Threats to marine biocultural diversity in the Bismark Sea (Papua New Guinea)
In Oceania, knowledge of coastal and marine environments is indispensable to Indigenous populations for sustaining human and non-human life. The people who live in this island region and the marine environments they inhabit are however under threat from multiple sources of violence including destructive primary resource extraction, sea level change, and loss of biodiversity. Together, these forms of violence are degrading established and functional relations between human societies and the living environment. On all shores of Papua New Guinea’s Bismarck Sea the situation is urgent in this regard, as impacts from sea-level rise, ocean acidification, run-off from mining and logging, and overfishing are already being felt. In the medium term, potential ecological and social consequences of deep seabed mining (DSM) also loom, as “Solwara 1”, the world’s first DSM exploration, is underway there. The research project we propose here is focussed in two sites located on both sides of this sea. It applies an anthropological lens to document and understand the threats to coastal societies and marine environments, collaborating with local non-governmental organisations and Indigenous ecological experts. It aims to produce knowledge and educational tools that can be used to mitigate the effects of biocultural degradation.
John Aini is co-founder of Ailan Awareness, a marine conservation and Indigenous empowerment-focused NGO in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. He is a Maimai (a chief in the Malangan culture in northern New Ireland), an Ainpidik (in the Tumbuan Society from southern New Ireland), and a Merengen (from his own Tungak culture on Lovongai Island). He previously worked as a community-based resource manager for the National Fisheries Authority, and as a lecturer at the National Fisheries College of Papua New Guinea. He is the co-founder of The Ranguva Solwara Skul, and former president of the Local Level Government for Lovongai. In 2012, he received the 2012 Seacology Prize for exceptional achievement in preserving island environments and culture.
Mark Collins is a research fellow in anthropology at the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, recipient of a post-doctoral grant from the Fyssen foundation, and associate researcher at the Credo. He specialises in environmental anthropology and marine anthropology, and has been working in Papua New Guinea since 2019, where he has carried out over 17 months of fieldwork. His research is focussed on relations between the inhabitants of the island of Lovongai and animals of the sea. He has collaborated with Indigenous civil society partners in New Ireland province on projects related to the documentation and understanding of cultural practices related to the ocean.
James Leach is a research director in anthropology at the CNRS, working at the Centre for research and documentation on Oceania (Credo) in Marseille, France. He has spent more than four years carrying out fieldwork on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea since 1993. His research focuses on environmental knowledge, the multiple implications of the politics of knowledge, creativity, and ecological relations to ‘place’. He has co-authored several respected publications with Indigenous Rai Coast dwellers, including the dual language, open access book Reite Plants and managed multiple grant-supported projects that, in partnership with Indigenous actors on the Rai Coast, developed tools to enable local research participants to document and preserve their heritage. He is the recipient of international prizes for ‘co-creative’ research with Indigenous people, and has held university positions in Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Western Australia before joining the CNRS.
Porer Nombo was Local Government representative (Komiti) for the villages of Reite, Sarangama and Marpungae in Ward 16 of Mot 1 District on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea for more than 30 years. Growing up in the village in the 1950s and 1960s, he never learned to read or write, but was educated about plants and healing, among other things, by his elders, and is recognised as the leading local authority on kastom. In 2000, he gave a presentation to the Motupore Island Seminar on Intellectual and Cultural Property in Port Moresby organised by the University of Papua New Guinea, and in 2009 he visited the UK at the request of the British Museum to assist them in their work of documenting the Melanesian collections. He is the co-author of one book and several articles on the ecology and traditions of Papua New Guinea, and also spoken at international conservation and ecology conferences in the USA, Australia, Vanuatu, and Germany.
Paige West is the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University. A cultural and environmental anthropologist by training, she earned her Ph.D. in 2000 and joined the Barnard and Columbia faculty in 2001. Her research and teaching focus on the relationships between Indigenous ecological knowledge, environmental conservation, and socio-political transformation in Oceania, particularly in Papua New Guinea, where her field research since 1997 amounts to a decade. Her long-term collaborative engagements in Papua New Guinea are grounded in her commitment to foregrounding Indigenous biocultural diversity revitalisation in her work. She is the author of three books, the recipient of numerous fellowships and honours, and she has delivered over two hundred invited and distinguished lectures across the United States and internationally.
