The Governance of Common Property in the Pacific Region Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: ISBN: 9781922144744 (pbk.) 9781922144751 (ebook) Subjects: Other Authors/Contributors: Larmour, Peter Dewey Number: 333.2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published by National Centre for Development Studies, 1997. This edition © 2013 ANU E Press Contents Abbreviations vii Contributors viii Foreword ix Ron Duncan Introduction Peter Larmour 1. Changing forms of communal tenure 19 R. Gerard Ward 2. Resolving property issues as a precondition for growth: 33 access to land in the Pacific islands Satish Chand and Ron Duncan 3. It's the land, stupid! The moral economy of resource ownership 47 in Papua New Guinea Chris Ballard 4. Customary land tenure and common/public rights to minerals 67 in Papua New Guinea Andrew A.L. Lakau 5. Improving security of access to customary-owned land in 73 Melanesia: mining in Papua New Guinea Ron Duncan and Rod Duncan 6. Common property, Maori identity and the Treaty of Waitangi 89 Sir Hugh Kawharu 7. Common property and regional sovereignty: relations 103 between aboriginal peoples and the Crown in Canada Peter J. Usher 8. Property, sovereignty, and self-determination in Australia 123 Henry Reynolds 9. Common property regimes in Aboriginal Australia: 127 totem ism revisited Deborah Bird Rose 10. Cooperative approaches to marine resource management 145 in the South Pacific ColinHunt 11. Common property management of highly migratory fish stocks: 165 tuna in the Pacific Janaline Oh 12. Common property conflict and resolution: 183 Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea Kilyali Kalit and Elspeth Young Author Index 209 Figures and tables Table 1 Excludability and rivalry 3 Figure 1.1 Landholdings in a hypothetical village 22 Table 2.1 Some basic indicators for the Forum island countries 35 Table 2.2 Categories of landownership in Fiji and Papua New Guinea 37 Figure 10.1 Coastal fisheries value (mean of 1989-1994) 147 Table 10.1 Marine sector profiles, South Pacific 149 Figure 12.1 Aboriginal land in Australia 190 Figure 12.2 Anmatyerre and non-Aboriginal delineations of property on Mt Allan 193 Symbols used in tables n.a. not applicable not available vi I The governance of common property in the Pacific region Abbreviations ANU The Australian National University BQCMB Beverly-Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board ePR common pool resources DFAT Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia EEZ Exclusive Economic Zones ESCAP Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific FFA Forum Fisheries Agency FFC Forum Fisheries Committee FSM Federated States of Micronesia GDP gross domesic product IFA Inuvialuit Final Agreement ILG Incorporated Land Group LMP Land Mobilisation Program MARPOL International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from Ships MTC minimum terms and conditions NLTB Native Land Trust Board NWMB Nunavut Wildlife Management Board NWT Northwest Territories (Canada) OPA Office of Pacific Island Affairs PNG Papua New Guinea SPC South Pacific Commission UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea UNDP United Nations Development Programme Foreword I vii Contributors Chris Ballard is a Research Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia­ Pacific project at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. Satish Chand is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Economics Division, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. Rod Duncan is a PhD student, Economics Department, Stanford University. Ron Duncan is the Executive Director of the National Centre for Development Studies, ANU. Colin Hunt lectures at the National Centre for Development Studies, ANU and specialises in ecological and resource economies. Kilyali Kalit coordinates activities for the World Wildlife Fund in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Sir Hugh Kawharu is the Foundation Professor of Anthropology and Maori Studies, The University of Auckland. Andrew A.L. Lakau is Executive Director of the Pacific Land Tenure and Policy Centre in Lae, Papua New Guinea. Peter Larmour is the Director of Graduate Studies in Development Administration at the National Centre for Development Studies, ANU. Janaline Oh works in the Office of Pacific Island Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, on regional resources issues. Henry Reynolds is an Australia Research Council Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University. Deborah Bird Rose is a Senior Fellow of the North Australia Research Unit, ANU, and has worked with Aboriginal claimants on land claims and in land disputes, and with the Aboriginal Land Commissioner. R. Gerard Ward is Professor of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. Peter J. Usher is Chairman of the Wildlife Management Advisory Council, Northwest Territory, one of the co-management bodies established under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement in the Canadian Western Arctic. Elspeth Young is a geographer and Director, Graduate Studies in Environmental Management and Development, National Centre for Development Studies, ANU. viii I The governance of common property in the Pacific region Foreword With the inevitable lessening of the importance of traditional forms of management of land and water resources in Pacific island countries accompanying the development of the state and the internationalisation of these economies, common property problems have arisen in many natural resource areas. 'This publication covers many of the problem areas which have arisen and discusses various approaches to better management. The papers in the volume were initially presented at a conference organised by the National Centre for Development Studies and held at The Australian National University on 19-20 September 1996. The conference was generously financed by AusAID and the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific project of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. The Centre is grateful for their support. The Centre also extends its appreciation to Dayaneetha De Silva and other publications staff of NCDS for their fine editorial and pagemaking efforts in bringing the publication to fruition as well as Centre staff led by Jennie Colman for organising the conference. It also thanks the ANU Cartography Unit for their help in preparing the maps for publication. RonDuncan Executive Director NCDS Foreword I ix Introduction Peter Larmour Common property has often been regarded as an obstacle to develop­ ment and best-or inevitably-replaced by private or state ownership. However, there are now many well-documented examples of successful management of open-access resources, and experiments in 'co-management' by users, owners, and government officials. The idea that the government should intervene to remedy the defects of common property, perhaps by registration, is now contested by a celebration of indigenous systems of self-management (Bromley 1989, Bromley and Cernea 1989). Government intervention may sometimes make things worse. Common property claims are also part of indigenous peoples' defence and reaffirmation of political sovereignty. The following chapters offer perspectives on common property from different academic disciplines, and from different islands and regions within and around the Pacific ocean. The disciplines include Geography, Economics, Anthropology, Law, History, and Political Science. The Pacific region includes settler societies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where indigenous systems were margina­ Used, and islands like Papua New Guinea and Fiji, where they were conserved, and even strengthened during and after colonial rule. The word 'governance' in the title recognises the political context of property rights, and refers to the idea that order, including systems of Introduction I property, is the outcome of interactions between governments, markets and communities (Larmour 1996a, 1996b). What is common property? Bromley defines property in terms of rights and duties towards a stream of benefits flowing from the resource. He notes that rights to use private property may be qualified, for example, by zoning legislation. He goes on to define common property as follows The management group (the owners) have a right to exclude non­ members, and non-members have a duty to abide by this exclusion. Individual members of the management group (the co-owners) have both rights and duties with respect to usage rates and maintenance of the thing owned (Bromley 1989:872). By contrast, in non-property there is ... no defined group of users or owners and so the benefit stream is available to anyone. Individuals have both privilege and no right with respect to usage rates and maintenance of the asset. The asset is an open access resource (Bromley 1989:872). The same resource may be treated in some circumstances as common property and in others as open access, or something in between. Common property regimes may dissolve into the free-for-all of open access. Equally, property regimes (common, private, or state) may be established over formerly open-access regimes-the creation of Exclusive Economic Zones would be a good example. The distinction between common