In Papua New Guinea, a rainforest's forgotten faces

A reminder that conservation is not only about exotic plants and animals

(Andrea Savage photo)

A man from Naukenane village carried a leg of pork wrapped in banana leaves to give to one of the Managalas Plateau's visitors.

Andrea Savage, a former Boston resident who graduated from Tufts University in 2006, is a project officer for Partners with Melanesians, a nongovernmental organization in Papua New Guinea.

By Andrea Savage

Thursday, Nov. 27

ITOKOMA, Papua New Guinea -- The eager faces lining the grassy runway that afternoon were visible from the oval window of our small twin-engine plane. Some of the hundreds who awaited the flight were dressed in faded or thread-bare clothes, while others were adorned with bird-of-paradise feathers and tapa cloths traditional to Oro Province, a northeastern region of Papua New Guinea.

Expansive blue skies, rolling mountains of as-yet undisturbed rainforests, and wooden huts provided a breathtaking backdrop.

The sound of men beating kundu drums heightened the villagers' excitement as they waited for the bigpela mangi (''big man'' in the tok pisin language) to disembark. But they were to be disappointed. The long-awaited minister from the Department of Environment and Conservation never boarded our flight from Port Moresby, the capital, to come to Itokama village.

Later that night, as we slept in Itokama's stilt houses, the kundus' beat seemed to echo more bitterly.

I had traveled to Itokama, one of 75 isolated villages on the Managalas Plateau, to join my co-workers from Partners with Melanesians. Based in Port Moresby, the NGO is run almost entirely by Papua New Guineans and has worked for more than 20 years to promote conservation among the villagers of the plateau, an 890,000-acre area of diverse rainforest.

We were in Itokama to plan a forum for the villagers, and to celebrate the completion of a proposal for the government to declare the plateau a conservation area. The minister was meant to have received the proposal during his visit, but then made a last-minute decision to go to Australia instead.

Apart from the pilot, I was the only foreigner in the village, and certainly the only wait meri, or white woman. Children in the crowd stared and giggled. I flashed back to seven months earlier when I was worlds away, working an office job in Cambridge.

I have discovered that this experience isn't just about me living my dream of working abroad, nor is it exclusively about the few untouched rainforests remaining in the world. It’s mostly about the forgotten faces whose lives revolve around the ecological gems we are trying to protect. Often when we speak of conservation, we think of rich forests, exotic plants, and endangered animals. Rarely do we think about the rainforest communities -- the actual people, like the villagers of Itokama. Conservation lies in their hands.

With the absence of the environmental minister, the people of Itokama seem to feel forgotten once again.

The forest communities of Papua New Guinea follow a simple way of life. The villagers live in biodegradable houses made from the materials that surround them. Most of their food comes from the land. There are no roads for cars, no machines for farming. There's no electricity except a solar panel in Itokama that powers a radio allowing villagers to communicate with the PWM office in Port Moresby.

Some scientists have said that in the past traditional Papua New Guinean gardening cycles increased biodiversity. The process of circulating crops to allow the forest to regenerate and restore the soil’s nutrients keeps parts of the forest in varying stages of growth.

As the country’s population swells, these gardening methods of crop circulation pose problems. The gardening cycles get shorter, gardens get bigger, and the forest has less time to regenerate. This causes soil erosion and increases the spread of fires.

Along with logging, subsistence farming is the biggest cause of deforestation here. The University of Papua New Guinea published a report this year stating that 80 percent of the country’s population is dependent on subsistence agriculture. Between 1972 and 2002 Papua New Guinea’s population more than doubled, from about 2.7 million to 5.6 million.

PWM has educated villagers on the importance of sustainable farming practices and family planning, and has provided training for small businesses that do not require many forest resources, such as coffee and honey production. PWM also helps villages find traditional solutions to problems such as land disputes. Land boundaries are not properly documented in Papua New Guinea, frequently slowing down many conservation and development efforts.

However, most recently, PWM’s progress has been hampered by the villagers' demand for development and monetary support from NGOs. This is evident during the forum. The morning after my arrival in Itokama, PWM staff and representatives from 11 other villages gathered in the meeting house of a nearby village, Naukenane. The house is made of raw materials, such as rigid agave-like leaves and timber. With 177 participants seated cross-legged on the floor, the meeting began and then one by one the village representatives stood to express their thoughts. Most supported PWM's conservation efforts, but soon the discussion was overshadowed by heated demands for more money from NGOs to improve the villagers' standard of living.

(Andrea Savage photo)

Villagers prioritize various topics for Partners with Melanesians to address.

Because Itokama is next to an air strip, it can receive some resources to run an aid post that provides some basic medical services, and a school that teaches up to Grade 6. However, most villages on the plateau have neither. The closest hospital is a 25-mile walk from Itokama or Naukenane, and possibly a longer walk from the other villages.

Any hopes for progressing on environmental initiatives during the forum were quickly sidelined. The villagers' frustrations were valid, but the source of the problems seems too great for small NGOs to solve.

I recently attended a lecture by American anthropologist Paige West in Port Moresby, and she observed that in the absence of government support, rainforest communities in Papua New Guinea look toward conservation initiatives as substitutes for government programs, and expect NGOs to provide them with what the government has not. Because of conflicting expectations, the local communities become disheartened, and occasionally angered by the organizations' programs and are less likely to cooperate. As much as the villagers on the Mangalas are aware of the benefits of protecting their forests, it is nearly impossible to have good schooling and healthcare or to transport their products to a market outside the plateau.

The day after the forum it was raining heavily as I boarded the 15-seat plane. Despite the dreary weather, the runway was once again lined with hundreds of faces. The plane took off with my co-workers feeling disillusioned. We were leaving behind the plateau and its people, who continue to question whether anyone will answer their pleas for a better standard of living.

To find out more about Partners with Melanesians, go to www.pwmpng.org.pg. For information on how you can contribute to the Passport blog, contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at k_kaplan@globe.com.