have found a failing communities. ‘fragile middle ground’ between the The BRG approach of disciplined competing interests of two communities. facilitation, refusing to make ultimate These clans realised that a conservation decisions for communities and encouraging arrangement could help them assert their them with a ‘you can do it’ message, seems rights as landowners in the face of Jimi well appreciated. Although it has potential migration and competing claims within the beyond indigenous communities and floodplains (Van Helden 2001:321). developing countries, this approach has Barry Lalley says that the Bismarck particular relevance to the imposed inferiority Ramu Group talked at length about this complexes of post-colonial societies. Powerful possibility but, in the event, the Jimi settlers ideological forces lead people to believe that unexpectedly supported the Upper Ramu they have no voice and no ability to oppose clans’ conservation areas, as a hedge against powerful interests. Community development further settlers in the area (Lalley 2003b). thinking has challenged this, and the BRG That still leaves open—as a matter for synthesis offers some inspiration. judgment in other situations—the question The BRG approach to indigenous of whether the BRG approach would aid one community empowerment has been one of group of landowners against another organised facilitation, and helping dispossessed, migrant or landless group. communities make decisions over the form

of community organisation, development is probably best understood as a ‘Melanesian and conservation. Even when this is at odds synthesis’. It introduces the value placed on with the corporate development model—and relationship building, traditionally found in perhaps because of that fact—their kinship systems, into a structured social committed decisions may well prove organisation. The result is a group which successful. does not ignore goals, but stresses process; and which actively organises opportunities Challenging ‘desocialised’ conservation for collective participation in group plans It is the obverse to ‘ownership’ of a develop- and evaluation. Very few groups meet for one ment or conservation project that imposed week to evaluate the past three weeks’ work. projects are highly vulnerable. While this Very few listen with such intense respect, and may be recognised in theory, the Bismarck allow long silences so that no opportunity to Ramu Group has experienced the failure of engage is denied, and in case a new imposed conservation projects, and viewpoint may emerge. This approach demonstrated the success of those generated challenges widespread notions of efficiency. by traditional communities. This gives them Yet the Bismarck Ramu Group is a dynamic a powerful position from which to criticise organisation, and as some have hinted conservation projects and processes that are (Eagles and Jones 2002:6–16), its future cut off from traditional communities. There is problems will most likely have to do a lesson here for western conservation groups. with a proliferation of activities and a Traditional communities have a wealth of reorganisation of priority areas. ecological management resources. Protected- area proposals that attempt to bypass these communities and their stores of knowledge, References and simply focus on bio-diversity, do so at their peril. These could be considered AACM, 1995. Papua New Guinea Conservation ‘desocialised’ conservation projects. As well Project, Oro province: Draft Project as failing in nature conservation, such projects Implementation Document, AACM Inter- may often offend and damage the interests of national Pty Ltd in association with the local communities. The most obvious example Australian Association for Peoples of the of these bypassing strategies is the engage- South Pacific, for the PNG Department of ment of international conservation groups Environment and Conservation and the with mining companies and international Australian Agency for International agencies, against the interests of indigenous Development (AusAID), Port Moresby communities. New possibilities for nature and Canberra, July. conservation could be looked for in partner- Anderson, T., 2003. A Grand Deceit: the ships with these communities. The lesson here World Bank’s claims of ‘good governance’ is that conservation must be seen as an in Papua New Guinea, Report for the enduring custodianship issue, and not a Australian Conservation Foundation, desocialised process. Sydney and the Centre for Environ- mental Law and Community Rights, Group process Port Moresby. Finally, some features of the Bismarck Ramu Bismarck Ramu Group, 1997. Guide for Group’s internal processes should be of Community Development Team Members, interest to a wide range of other groups. Like Bismarck Ramu Group, Madang. indigenous community empowerment, this

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