In Papua New Guinea, Indigenous communities adopt conservation deeds to protect their lands on their own terms.

Tanya Zeriga and Mavis Jimbudo

The Wanang Conservation Area with a school, village, and forest. The first conservation deed in Papua New Guinea was established by the Wanang community, who banded together and signed a contract to refuse the exploitation of their forest. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

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In Papua New Guinea, land-holding clans are adopting conservation deeds to implement conservation projects. Why are they choosing to use contract law (legally binding agreements between parties, creating mutual obligations) over government-sanctioned conservation legislation?

Before exploring the reasons behind this choice, we backtrack in history to set the stage for making our case.

Papua New Guinea was one of the last countries in the world to be liberated from colonialism and recognized as a sovereign nation in 1975. The real Papua New Guinea story, however, began eighty years earlier. While the rest of the world was entering the so-called postmodern era by the twentieth century, Papua New Guinea tribal peoples — newly “discovered,” innocent, and starry-eyed — were found splitting rocks for stone axes and suddenly catapulted into the age of splitting DNA in cryonic laboratories. People who were communicating by way of callers from one mountain ridge to another were thrust almost directly into 5G communication networks with mobile phones. All this achieved in less than one hundred years.

People who were communicating by way of callers from one mountain ridge to another were thrust almost directly into 5G communication networks with mobile phones.

The standard operating procedure for functioning in the postmodern Westernized society was already in place in the West when Papua New Guinea was introduced to the world. The indigene from the Stone Age arrived in the postmodern era as observers and then as implementers of a Western-based system without understanding how all those systems were developed. The thinking that had shaped the Western conservation ethos was already well established by the time Papua New Guinea pledged to implement conservation.

At the time of discovery, Papua New Guinea was also an enigma. The island of New Guinea is located in the western Pacific and is populated by Melanesians. The colonial powers had split the island of New Guinea in the middle, with the West Papua Province of Indonesia in the west and the independent state of Papua New Guinea in the east. The eastern part of the island, comprising Papua New Guinea, has a land mass of 46.9 million hectares and contains over 800 tribal groups that speak up to 11 percent of the world’s languages (839 out of the world’s 7102 languages).

The Enga cultural group of the hinterlands of Papua New Guinea, one of the 800 cultural groups found in the country. Photo: Tanya Zeriga

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The land contains six percent of (mostly endemic) biodiversity on one percent of the global landmass and houses the third-largest rainforest area in the world after the Congo and the Amazon. It is described by the State of the Forests in Papua New Guinea as an “ecological wonder and one of the last places in the world where large unbroken expanses of tropical rainforest still abound.” The tectonic history of the land has also endowed the island with oil, gas, and precious metals. Currently, Papua New Guinea ranks as the eleventh-largest gold producer and tenth-largest copper producer in the world.

The land contains six percent of (mostly endemic) biodiversity on one percent of the global landmass and houses the third-largest rainforest area in the world.

The Raggiana bird of paradise (Paradisaea raggiana), also known as Count Raggi’s bird of paradise, is one of 38 species of showy birds and a flagship for conservation in Papua New Guinea. Distributed widely in southern and northeastern New Guinea, this species is also the emblem of Papua New Guinea. Photo: Tanya Zeriga

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When the constitution of the new country was being developed, conservation was seen as a requirement. Consequently, the mandate for conservation was written into the constitution. The fourth goal of the constitution explicitly states that the natural resources and environment will be conserved and used for the collective benefit of us all and be replenished for the benefit of future generations. In 1992, when the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Papua New Guinea sent an entourage and ratified the Convention of Biological Diversity. The output of such conservation efforts in the mid-1990s included fifty-six protected areas in the form of national parks, sanctuaries and memorial parks, conservation areas, and wildlife management areas.

Left: Varirata National Park information center. Varirata is the largest and longest-standing national park in Papua New Guinea that was enacted under the National Parks Act. Right: The signboard showing the management rules for the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Area, enacted under Papua New Guinea’s Conservation Areas Act. Photos: Tanya Zeriga

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This tiny tropical frog, a Paedophryne spp., is found on the island of Papua New Guinea and is a target for conservation. The world’s smallest known vertebrate, it is smaller than a coin and lives in the leaf litter on the rainforest floor. Photo: Tanya Zeriga

Since then, Papua New Guinea has quietly struggled to deliver on its targets in the multilateral environment agreements. The Aichi target of seventeen percent protected areas is still outstanding as Papua New Guinea is only managing less than one percent of protected areas. The number of protected areas has decreased since the 1990s, especially the government-run protected areas. As many as four evaluations have been undertaken so far to measure the effectiveness of conservation efforts in Papua New Guinea, the results showing minimal improvement.

What could the problem be?

While the global conservation agenda and target are reflected in Papua New Guinea’s conservation legislation, the law does not seem to make allowance for Indigenous conservation values and the interdependence that exists between people and nature. While the West seeks to conserve and preserve the inherent value of nature, the Indigenous concern is to perpetuate the aspects of nature that are useful for survival. Surrounded by forests on all sides, Indigenous Peoples in Papua New Guinea believe in the buffering capacity of the forest and lose no sleep on issues Western conservation is worried about, such as species extinction and climate change.

A mother and child fishing on Lake Kutubu in the Lake Kutubu Conservation Area. Wildlife management areas are enacted under the Fauna (Protection and Control) Act. Photo: Tanya Zeriga

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The dismal results so far can also be attributed to the fact that ninety-seven percent of the land is communally owned by clans, and this customary land tenure is protected by law. The law recognizes that the people depend on the land for their livelihood and therefore does not allow land to be traded or sold. This is the same land on which conservation is supposed to be implemented. This is a predicament for the government because it is unable to alienate customary land for parks and protected areas.

While the West seeks to conserve and preserve the inherent value of nature, the Indigenous concern is to perpetuate the aspects of nature that are useful for survival.

Furthermore, the Western-driven conservation ethos clashes with the Western-driven economic development agenda. Without the relevant mechanisms for manufacturing goods and services, the imposition of the Western development model has pushed the government of Papua New Guinea toward harvesting nature to sell for money. This “legal” pillaging has introduced a conflict between the government and the communities that still live in and maintain their livelihoods from nature. Experience shows that revenue raised from the forest belonging to the people rarely gets returned to the villages for their own development purposes. Forest people remain poor, while having to compete with large-scale destructive extraction for forest resources. People have lost trust in the government as able and willing to protect their rights to their lands.

Yet, instead of snubbing conservation, the people of Papua New Guinea have embraced conservation. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, over seventy-five percent of Papua New Guinea’s Indigenous people still live in the forests, sustaining their livelihoods from forest resources; therefore, they see conservation as protecting forest resources from overexploitation.

Kenneth Molem, a paraecologist, measuring a tree in the Wanang Conservation Area. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

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Implementing conservation using contract law as opposed to sanctioned legislation is a recent idea that has so far seemed to offer a viable solution for conservation in Papua New Guinea in the present and into the future. Currently, there is no official record for conservation areas registered through conservation deeds, but unofficial numbers indicate that the formation of conservation areas using conservation deeds is taking place at a rate of 1.5 conservation areas a year.

Over seventy-five percent of Papua New Guinea’s Indigenous people still live in the forests, sustaining their livelihoods from forest resources.

The first conservation deed was established by the Wanang community in Madang Province in the year 2000. This community had observed unregulated logging in nearby forests by unscrupulous loggers. The government was unable to regulate the loggers. The Wanang community, comprising eleven clans, banded together and signed a contract among themselves to refuse the exploitation of their forest.

John Auga, a Wanang paraecologist, surveying the 50-ha forest-dynamic plot that the Wanang community established with the support of conservation funding. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

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Ruma Umari, a Wanang paraecologist and entomologist, rearing insects from fruits gathered from the Wanang Conservation Area. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

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The main attraction of a conservation deed is that it is voluntary and flexible for the people. Intensive community consultation is undertaken before community leaders can sign the contract for conservation. The consultations allow the community to prioritize the preservation of their conservation values. Like the Wanang conservation projects, most communities are choosing to protect their land from exploitation by loggers and miners. The indirect outcome is that the maps produced in the process validate clan and tribal land boundaries.

The consultations allow the community to prioritize the preservation of their conservation values.

In a conservation deed, the process is led by the people themselves. The clans decide how to use their land in a manner that is consistent with their wishes for the land. The clans make the conservation area management rules and police themselves. The management reflects local needs and circumstances leading to more effective governance. Any penalty for rule breakers is handled by the community according to an agreed-upon charge that is suitable for the community. The duration of the contract is determined by the clan landholders according to their calendars. Furthermore, any monetary proceeds from the conservation area go to the clan landowners who decide how best to use the income based on their community’s needs. The contract is also drawn up in a language that the community can understand. This allows all community members to fully participate in the process.

A botany training with students from Papua New Guinea and Europe at the Swire Research Station, built by the Wanang community, with funding from Swire, to support conservation, research, and training. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

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The Conservation Area Board with clan leaders who signed the Conservation Deed. Photo: Binatang Research Centre

Importantly, this process seems to be sustainable because it is driven by the local leadership. In tribal communities, people’s allegiance is to their cultural leaders, who are also the Knowledge Keepers. Communities that have strong cultural leadership are also communities that are collectively strong and work together. The leaders are trusted to make decisions that are beneficial for the clan. The process of implementing a conservation deed empowers local leadership.

Since the year 2000, the local leaders of land-owning clans in Papua New Guinea have taken ownership of the conservation agenda and provided leadership in mobilizing the community to protect conservation values deemed important. While the project is finding traction with the Indigenous communities, any disadvantages of this approach are yet to be documented and evaluated. At the onset, however, the process is flexible and allows people to interpret the multilateral environmental agreements and targets on their own terms and within their local context.

The clans make the conservation area management rules and police themselves. The management reflects local needs and circumstances leading to more effective governance.

Support the Cause: As a new world rushes across Indigenous communities, it is important to create platforms where future leaders can be connected to and informed about Papua New Guinea’s truly unique biodiversity. The Future Indigenous Guardians of Science (FIGS) Club is an afterschool science and environmental education program for the youths of Wanang Conservation Area that seeks to inspire the next generation to continue as custodians of their forests. The FIGS Club students will have a foundation from which they can pursue a career offering enormous personal development and at the same time become leaders in protecting one of earth’s last bastions of biodiversity. This initiative can serve as a model for a national program. Learn more and donate to the FIGS Club at globalgiving.org/projects/the-figs-club/

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Tanya Zeriga is a Melanesian woman from Papua New Guinea. With over eight years of experience as a conservation practitioner and researcher, Tanya is a thought leader in the field of conservation in Papua New Guinea, seeking to interpret the science-based Western conservation ethos and link it with the existing Melanesian worldview on conservation.

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Mavis Jimbudo is a Melanesian woman from Papua New Guinea. As a lecturer at the University of Goroka, she teaches conservation science to undergraduate students. Before obtaining an advanced degree and becoming a teacher, she worked as a botanical parataxonomist. Mavis has interacted extensively with community members in a conservation area that was obtained under a conservation deed.