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Engaging Communities and Government in Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation in Papua New Guinea

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Managing Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Region

Part of the book series: Climate Change Management ((CCM))

Abstract

Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) mainland consists of 33 million hectares of forests. The third largest intact rainforest in the world, it contains about 7% of the world’s species, 2/3 of which are unique to PNG. PNG’s ecosystems face multiple and interdependent threats associated with economic development, population growth and a changing climate. Academic and policy analysis on environmental change in PNG is extensive, particularly associated with the minerals and energy extraction sector. To counterbalance the negative impacts of this sector on affected communities, much of the focus has been on devising compensation packages and formal regulatory mechanisms to increase ‘landowner’ participation. Less attention has been afforded to the development activities undertaken by communities (e.g. development of new roads, expansion of settlements, land clearance from fires and logging), which also impact on ecosystem services. PNG’s rural communities are eager for more support to identify existing threats to supplement their own processes for determining trade-offs of development particularly under a changing climate. This paper describes the use, in facilitated workshops, of participatory techniques to engage communities in managing ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation to inform the development of community-led adaptive strategies.

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Acknowledgements

The project Engaging Communities and Government in Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation was led by researchers from the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre (BRC) and the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney. The research project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). We thank staff of BRC for their support in logistics and members of the four participating communities for sharing their knowledge with us.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Technology Sydney, Institute for Sustainable Futures, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Brent Jacobs, Kylie McKenna & Louise Boronyak

  2. New Guinea Binatang Research Centre, PO Box 604, Madang 511, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

    Francesca Dem, Shen Sui, Kenneth Pomoh, Mavis Jimbudo & Heveakore Maraia

Authors
  1. Brent Jacobs
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  2. Kylie McKenna
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  3. Louise Boronyak
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  4. Francesca Dem
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  5. Shen Sui
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  6. Kenneth Pomoh
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  7. Mavis Jimbudo
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  8. Heveakore Maraia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brent Jacobs .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. HAW Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

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Jacobs, B. et al. (2020). Engaging Communities and Government in Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation in Papua New Guinea. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Managing Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Region. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40552-6_11

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