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In his 8 February blog post, Colin Filer discusses a contest between the courts and the bureaucracy over the identification of land ownership in PNG. After Social Mapping and Landowner Identification (SMLI) reports written by largely foreign and independent anthropologists are received, challenges are heard in the courts. But ultimately it is the Minister for Petroleum and Energy who makes a decision about who will represent the landowners and how the benefits will be distributed. Filer observes that the SMLI reports do not provide what the Minister, or the landowners want. The anonymous and Greek speaking Vailala, in his comment on Colin Filer’s blog post, thinks that the SMLI reports, or at least those covering PNG LNG and the Huli, may have “stoked the fires of the political struggle waged by many individuals and groups to gain access to petroleum landowner royalties benefits.” Forty years ago in 1977 Mervyn Meggitt the first ethnographer in Enga, thought the Court of Native Affairs and the Land Titles Commission had brought back to life many dormant land disputes. Many of these disputes were probably insoluble given what Vailala calls the “contestation of historical memories”; in many cases the disputants had more less agreed not to fight over them anymore but to leave the land unused. But when a foreign institution like a land court appeared and had the power to enforce a zero-sum solution in which one side lost, both sides saw an opportunity to get a permanent outcome that would be to their advantage. This was and is Filer’s “disjunction between different forms of knowledge, and even different ideologies”. He correctly observes that this contest (what Vailala calls “the argon”), occurred well before the appearance of the Oil & Gas Act or the Mining Act. Neither Filer nor (especially) Vailala, make a clear distinction between landowner identification undertaken for the purposes of paying the benefits of resource extraction and that undertaken to resolve land disputes. Although landowner identification commonly reignites dormant land disputes, mixing up the two processes is not helpful in understanding the nature of the problem or seeking possible solutions. Land court magistrates in the 1970s and 1980s worked under the Land Disputes Settlement Act 1975 and faced similar situations to today’s PNG magistrates and judges. They were assisted by a District Land Disputes Committee and Land Mediators, who were knowledgeable local men empowered under the Act to do everything possible to settle a dispute through mediation. Today, lack of funding frequently means magistrates cannot visit the disputed land and mediators do not get paid and refuse to work. But they would still struggle to assess the veracity of the evidence offered to them by the disputants. Back in 1982, Rick Giddings, District Land Court Magistrate in Goroka observed that “disputing parties tend to push their own selfish ends, do not apply traditional principles, will not accept responsibility and are reluctant to accept court decisions” . . . “Many individuals and groups use disputes as a vehicle for their own social and political ends and are therefore not overly interested in having the dispute settled.” (Allen and Giddings 1982, 185). Giddings was aware that disputants tried to understand the principles on which the court was going to make its decision. If it was going to favour historical evidence about who originally occupied the land, oral histories and genealogies would be concocted by both sides to support their position. If it was going to favour present occupancy, both sides would make claims of ownership over gardens and houses and even women working a garden. He found, “many witnesses make untruthful statements before the Court”. The immediate post-colonial land courts were trying to resolve disputes over land that that had little or no monetary value. Today’s courts are dealing with disputes that may result in one group receiving significantly large amounts of money in the form of mining or petroleum royalties while their adversaries receive nothing. The Land Disputes Settlement Act was not designed to deal with land that has suddenly become worth millions of kina to its owners. Nor was the Land Groups Incorporation Act designed to be used by resource companies to pay royalties. But very importantly, as Vailala observes, “money is both moveable and divisible”. In the Hides LNG licence area, a number of disputes over small areas of land, like quarry sites, were settled by the disputants agreeing to divide the money between them and to leave the land dispute unresolved. A highly relevant case not mentioned by Colin Filer or Vailala is Justice Amet’s decision over the land at Juni on which Oil Search’s gas-to-electricity plant is constructed. Amet flew in the face of Huli custom, and made a decision in favour of the present Huli occupants, over the former Duguba owners. After winning their case in the court, the Huli offered 50% of their winnings to their Duguba protagonists (Weiner 2002). To return to the SMLI reports. Vailala is wrong to argue that the “Hela reports” promote the view that “all Hela landowners have a landownership interest in all Hela-owned land and much land owned by non-Hela”. The reports are not “Hela” reports. They are based on licence areas (Petroleum Retention Licences– PRLs and Petroleum Development Licences – PDLs) which are international 9km by 9km grid squares that go beyond the boundaries of Hela and beyond land occupied by Huli speakers. In the PNG LNG SMLI reports “major clans are identified as general landholding agencies, without then also specifying every individualised plot of land and how those holders or users relate to the primary landholding segment”(Goldman 2008, 19). Under the Act the government is not obligated to pay royalties to individuals and prefers to pay ILG representatives. But at Kutubu the ILGs did not function as envisaged by the Act as business entities: they did not cooperate in the management of their resources, rarely reinvested their cash receipts in business ventures, did not regulate their membership lists or manage land disputes, did not have functional Dispute Settlement Authorities as required by the Act; and received no infrastructure support or training (Goldman 2005). The initial number of ILGs at Kutubu more than doubled as members dissatisfied at not receiving payments due to them, split existing ILGs and created new ones. At Hides, the Act’s requirement that an individual belong to only one clan meant ILGs were rejected by the Huli, who all belong to at least two clans and usually more than two. As I have argued elsewhere, it is not possible for any non-Huli, nor for most Huli, to know who is a member of any particular Huli clan, nor to know what is the status of their membership. The solution to the problem of how to pay gas royalties to the Huli owners of the PNG LNG will have to be resolved by them. The circumstances must be created in which the Huli can devise a way to make the payments that satisfies the majority of the members of landowning clans. This situation will not be resolved by judges, ministers or public servants. Allen, B. J. and R. J. Giddings 1982. Land disputes and violence in Enga: the 'Komanda' case. Enga: foundations for development. B. Carrad, D. A. M. Lea and K. K. Talyaga. Armidale, University of New England. Volume 3 of Enga Yaaka Lasemana: 179-197. Goldman, L. 2005. Incorporating Huli: lessons from the Hides Licence Area. Customary Land Tenure and Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea: Anthropological Perspectives. J. F. Weiner and K. Glaskin. Canberra, ANU Press: 97-115. Goldman, L 2008. Full-scale Social mapping and Landowner Identification Study of PRL-11 – PNG LNG Gas project Weiner, J. F. 2002. Adverse possession: some observations on the relation between land and land-based knowledge in Papua New Guinea. Transforming Land Conflict Symposium, http://www.usp.ac.fj/landmgmt/SYMPOSIUM

CFW and Bishop are both on the record lecturing the aid sector that it needs to ‘sell the benefits of aid to the public’ before aid can increase, or even reverse its current free fall. But does CFW actually mean it? Comments like her latest ones basically reveal her as an aid sceptic, or least one only willing to lead as far from the front as she can be. This undercuts any sales efforts by the sector when the responsible Minister can’t see any value in selling the benefits of Australian aid herself. Sad lack of leadership in this.

What is the role of vernacular language in sustainable development?

Thanks Bal For shedding some lights into the deepening influence of China foothold in the Pacific and how much influence Australia had exerted in the Pacific. Including the evolving domestic expectations and demands exerting pressures on Pacific countries’ government to venture regionally and globally to court new allies and secure more aid. For China, we cannot say much because they move to aid Pacific countries’ development areas with bigger impact projects to drive the local economy, its looking for bigger space in the Pacific. Whether it is sustainable or not at the end is not an issue for the host countries. Also, politically Australia is not in a position to use its Sino Aussie bilateral relations to talk about Pacific foothold. Australia needs to understand the domestic and regional politics played out by Pacific countries past, present and their aspirations for the interim future. Pacific countries are not the same in the last one or two decades, leadership in the small island countries have shifted with new crop of leaders taking the helm of political aisles in their countries who are much better or worse off than the previous leaders. These leaders tried to look beyond Australia to foster new trade and foreign relations and China – a growing economy in the East Asian region, is more of an ideal helping hand that Pacific countries more likely to grab. Apart from reorganizing its geopolitical and strategic position around economic and foreign relations with the Pacific countries, Australia needs to focus on training potential future leaders of the Pacific islanders to think the way Canberra would want to. Otherwise Australia would spend more to match China foothold in the Pacific but less likely to attract attention of the current crop of Pacific leaders.

What has been missing in these discussions about China, is not so much what the Chinese Government is doing, but the infiltration of Chinese businesses and its increasing dominance across the Pacific Islands. The only countries that have so far been able to resist it is perhaps, the Federated States of Micronesia, Niue and the Cook Islands. In Melanesia there is already a very strong presence of Chinese retailers with Honiara being so visible when you drive from the airport to the end of town. Honiara has literally become a Chinese town, and this is in the capital of a country where Australia spent almost $3 billion over 14 years. In the Marshall Islands, most of the taxi's are owned by Chinese and a good number of shops are also owned by Chinese. The same trends are discernible in Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tonga. The Chinese Government does not need to build a military base to extend its influence in the islands. The Chinese are already doing it by crowding out the locals from their turf and making them increasingly bystanders in their own country! Talk about Chinese influence has been about its government but they are already have a big influence where it matters.. in the pockets of peoples where they dominate commerce and in what they buy and can and cannot do. This is a far bigger internal security risk than that posed by the engagement by the Chinese Government which so far are perceivable, imaginary risk seen by those whose influence are perceived to be waning. In the Pacific Islands, there is enough space and problems for us to engage with other countries to help us address, and not believe that it is just the line of a few

There is a growing number of small NGOs and foundations specializing in offering direct funding to grassroots leaders. And 20+ of them came together to write a book last year entitled, "Smart Risks: How small grants are helping to solve some of the world's biggest problems." See: smartrisks.org When people in the aid and philanthropy sector learned about our approaches to making small grants at the international level, there were always questions that revealed how “risky” this seemed to people: “How do you find the groups?” (In other words, “It’s much easier for us to fund the same, usual players in the capital cities who talk like us.”) “Aren’t most local NGOs corrupt?” (In other words, “I believe the hype about briefcase NGOs.” or “I inherently distrust people who are from different cultures or nations.” or “I may have racist or classist assumptions that have never been challenged.”) “How do you measure your results?” (In other words, “Small grants are too insignificant to make a real dent in any social issue.” or “Hard numbers are the only way I know if I am getting a return on investment.”) “How do you keep your overhead costs down?” (In other words, “It’s too expensive to fund at the grassroots. It costs me the same amount of money to make a US$5,000 grant as a $500,000 grant.”) We didn’t get it. For us, not investing in the wisdom, experience, and leadership of people most affected by poverty was the opportunity cost we were unwilling to bear. In our minds, placing our relatively small amounts of money in the hands of people who are already doing something to address the challenges in their own communities was actually one of the least risky things we as funders could do, and also one of the smartest. We also wanted to highlight the often more serious risks of supporting even more irrelevant aid interventions or the risk of new “players” on the scene turning into more over-bearing funders. And so we named our book about small grants, Smart Risks. If we are focused on the expected gains of lasting, transformative change over large scale or quick “results,” to deem an initiative or a group of people as “risky” continues to reveal the global power structures at play. Risk implies future uncertainty. That is something Smart Risks authors have learned to embrace. Hopefully those who haven’t yet considered funding grassroots groups may pick the book up and discover that it’s not as risky as they may think. And hopefully readers of all kinds will use the book to continue to deepen their analysis of how power and privilege play out in our work. Learn more here: https://www.smartrisks.org/

In the debate about Australia's influence in the Pacific and whether it is declining, there has been little discussion of Australia's attitude to climate change. But my experience with Pacific Islander students and churches suggests they are appalled by what they see as Australia's callous disregard for the dangers of sea level rise, increased cyclones and the other harms of climate change which will affect the islands. Examples of Australian politicians laughing at the plight of Islanders go down very badly. Clearly this is not the only reason for the distancing of relations between Australia and the Pacific Islands - but is more important than some commentary would suggest.

This is an excellent and very valuable piece of long-term research. Fascinating that 14 out of 22 of the workers have started to try a business. Most though seem to have failed. Getting workers to invest their seasonal earnings is more a matter of improving the business environment than providing financial or business training to workers.

Maybe its time to redefine Chinese antics in the Pacific region - from 'soft power' to 'sharp power'. While soft power is limited to spreading one's culture and values abroad,'sharp power' coined by the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington-based think tank, more appropriately describes Chinese influence, through coercing opinion abroad, economically and otherwise (short of outright conflict), see: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21732524-china-manipulating-decision-makers-western-democracies-best-defence There have been reports that Chinese development loans through EXIM Bank and AIIB, although given at concessional rates, do not allow debt restructuring, or the ability to write these loans off should a recipient country default. Hence, China is spreading its reach in economically vulnerable countries, repossessing key infrastructure that these loans are used to build. The Pacific region's need to be conscious of Chinese interests cannot be understated: China may help meet our short term interests, but an overarching regional dominance is its long term goal.

Sadly, it’s a consistent approach from a government which reportedly mentioned aid as much as it mentioned Antarctica in its recent White Paper on foreign policy...

If agencies are so concerned with taking risks, maybe they should take the time to plan for more options, and more solutions when issues do arise? I think they could benefit from developing their own custom software to plan and track projects, so they could be best-prepared in the moment when something does fail. It should be known that there will be many risks in International Development, but they could be well worth it in the end, with educated planning.

Thank you for this piece. I have only lately come to appreciate the extent of the refugee crisis. The world once tolerated slavery. I hope our generation will lead the way in ending the refugee crisis.