Part 6 Agricultural Development, Policies and Governance Bryant Allen 6.1 Land tenure . .426 6.2 Agriculture and gender . .431 6.3 Policy making in the agricultural sector . .437 6.4 Governance . .442 6.5 Agricultural surveys . .455 6.6 Nutrition surveys . .463 6.7 Land settlement schemes 1 . 469 6.8 Rural development projects . .473 6.9 Transport infrastructure . .477 6.10 Rural poverty . .484 425 6.1 Land tenure After World War II, attempts were made to provide Customary ownership for registration of customary land. The Native Land Registration Ordinance was passed and a Native Land Commission was established to administer it. Around 97% of land in PNG is occupied and used Around 1960 a Land Titles Commission was set up under customary tenure. This section attempts to to hear claims and make decisions about ownership provide a basic understanding of customary land of customary land. In 1972 the Commission tenures. Custom is here defined as the long-estab- of Inquiry into Land Matters, with an all-PNG lished practices of the people of PNG. The principles membership, was set up by the PNG Government to of land tenure that arise from custom are not written make recommendations on suitable land policies and down, but are maintained through time by human laws for an independent PNG. The Commission’s memory and everyday practice. Although custom recommendations for customary land registration is recognised legally in the laws and constitution were never fully adopted but some legislation of PNG, land used and occupied under customary based on the inquiry was passed, including the tenure remains outside any formal state system of land Land Groups Incorporation Act and Land Disputes administration. Until recently, this land could only be Settlement Act. brought within a state system of land administration During the 1990s, under the influence of policies that through a process called alienation. In this process, argued that economic development depends on land land was purchased by the state from its customary registration, the World Bank attempted to persuade owners and leased to other users. When land was PNG to accept a Land Mobilisation Project that alienated, the customary owners legally lost all further included the drafting of customary land registration interest in the land. This permanent loss of interest in laws. This project was to be trialled in East Sepik land was always resisted by customary owners in PNG and East New Britain provinces. The laws were and today it is almost impossible to find landowning drafted but the trials were never carried out. In 2001, groups that will agree to land being alienated. rumours began circulating that the World Bank was The first laws governing land registration were trying to take possession of customary land. This led introduced to PNG in 1889. They provided for the to public protests and riots in which four people were registration of titles in ‘alienated lands’, or land that shot by police. had been acquired by colonial administrations from In the absence of a suitable law for the registration customary owners. Until World War II, registered of interests in customary land, the state has moved titles were only available to those who occupied towards the option of temporary alienation. Under alienated land. Section 11 of the Land Act 1962, the state can lease 426 6.1 Land tenure customary land from the recognised customary are remembered by repeated storytelling. Particular owners and then lease the land back to them as a individuals, usually older men, hold this knowledge legally incorporated body, or to another individual and are relied upon to argue the historical precedents or body, designated by the owners. At the end of the and principles, should disputes arise. lease, the land reverts to customary tenure unless a Landowning groups are commonly made up of a further lease is negotiated. number of related extended families. In some places, the families may be the descendants of a number of ancestral brothers, the sons of the original founding Landowning groups ancestor. In other places the families may trace their descent through female ancestors. In yet other places, membership rules allow affiliation to be traced The largest social groups, sometimes known as through descent from both male and female ancestors, ‘tribes’ or ‘language groups’, occupy large areas that such that the line of descent that an individual traces can be viewed as territorial domains. The rights to may jump back and forth between ancestral males and the territorial land may be held by the group as a ancestral females. Intelligent, forceful men can argue whole, or by parts of the group, and are protected their rights as landowners by either knowing these against infringements by agreements with neigh- histories better than other men, or by being more bouring territorial groups, and if necessary by force. skilled than others at manipulating the histories and The size of territorial domains may vary from a few presenting them more convincingly in public. hectares to many square kilometres, and the groups that occupy them may number from a few hundred Importantly, some members of the landowning to thousands of people. The rights to occupy a group will be individuals whose ancestors were territorial domain may be determined by kinship or incorporated into the group, by adoption for by historical circumstance. Large landowning groups example, at some time in the past, perhaps hundreds are often held together by the mutual advantages of of years ago. They will not be able trace a biological shared labour and defence, as well as by constant descent from the founding ancestor. Enough cases references to kinship, tradition, history, culture of non-descent incorporation into so-called ‘descent’ and language. groups exist in PNG to argue that ‘descent’ group is an inappropriate term for a landholding group, Within a territory, smaller landowning groups that even if the central ideology of most landowning make up the territorial group are composed of groups is one of descent from a common ancestor. people who say they are descended from a common Adoption into a landholding group and change of ancestor. For this reason these groups are often group membership is a typical feature of PNG land known as ‘descent’ groups and in PNG they are often tenure systems. The ability to transfer individuals loosely called ‘clans’. However, what determines clan serves to continually adjust the numbers of people membership can vary widely across PNG and the to the amount of land available. It also ensures the uncritical use of the term ‘clan’ can create consider- survival of individuals from groups that have gone able confusion and misunderstanding. Customary into decline because of the uncertainties of reproduc- landowning groups are based on a dominant ethos tion, mortality and warfare. However, adoption and of kinship in the broadest sense of that term, but change of membership of landowning groups is legitimate membership of a landowning group is frequently poorly understood or not recognised at all rarely determined only by biological descent. by non-villagers who simplify rights to descent from The rights of landowning groups to the land they a single male ancestor. occupy are established through agreed-upon histories The means of determining rights to land within that describe how they came into being and how they landowning groups vary from place to place and came to occupy the land. In the case of disputes, it from group to group. Rights to land are determined is often these histories that are disputed, rather than by very local histories that are recorded only the boundaries of the land concerned. The particular in the memories of the living. Within a single historical events that endorse rights to occupy land 6.1 Land tenure 427 village, hundreds of individual pieces of land have the user. The rights held by different people in the particular histories. It is very difficult to predict the same piece of land vary in nature and in degrees of circumstances that will have led to any particular importance. The use of the land for cultivation or family owning any particular piece of land. Previous another use may be decided from time to time by attempts to adjudicate land disputes in PNG have consultation within the family. been forced to rely heavily on the merits of each It is not necessary to be a customary rightholder to particular case as argued by the disputants and a piece of land to use it temporarily. A great deal local experts, and rarely on generalised principles of land is cultivated by a non-rightholder, with the of rightholding. An outsider wishing to determine permission of, or at the request of, the customary the rights to a piece of land must understand the rightholder. When a person who does not have particular circumstances related to it. This can be rights to a piece of land uses it without paying a rent, a time consuming and tedious business, especially the use is known as usufruct. For many reasons, as some informants can be senile, confused and including shared labour arrangements or to ensure forgetful and some will present a case that favours the maintenance of marriage, exchange and social their family’s interests over those of other families. relationships, the rightholders to a piece of land However, if membership of the landholding group is will invite non-rightholders to cultivate it. This is not properly investigated, great injustices can occur also how people who cannot establish rights to land and major disputes can be generated. within a group, such as in-marrying widows or All members of the landowning group are expected recent migrants, can be given land on which to grow to meet certain social and economic obligations food and build houses during their lifetimes.