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As someone who has only had a passing interest in this issue - thank you for this contribution - Ive learned a lot!

In a society where communal land ownership was settled hundreds if not thousands of years ago, the notion that a state lease confers a right for an outsider to occupy and exploit land for economic gain is a complete fallacy. With few exceptions the plantation sector learned the hard way that their views and that of traditional owners can never be compatible. I hope that chapter is behind Papua New Guinea and a more enlightened generation of planners seek to boost food security and economic empowerment within the established order that constitutes the bedrock of PNG society.

Indeed. This article does not consider the viewpoint of the villager, or of the women whose lives and labour are vital both to the agricultural workforce and the community. The proposal that 'The most effective route is to lease land and provide secure law and order to established operators' is merely a return to the plantation system.

Very informative and insightful. Data as social registry (Columbia example) is something I had never heard before, also the range you covered from funding to data customisation and core to globe framework makes it relevant for policy makers and desk planners both while it should also be brought to public discourse as decision makers also need to understand the nuance of data infrastructure practically, which has been very well explained in this piece. Loved reading!

This paper is a short summary account of the two part analysis of the 2024 draft Bougainville Constitution. The Bougainville Draft Constitution 2024 https://www.academia.edu/171946761/The_Bougainville_Draft_Constitution_2024 Vailala

This is an important topic and Bryant makes an important point. Though it seems simpler than this, notwitstanding data limits. Per FAO (gross ag production index), from 2005 to 2023, this increased 32%, or about 1.5% a year. Slower since 2015, but clearly positive. Value measures also appear to have steadily increased. Production volume declines can be seen on a crop-specific basis for some crops, with increases for others, and if you express the first measure in per-person terms, on any of the recent population estimates, we do see a stronger decline. The piece would have benefited from these distinctions, in my view, as the hook at the start seems rather misleading without such conditions attached to it.

How can LLG ward recorders connect through Electoral commission office?

President Adeang's recent 'discovery' of Chinese ancestry is clearly pushing Naoero further, and further, into the Chinese Web and the Island's people will eventually suffer. In the meantime there is no Ombudsman after more than 10 years, his son is head of the finance department, Australia pours money into a bottomless pit, the police wear riot gear out of a science fiction movie, and government members constitute 17 out of 19 members of Parliament. Naoero is turning into an authoritarian state and there's no clear way back. Hammer must be turning in his grave.

Mauri Dr Amota, Thanks for these 3 articles on migration, particularly Kiribati and Tuvalu migration to Australia and New Zealand. Whilst I agree with much of the evidence you present I find differences in context and conclusions. But first i feel as if I should introduce myself. I live in Ambo, was born in Abaokoro, consider myself to be Tabiteuean but have no Kiribati blood, an I-matang n I-Tabiteuea! My parents were British colonial officials which gave me the privilege of being born in Kiribati and I have now, aged 73, been accepted as a Kiribati citizen. As a child I also lived in the Solomon Islands but have spent most of my life in England where I am a long standing member of the I-Kiribati community. I have spent 20+ years in Kiribati, have lived on Tabiteuea, Onotoa, Butaritari, Betio, Bairiki and the last 10 years in Ambo. I have also stayed with Kiribati families in Australia, NZ, Fiji, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden. I believe my background has given me some understanding of Kiribati but my different life experience often gives me different perspectives which can be useful sometimes in discussion. With regard to migration it does seem that Kiribati has not got the advantages of many other island peoples, particularly Tuvalu. Kiribati population has grown 4 fold in my lifetime from 30,000 in 1952 to 138,000 now and is unique I think in the Pacific in this regard. It has no migration pathway to a metropolitan state as the COFA countries do with the US and Cook Islands, Nuie, Samoa, Tonga do with NZ and now Tuvalu with Australia. Personally I see this as a positive- there is not the depopulation that is happening in the Cook Islands or the brain drain although I am concerned when I see teachers and nurses, both in short supply in Kiribati, leaving to do age care and fruit picking in Ausralia and NZ . Its great for the people going, more money, experience etc, but it's not necessarily great for Kiribati. I think there are a few reasons for this which are positive. Kiribati has done comparatively well financially and stability wise since Independence. Its massive EEZ has given it both more money to invest in social welfare programmes improving the lives of people but also a growing sovereign wealth fund for future investment. Kiribati constitution has also provided stability - only 5 presidents in almost 50 years compared to many many more Prime Ministers in Tuvalu over the same period. I would really love to see a Marine Science campus of USP located in Kiribati so that over the coming years there is a growing number of I-Kiribati with a good scientific as well as traditional knowledge of our environment, we know how to conserve and farm our ocean and lagoons, te bun. te nuovo, te komera, te koikoi, te waro, te newe etc. I would also like to see us assembling the data around sea level rise and climate change. The media narrative is not the whole story. Atolls around the world are mainly increasing in land area(see Paul Kench et al studies which have shown accretion of 30% on South Tarawa, and even accretion on Funafuti). My lived experience confirms these findings. We need to be assembling data and studying our environment so we are the experts on atolls, not people who've hardly ever spent much time on them. Is overwashing more or less frequent, is it more extensive?We need to measure levels of the water lens, the temperature and acidity of the sea, the health of our corals and much more. Renewable energy and desalination technology offer us the possibility of making our islands more sustainable despite climate change. In response to your story about the strength and organisation of the Tuvalu community in Australia as evidenced by their own church and pastor I would point out that Tuvalu is almost exclusively LMS Protestant which means religious and cultural identity are the same, whereas the Kiribati diaspora is denominationally divided, Catholics, Protestants, LDS, SDA. Jehovas Witnesses et al, making it more difficult to come together in that way. Despite this the Kiribati diaspora seems to come together well. I have been a member of the British version, the Kiribati Tungaru Association (KTA) for over 30 years and I see similar communities in Australia, NZ and the USA posting Independence celebrations and dances in their countries (or states). I offer these comments up for debate, te maroro, and I hope you will consider them as such. I very much enjoyed reading your various articles and look forward to more. I hope that I have the pleasure of meeting you one day, maybe when you next come to Tarawa if you have the time and inclination.

Interesting to see how this may have changed in the last few years with the spread of Starlink. My experience in Kiribati, which gets minimal attention in the article, is that it has made the internet much more accessible. I'd also like to have seen mention of the degree to which Facebook is used by government for communications.

This debate does come up fairly regularly but my impression is it has more support in the Kiribati/ Tungaru diaspora than in the islands themselves. The arguments I hear are 1) Our unimane decided on Kiribati back prior to Independence so who are we to change it, 2)Tungaru was never a word that covered the current country which includes the Line and Phoenix islands which were not known to I-Tungaru. 3) We have more pressing issues to deal with and don't need to spend time and money on this, 4) We know ourselves as I-Kiribati and are fine with that, 5) it's hard enough getting name recognition for Kiribati without confusing the world by changing name and then getting confused with the very similar sounding Tuvalu. Whilst I agree that it is important to decolonise our minds and rid ourselves of the colonial mentality, I would suggest that our time would be better spent examining the domineering role of colonial Christianity in modern Kiribati/Tungaru culture and identity(and indeed in most Pacific Island culture and identity) I look forward to further discussion!

The most important agricultural production in PNG is subsistence production which provides over 8 million people with the majority of their carbohydrate and protein. There is a reasonable amount of evidence that food production by rural people has kept pace with population increase, so it has more or less doubled since 1996. So it is misleading to say PNG's "agricultural production has been in steady decline for more than two decades". Subsistence production must be distinguished from commercial production.