From Radio Australia 

Land alienation is a problem not just in Papua New Guinea but across Melanesia, and it has the potential to have a catastrophic affect on Melanesian society, according to one of the region's most experienced anthropologists.



Kirk Huffman, a former Director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and a Research Associate at the Australian Museum says, when it comes to land, even well-meaning investors and aid donors in Melanesia have the wrong model of development. 



A series of eminent persons, including Sir John Kaputin, Peter Donigi. Alan Bird and Jamie Maxton-Graham, have spoken out this week to rubbish the government's model of development which favours foreign corporations over indigenous business and ensures the majority of people live in poverty.

The Central Bank governor has warned the government that its opaque management of trust funds could seriously undermine Papua New Guinea's economic future.

In his latest bi-annual statement [attached below] the governor, Loi Bakani, says the government has already reneged on a promise to open all new trust accounts at the Central Bank, and K103 million from the K592 million announced in the 2010 Supplementary Budget has not been deposited with the Bank.

15 Landowner representatives from Western, Gulf, Oro, Milne Bay, Sandaun, Central and East New Britain, gathered at the Holiday Inn for 3 hours yesterday, at a media event giving prominence to the PNG government’s issuance of 99 year Special Agricultural Business Leases over more than 5 million hectares of customary land throughout PNG.

A new report details the role of the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, in promoting the growing global trend of large-scale land investments in developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors.

By Rowan Callick*

THE cyclone season is coming to an end for this year, yet a different type of turmoil is starting to stir the Pacific islands. A digital revolution is running through the region, with myriad mobile towers being erected providing cheap-as-chips, pay-as-you-go calls.

Landowners living on and around the site chosen for Papua New Guinea's first Special Economic Zone, the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, have announced a three-day public forum to discuss their concerns about the project. Invitations to the event are being sent to among others, Madang Governor, MP James Gau, his predecessor and now Attorney General, MP Arnold Amet, World Bank representative in PNG, Laura Bailey and MP Gabriel Kapris, the Minister for Trade and Industry. 

BY ARTHUR WILLIAMS*

QUITE A FEW DECADES ago PNG started logging for export revenue rather than building homes for its people or making furniture. It was explained at the time that commercial logging would benefit the nation as well as the communities that allowed it on their land.

In the 1980s, Pedi Anis, one time Premier and now entrepreneur and friend of the Asian loggers, told the citizens of Lavongai Island that the only way forward for development was to embrace timber felling (despite knowing it was a very poorly regulated industry).