Contested rainforests, NGOs, and projects of desire in Solomon Islands (original) (raw)
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Traditionat natural-resource management systems of the ildigenous cornmunities of the Pacific isiands, based on communal-property concepts' continue to function in the face of many changes ia the circumstances ia which they operate. All have been weakened by chalges accompanying economic developmentyet they have adapted, ancl persist. Independent Pacific isiand governments accept that these systems, being expressions of social structure itself, are basic to the contiaued welfare of their societies. At the same time these govemments are Proceeding to implement forms of economic development which are in conflict with these traditional systems. This poses a development dilemma which is crucial for the future of the people of the South Pacific islands. To what extent can the raditional systems accommodate further change? Will serious efforts be made to adjust approaches to econoinic development so as to ease those disruptions to traditional iesource-management systems which are eroding Pacific island societies themselves?
Landscape, history and migration among the Langalanga, Solomon Islands
2001
This dissertation aims to understand how the Langalanga people of the Solomon Islands conceptualize and appropriate their landscape. Recent studies have shown that landscape is socio-culturally constructed and experienced in multiple ways in diverse localities all over the world. There are two major genres of models in contestation in landscape studies: the inscriptive model and the processual model. The former, initiated by cultural geographers, sees landscape as a pictorial way of representing or symbolizing surroundings and as the materialization of memory. However, since the mid-1990s, some anthropologists argue that landscape should be seen as cultural process instead. This approach stresses that the relationship between people and landscape is more intertwined and dynamic in some societies than the inscriptive model may suggest.
Why do Solomon Islands' villagers continue to engage with large scale logging projects by foreign companies when they have decades of experience of the disadvantages of such deals? This paper explores village level narratives of equality surrounding a logging dispute in a village on Kolombangara Island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. Drawing on empirical evidence I seek to understand firstly, why villagers continue to engage with logging companies, and secondly, why seemingly viable and financially attractive alternative forestry projects may not be taken up. Additionally, I examine legal recognition of a local conservation Non-Government organisation as an environmental 'stakeholder', with an accepted interest in customary land as distinct from the categorisation of 'landowners'. I conclude that village communities may continue to engage with foreign logging companies, despite their clear knowledge of the disadvantages of such projects, partly as a means of maintaining some measure of social equality in the village.
“Management over ownership”: Modern community cooperation in Langalanga Lagoon, Solomon Islands
2016
In many Pacific Island countries, modernity has weakened the foundation of community-based resource management. In this article we describe a cooperative process among six communities in Langalanga Lagoon in order to explore how collective efforts to improve natural resource management can evolve in situations where natural resources are degraded and contested, and where both traditional and centralised mechanisms to control use have either been weakened or are missing. For over five years, communities in Langalanga Lagoon have gone through several phases of increasing cooperation initiated and driven by community members to reach a level of association that has been formalised as a communitybased organisation. A management plan for a locally managed marine area has been developed, but has not yet been fully implemented. Although community cooperation has been predominantly an internal negotiation, activities by non-governmental organisations have facilitated its development. This c...
The South Pacific is home to a myriad of island groups. One of these groups, the Solomon Islands, provides the setting for the following case study. The Marovo Lagoon Resource Management Project was initiated by the Marovo community of Western Province. The paper, by Graham Baines and Edvard Hviding, describes the reciprocal nature of the project's research. Visiting scientists impart their experience to Marovo residents. In turn, the Marovo people provide the visitors with hands-on training in traditional skills. The results are mutually beneficial and act to preserve the traditional wisdom of the Marovo community.
A cultural landscape approach to community-based conservation in Solomon Islands
International environmental organizations have an increasing commitment to the development of conservation programs in high-diversity regions where indigenous communities maintain customary rights to their lands and seas. A major challenge that these programs face is the alignment of international conservation values with those of the indigenous communities whose cooperation and support are vital. International environmental organizations are focused on biodiversity conservation, but local communities often have a different range of concerns and interests, only some of which relate to biodiversity. One solution to this problem involves adoption of a cultural landscape approach as the ethical and organizational foundation of the conservation program. In our conservation work in coastal Melanesia, we have developed a cultural landscape approach that involves the construction of a conceptual model of environment that reflects the indigenous perceptions of landscape. This model incorporates cultural, ideational, and spiritual values alongside other ecosystem services and underpins the conservation activities, priorities, and organizational structure of our programs. This cultural landscape model was a reaction to a survey of environmental values conducted by our team in which Solomon Islanders reported far greater interest in conserving cultural heritage sites than any other ecosystem resources. This caused a radical rethinking of community-based conservation programs. The methodologies we adopted are derived from the fields of archaeology and historical anthropology, in which there is an established practice of working through research problems within the framework of indigenous concepts of, and relationship to, landscape. In our work in Isabel Province, Solomon Islands, coastal communities have enthusiastically adopted conservation programs that are based on cultural landscape models that recognize indigenous values. A particularly useful tool is the Cultural Heritage Module, which identifies cultural heritage sites that become targets of conservation management and that are used as part of a holistic framework for thinking about broader conservation values.