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Abstract
Large-scale logging began in Solomon Islands in 1963. Since then there have been two distinct regimes. The first lasted until the early 1980s and the early years of independence. It involved a small number of companies harvesting government-owned forests or government-leased forests, confined to a few isolated locations, operating under close government supervision. The second regime came about through the expansion of logging to customary land. There was a greater spread of operations, with an increased number of companies and much less central-government control. Resource owners had little real protection against foreign loggers. This paper concentrates on the second period, reviewing the history of the logging industry during this time and the extreme divisiveness it brought about in rural areas. As logging expanded there emerged a loosely organized anti-logging movement in provinces affected by logging. The movement came to represent a direct challenge to the large-scale, capital-intensive development policy followed by the postcolonial state. The movement has had some local successes against logging companies but has failed to match the power being wielded by the logging industry and failed to slow the high rate of timber extraction nationally.
... As is common in ethnographic research, the types of interviews used in this study range on a continuum from semi-structured to open, with many interviews containing FIGURE 3 People crossing a log pond in West Are'are (Minter 2017) elements of both (Firmin 2012). Which type of interview was most appropriate depended on the aim and setting of the interview, and the expertise and interests of the interviewee. ...
... In contrast, (parts of) interviews that addressed more complex or sensitive subjects, such as royalty payments, conflict, or sexual exploitation, required a more open-ended and interviewee-led mode of interviewing (Firmin 2012). In such cases, questions asked were guided by topic lists, which evolved based on new insights that emerged as the research progressed. ...
... This grounded, inductive approach ensured that interviews covered subjects that were locally relevant, rather than externally determined (Firmin 2012). It also meant that the exact focus of each interview depended on the emphasis that informants put on specific topics, which differed in accordance with someone's specific expertise, experiences and social position. ...
Solomon Islands has relied on highly unsustainable industrial logging since the 1980s. While the development narrative around logging emphasizes its macro-economic importance, it structurally overlooks the impacts on local people's lives. Based on 200 qualitative interviews conducted in 25 villages and 14 logging operations in Malaita Province between 2016 and 2019, this paper demonstrates that the impacts of logging on subsistence and social relations are systemic rather than incidental. By making use of interview quotes, the paper gives voice to rural Solomon Islanders. The results show that the logging industry fails to generate lasting local benefits, while unsustainable logging practices undermine subsistence livelihoods, especially fisheries. Logging triggers conflict that long outlasts the operations themselves, causes sexual exploitation, facilitates excessive alcohol use and reinforces gender disparities by stru cturally excluding women from decision-making and benefit-sharing. This paper calls for a stronger focus on the social impacts of logging in forestry science, policy and practice.
... Another reform effort in 2004 stranded in Parliament. The poor enforcement of forestry legislation is a longstanding problem (Boer 1996;Frazer 1997;Allen 2008;Allen and Porter 2016;NEPCon 2018 ...
... These financial constraints mask more fundamental political problems and struggles. Ministers enjoy far reaching discretionary powers, a remnant of the colonial administration, so decision-making processes can be highly politicized and override the initiatives of public servants (Frazer 1997;CCIF 2003). 22 As a result, national government agencies such as the MOFR, MECDM and MFMR are struggling with low staff morale and inaction (MDPAC 2016). ...
This policy gap analysis identifies threats to coral reefs, evaluates the effectiveness of the existing legal framework to address these threats, and formulates recommendations to strengthen community-based natural resource management in Solomon Islands. Coral reefs are of crucial importance for food security and rural livelihoods in the archipelago. Logging is a major, yet often overlooked, threat to coral reefs in the country. Large-scale logging operations cause massive erosion, which has a detrimental effect on water quality. The shipping accidents, oil pollution and uncontrolled construction of log ponds associated with the logging industry also have a significant impact on coastal ecosystems. Overfishing is particularly problematic on narrow fringe reefs in densely populated areas, such as the northwest coast of Malaita and the west coast of Guadalcanal. Nonetheless, coral reefs in Solomon Islands remain in fairly good condition and seem relatively resilient to global climate change impacts. The existing legal framework is in principle adequate to address current threats to coral reefs. The key challenge is to enforce these laws on the ground. But provincial governments, which play a pivotal role in implementing environmental legislation, remain structurally under-resourced. Civil society organizations, government agencies and donors are actively promoting community-based resource management (CBRM), and substantial efforts have been made over the past 20 years to build an enabling policy framework to support conservation action at the grassroots level. However, these initiatives have little impact on wider development trajectories in the country. In most cases, customary authorities are unable to address supra-local threats, such as logging- induced sedimentation, shipping accidents or the harvesting of marine resources for export markets. Only government agencies can effectively address these threats. New investments to conserve coral reefs should therefore primarily focus on the following: • Strengthen the enforcement of existing environmental legislation, for example by ensuring adequate operational budgets and by enabling legal action against environmental crime, fraud and corruption. • Provide essential information to improve CBRM, for example by disseminating awareness materials to coastal communities, and by developing paralegal referral systems to report and respond to violations of environmental legislation. • Mainstream environmental conservation in rural development programs, for example by building a broad civil society coalition to campaign for structural reforms of the logging industry.
... Existing drivers of biodiversity and carbon loss continue to impact terrestrial biomes in Oceania (Frazer 1997;Lees 2007;Lindenmayer 2007;Kingsford et al. 2009;Bryan et al. 2010;Woinarski 2010). Deforestation and degradation of terrestrial biomes for urban development, agriculture and logging remains the predominant threatening process in Oceania (Lindenmayer 2007;Kingsford et al. 2009;Woinarski 2010), and is the major cause of extinctions (Sodhi et al. 2009) and carbon loss. ...
... The carbon stock loss in New Guinea is approximately 50% from logging and 50% from subsistence agriculture (Shearman and Bryan 2011), with area of each increasing. Logging in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea is progressing at a rate that will leave little mature and undisturbed forest within a decade (Frazer 1997;Keppel 2006;Shearman and Bryan 2011). ...
We review the threats from anthropogenic climate change to the terrestrial biodiversity of Oceania, and quantify decline in carbon stocks. Oceania’s rich terrestrial biodiversity is facing unprecedented threats through the interaction of pervasive environmental threats (deforestation and degradation; introduced and invasive species; fragmentation) and the effects of anthropogenic climate change (sea level rise; altered rainfall patterns and increased fire frequency; temperature rises and increased storm severity, extreme weather events and abrupt system changes). All nine of Oceania’s terrestrial biomes harbour ecosystems and habitat types that are highly vulnerable under climate change, posing an immense conservation challenge. Current policies and management practices are inadequate and the need for new legislation and economic mechanisms is clear, despite powerful interests committed to limiting progress. Mitigation can be achieved by increasing the effectiveness of the protected area network, by maintaining and effectively managing existing carbon stocks and biodiversity, and by reforestation to sequester atmospheric carbon. A price on carbon emissions may encourage less carbon-intensive energy use while simultaneously encouraging reforestation on long-cleared land, and reducing degradation of native forests. However, realizing these changes will require societal change, and depend on input and collaboration from multiple stakeholders to devise and engage in shared, responsible management.
... 4 Over the same period, only two women won national elections. In 1989, Hilda Kari won a by-election in the electorate currently known as East Central Guadalcanal (Frazer 1997;Pollard 2006), and went on to win two general elections (1993 and 1997 Figure 1. Each point on the chart is a woman's candidacy. ...
... Afu Billy and Hilda Kari, for example, benefitted in their constituencies from being known to be successful civil servants in Honiara. And Billy benefitted significantly from family ties and her family's church connections (Billy 2002), while Hilda Kari also had strong community ties and gained credit for antilogging community work (Frazer 1997). In another case, in Gao/Bugotu constituency, interviewees stressed that Rhoda Sikilabu performed as well as she did (she won the highest vote share of any woman candidate standing in 2010, running second against a very popular incumbent) owing to strong community ties, leadership of the local church women's association, and having been seen to have served the constituency well as a member of the Isabel provincial parliament. ...
This article discusses the poor performance of women candidates in Solomon Islands elections and potential aid policy responses. The article outlines women candidates' performance, details challenges faced by women, examines existing aid work designed to help women candidates and provides policy suggestions. The article argues that existing aid policy focused on candidate training and voter education has achieved little because the main impediments women candidates face are access to finance and local gatekeepers, alongside more subtle normative constraints. These are barriers that are not easily shifted by training or education programs. Meanwhile, for reasons of political economy, another area of aid-supported engagement, a parliamentary gender quota, is unlikely to be enacted. Reflecting this, and the nature of the challenges women candidates face, the article recommends donors also undertake work to help prospective women candidates engage with communities over time, building ties and reputations as providers of assistance.
... Large-scalecommercial logging in the Solomon Islands has occurred since the early 1960's (Frazer 1997). Initially, most of the logging took place in government or government leased lands. ...
... Initially, most of the logging took place in government or government leased lands. The early 1980's marked a second period of logging where attention of commercial harvesters was shifted to customary lands with dense stands of high-value timber (Frazer 1997) and government lands became exhausted from exploitation without replenishment. Since these lands were owned and managed by indigenous tribes, large logging operations needed permission to access these areas. ...
The commercial exploitation of tropical timber is the key economic sector in the Solomon Islands. However, despite several decades of continuous large-scale logging, few efforts have been sustained at a regional level for reforestation of resulting degraded lands. Reforestation efforts have been limited to small, local and independent initiatives, with no movement on a regional or national level. In the past decade, however, the Christian Fellowship Church (CFC), a religious group in the Western Solomon Islands, has initiated a regional reforestation program in its member communities—a movement that has accelerated quickly and successfully. We use interviews and open-ended discussions with villagers and village leaders to explore how CFC has undertaken an apparently effective, large-scale reforestation project where the government, corporate logging companies, or localized kin groups have not. Results from the interviews reveal a diverse gamut of drivers, incentives, investments, and expectations for reforestation. Although respect of the power of the leader of the CFC was the most commonly cited reason for enrolling in reforestation, promises of income and land were also important in the success and widespread participation in the program. However, as this paper reveals, the significant time investment on a community level and by individual households, the growing expectation of financial return, and the distribution of land among community members for forestry, all will likely lead to unforeseen tensions in land tenure and resource ownership. Still, this reforestation initiative is a rare example of reforestation on customary land in Solomon Islands and one of the first models of a long-term, grassroots, religion-inspired community forestry effort in the Pacific.
... For most of the twentieth century, the organization of the regional timber trade reflected the political relationship between Western metropolitan powers and their colonial dependencies. For example , one British company was responsible for three-quarters of the logs exported from (state-owned) native forests in Solomon Islands during the 1960s and 1970s (Frazer 1997), Australia consumed most of PNG's timber exports during the final period of colonial administration (Jonas 1985), and where domestic supplies were insufficient to meet the demand for processed wood products in the smaller island territories, the deficit was normally met by exports from New Zealand or the United States. The initial round of Japanese investment in logging the native forests of Southeast Asia and the New Guinea region in the 1970s was only the harbinger of a much bigger shift in the patterns of trade and investment in the last two decades of the century. ...
... It removed the right of customary landowners (or their political leaders) to make " private dealings " with logging companies , and it centralized the process of " resource acquisition and allocation " in the hands of a National Forest Board and National Forest Service designed to operate independently of ministerial control. Some critics of the logging industry then began to question the exclusion of local communities from this new form of centralized bureaucratic control (Brunton 1996; Taylor 1997; Montagu 2001), yet it did seem to set PNG's forest management regime apart from the networks of patronage and corruption that still controlled the allocation timber harvesting rights in (West) Papua and Solomon Islands (Frazer 1997; Dauvergne 1998). Perhaps this was only an illusion. ...
... Allen 2011, 278-301. His chapter on the political economy of logging also draws on 'high quality research' byDuncan 1995;Frazer 1997, Dauvergne 1997, Bennett 2000, and Kabutaulaka 2001. 6 Islands Business, May 1989. ...
Solomon Sunaone Mamaloni was an outstanding and controversial politician in Solomon Islands from 1970 until his death in January 2000. Becoming the country’s first chief minister in 1974 at the age of 31, he led Solomon Islands to self-government in January 1976 and subsequently served as prime minister three times— from 1981 to 1983, 1989 to 1993, and 1994 to 1997. Solomon Islands has suffered many problems and crises during and since Mamaloni’s time, including the Tension from 1998–2003. It would be easy to attribute most of the responsibility for these to the style of politics that ‘Solo’ practised and inspired in others, but both need to be understood in context. ‘Solo’ was a product of complex traditional societies, changing rapidly as the islands moved from colonial rule to independence, situated in an even more complex and rapidly changing post-war global environment. By taking into account these historical and structural forces, this biography seeks to arrive at a fuller understanding of Solomon Mamaloni—his life, career, legacy, and country.
... Additionally, breaches of logging contract conditions are common; royalties to landowners may be underpaid and verbal promises by logging companies to village communities for infrastructural improvements -like building schools, clinics, or roads -are rarely kept (Gay, 2009, p. 218). The adverse environmental, social and economic effects of logging are well documented (For some examples see Barlow, 1997;Bennett, 2000b;Frazer, 1997;Gay, 2009;Hviding & Bayliss-Smith, 2000;Kabutaulaka, 2000Kabutaulaka, , 2006Oranje & Duff, 2006;Shearman, 2012). ...
This thesis is an ethnography of women on Kolombangara Island in the Western Province of Solomon Islands. It works towards making village women visible and their voices audible. A blend of quantitative and qualitative data is used to describe what women are doing, when, where, and how, and thus make sense of the position from, and within which, rural women act. As a feminist political work the thesis aims to reframe articulations of gender equity with development and natural resource management in the Pacific through the lens of village women's perspectives.
... comm., 5 February 2012). As has been the case elsewhere in Solomon Islands following logging, there has been a considerable breakdown in trust, particularly concerning the lack of transparency over royalty payments (see Frazer 1997;Hviding and Bayliss-Smith 2000;Kabutaulaka 2000;Scheyvens and Cassells 1999). One informant told me that 'the (Siropodoko) people were one, now they have become separated' (S. ...
Solomon Islands churches, such as the United Church on Choiseul, have accrued extensive organisational networks, governance structures, and a local political legitimacy that frequently surpasses that of the state. Well-respected and very influential at village-level, this places such churches in a strong position to be agents for change. On Choiseul, however, Nukiki village and others, are facing significant development-related challenges which they, and the church, do not have the necessary skills to address. Outside assistance is needed to enhance local capacity, and this could be achieved if development agencies engaged in partnerships with the church. In discussing the potential for productive partnerships with churches, this paper focuses on the case of the United Church in Nukiki Village, Choiseul Province.
... Corruption among logging companies and various sectors of society has also contributed to excessive logging in the Solomon Islands (Kabutaulaka 2000;Dinnen and Firth 2008). This involves opportunists (i.e., influential groups or individuals who cunningly pursue any foreseeable logging opportunities to make financial gains), mostly through illegal transactions (Kabutaulaka 2000;Dinnen and Firth 2008;Larmour et al. 2012 (Frazer 1997;Dinneth and Firth 2008). Several high-profile politicians, prominent government officers, and opportunistic individuals and groups have allegedly been associated with such illegal practices and been charged with illegal conduct (Bennett 2000;Dinnen and Firth 2008). ...
... The logging industry in Solomon Islands has been so tightly imbricated with the evolution of the nation's post-colonial politics that the two could be said to be mutually constituted (see, for example, Allen 2011; Bennett 2000; Dauvergne 1998/9;Frazer 1997;Kabutaulaka 2000Kabutaulaka , 2006URS Corporation 2006;Wairiu 2007). Benefits of logging have typically been captured by foreign, mostly Malaysian, companies and national-level politicians. ...
... This increased to 54.9 per cent in 1993. In 1994, it contributed 56 per cent of the country's export revenue and 31 per cent of all government revenues (Montgomery 1995;Fraser 1997). In 1995 it made up for 49.4 per cent of principal exports (Central Bank of Solomon Islands 1996:16). ...
... At the time of writing, however, logging continues and mining is not firmly established (Porter and Allen 2015). This logging regime has been marked by environmental destruction, political malfeasance, a failure of the state to regulate or control the logging industry, and unethical practices by foreign logging companies, including financial trickery (Barlow and Winduo 1997, Frazer 1997, Bennett 2000, Hviding and Bayliss-Smith 2000, Kabutaulaka 2000, 2006, Oranje and Duff 2006, Wairiu 2007, Gay 2009). It has also altered the gender of decision making around land. ...
Women’s lack of participation in important decision making is noted as an obstacle to sustainable development in many parts of the world. An initial issue for gender equity in environmental decision making in many developing country contexts is not only women’s inclusion but also their substantive participation in decision-making forums. In this article I examine the power structures embedded in the public communicative spaces in a village in the Western Province of Solomon Islands using empirical data in conjunction with ethnographic understanding of gendered meeting styles. The data reveal some reasons why women may be silenced as public political actors. It also raises the potential for development actors to create conceptual space for specific women’s ways of meeting and validating women’s meeting styles. These findings have implications for encouraging transformative communicative spaces and formats that allow transcendence of socially embedded power structures.
... Deals between customary or registered land owners and foreign logging companies are often contentious and cause community divisions and hostilities. Many of these disputes result in lengthy court cases, a situation common for the past few decades throughout areas in Solomon Islands engaging in large-scale logging projects with foreign-owned companies (for some examples seeFrazer 1997;Bennett 2000;Hviding & Bayliss-Smith 2000;Kabutaulaka 2000Kabutaulaka , 2006Wairiu 2007). ...
This article presents Solomon Islands village women's opinions about gender norms. It explores their perceptions of their ability to be involved in leadership roles and decision-making, and their analysis of how they conceive of their abilities changing. It attempts to unravel the 'push-pull' experience for Solomon Islands rural women—a push towards modernity equated with gender equity and development, and the pull of traditional gender roles for women embedded in notions of what it means to be a good Solomon Islander woman. It concludes that women's empowerment must be viewed as a journey that encompasses women's strategic and practical interests relating to agency in a variety of locations. This article contributes to understanding some aspects to women's empowerment and how international NGOs and other development entities may have a role in creating space for women's self-reflection, public commentary and visibility in secular social space.
... Major commercial shipping routes exist between the Solomon Islands and mainland SE Asia and currently the Solomon Islands has significant trade with Singapore and Malaysia [81] which could explain the ABC results and high between-region gene flow (F ST = 0.05-0.11). Large-scale logging operations have been prevalent in the Solomon Islands over the last 40 years, with a four-fold influx of logging industry multinationals, chiefly from SE Asia (especially Malaysia), during the early 1980s [82]. Shipping associated with this industry could have provided a prime opportunity for the introduction of Ae. albopictus from SE Asia. ...
Background
Within the last century, increases in human movement and globalization of trade have facilitated the establishment of several highly invasive mosquito species in new geographic locations with concurrent major environmental, economic and health consequences. The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is an extremely invasive and aggressive daytime-biting mosquito that is a major public health threat throughout its expanding range.
Methodology/Principal findings
We used 13 nuclear microsatellite loci (on 911 individuals) and mitochondrial COI sequences to gain a better understanding of the historical and contemporary movements of Ae. albopictus in the Indo-Pacific region and to characterize its population structure. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) was employed to test competing historical routes of invasion of Ae. albopictus within the Southeast (SE) Asian/Australasian region. Our ABC results show that Ae. albopictus was most likely introduced to New Guinea via mainland Southeast Asia, before colonizing the Solomon Islands via either Papua New Guinea or SE Asia. The analysis also supported that the recent incursion into northern Australia’s Torres Strait Islands was seeded chiefly from Indonesia. For the first time documented in this invasive species, we provide evidence of a recently colonized population (the Torres Strait Islands) that has undergone rapid temporal changes in its genetic makeup, which could be the result of genetic drift or represent a secondary invasion from an unknown source.
Conclusions/Significance
There appears to be high spatial genetic structure and high gene flow between some geographically distant populations. The species' genetic structure in the region tends to favour a dispersal pattern driven mostly by human movements. Importantly, this study provides a more widespread sampling distribution of the species’ native range, revealing more spatial population structure than previously shown. Additionally, we present the most probable invasion history of this species in the Australasian region using ABC analysis.
... The regulation of forestry in Solomon Islands is notoriously complex, and the problems surrounding logging have stimulated a wealth of research on collusion between foreign logging companies and local politicians, irregularities in the timber rights hearing process, poor monitoring and enforcement, and the uneven distribution of royalties (Frazer 1997;Dauvergne 1998;Bennett 2000;Kabutaulaka 2000Kabutaulaka , 2001Wairiu 2007;Wairiu and Nanau 2010;Allen 2011a;McDougall 2011). The Forest Resources and Timber Utilisation Act presupposes that it is possible to identify and mark boundaries between social groups, as well as delineate the 'land' and 'timber' to which they hold 'rights'. ...
This chapter links questions about social differentiation in land relations to debates about gender inequality in the exercise of formal political authority. I suggest firstly, that while customary land tenure regimes are dynamic and contested, different people are differently positioned to influence the outcomes of negotiations over land. Importantly, once contests over land enter the arenas established by the state, it is primarily male leaders who perform, endorse and reject claims to land as property. Secondly, I argue that an individual's ability to solicit state recognition of claims to land is not merely linked to their political authority, but that property and authority are in fact mutually constitutive. Thirdly, this means that land disputes have implications that stretch far beyond the local contexts in which they initially arise. Contests over land not only reflect social differentiation but constitute it; and processes of inclusion and exclusion at the national level are intimately entwined with the construction and re-inscription of categories of difference through contests over the ‘ownership’ of land at the local level.
... Unregulated logging activities began to boom under the governments of Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni in the 1980s and between 1994 and 1997 (Bennett 2002). During these periods, many political figures became entangled in logging interests, the impact of which is still being felt today (Bennett 2002;Frazer 1997;Dauvergne 1997Dauvergne , 1999. ...
Current growing interest in mining in Solomon Islands warrants critical reflection on the centrality of natural resources in the post-colonial formation of state-society interactions, in particular, as they have been shaped by decades of forestry resources extraction. Since independence in 1978 waves of Malaysian, Taiwanese, Korean, Australian and Japanese investors have developed natural resource extraction projects. Not only have these projects been poorly regulated, they have entwined politicians, leaders and landholders with the state as an economic agent with its own base of economic power. As a result, wealth in Solomon Islands is highly politicised and dependent on the bargaining position of the state and foreign investors (Bennett 1987, 2002). Instead of looking at the failures of the state, as is common in political science approaches to Solomon Islands, we draw on case studies in forestry, mining, and customary land dealings on the island of Malaita and on the Weathercoast of Guadalcanal to highlight the kinds of social networks that enable agreements over the use of natural resources. Challenging common assumptions about the division between state and society, we show that leaders in rural regions of Solomon Islands behave like landlords, that brokers from the communities see themselves as actors equalling the state, and that the state performs like a capitalist actor.
... Please send correspondence to Michelle Dyer: michelle.dyer1@my.jcu.edu.au NOTES 1 All direct quotes from informants are author's English translations from Solomon Island's pijin. 2 For some examples see: Oranje, 2006;Hviding, 2006;Hviding, 2003;Hviding & Bayliss-Smith, 2000;Kabutaulaka, 2000;Kabutaulaka, 2006;Frazer, 1997;Bennett, 2000;Gay, 2009;Shearman, 2012;CBSI, 2010;Wairiu, 2007. 3 People in this village interchangeably use the term butubutu and bubutu. ...
Why do Solomon Islands' villagers continue to engage with large scale logging projects by foreign companies when they have decades of experience of the disadvantages of such deals? This paper explores village level narratives of equality surrounding a logging dispute in a village on Kolombangara Island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. Drawing on empirical evidence I seek to understand firstly, why villagers continue to engage with logging companies, and secondly, why seemingly viable and financially attractive alternative forestry projects may not be taken up. Additionally, I examine legal recognition of a local conservation Non-Government organisation as an environmental 'stakeholder', with an accepted interest in customary land as distinct from the categorisation of 'landowners'. I conclude that village communities may continue to engage with foreign logging companies, despite their clear knowledge of the disadvantages of such projects, partly as a means of maintaining some measure of social equality in the village.
... The logging industry in Solomon Islands has been so tightly imbricated with the evolution of the nation's post-colonial politics that the two could be said to be mutually constituted (see, for example, Frazer, 1997;Dauvergne, 1998/9;Bennett, 2000;Allen, 2011). The economic benefits of logging have typically been captured by foreignmostly Malaysiancompanies, nationallevel politicians, and local 'big-men'. ...
Set against the backdrop of a recent low-level civil war in which distributional tensions over natural resources played an important role, this paper draws upon Solomon Islands’ experience with commercial logging, and its more limited experience to date with large-scale mining, to ask what the political economic impacts of an anticipated expansion in mining activity might look like. Employing comparative literature on political settlements and the political economy of extractive industries, we analyze the potential for the development of institutional arrangements that will be better able to manage the familiar but intensified social and political economic contestation that an expansion of large-scale mining is likely to engender. While an array of institutional reforms – which we canvass – would present ways to tackle these contestations, especially their salient spatial dimensions, ultimately we are skeptical about the likelihood that Solomon Islands' political elites will invest in them and concerned about the prospect of a return to violence at the intersection of landowner disintegration and provincial-national government tensions over benefit-sharing.
... Such engagements undermine government policies and environmental protections pertaining to logging. Politicians and government officials benefiting from such illegal deals enable and protect logging interests, even compromising national interests by overstepping any resistance to logging [26,28]. Several high-profile politicians, prominent government officers, and opportunistic individuals and groups have allegedly been associated with such illegal practices and been charged with illegal conduct [18,26]. ...
Forests of Asia-Pacific islands have undergone degradation by some of the worst-known selective logging practices in the tropics. It is unclear whether severely damaged forests can return to a pre-logging state via natural regeneration, or whether active restoration is required. In this review, we highlight how the socioeconomic dynamics in the Solomon Islands promote excessive logging, resulting in highly degraded forests. We detail seven key elements currently promoting excessive logging in this region: (i) economic interests, (ii) corruption, (iii) poor employment conditions in the logging sector, (iv) high forest accessibility, (v) resource limitations for forest monitoring, (vi) contention over logging benefits, and (vii) a paucity of information for policy development. Though research on the regeneration capacity of logged forests in the Solomon Islands remains extremely limited, we suggest that some logged forests in the country may require active restoration-especially those that have been most heavily damaged. Our argument is based on previous tree planting initiatives in logged forest in the 1970s and 1980s. We propose three broad restoration techniques-enrichment planting, direct seeding, and the use of artificial perches-as viable options to help restore logged forests in the Solomon Islands. Lastly, we recommend the conservation-concession model to aid forest restoration, given its recent success in the region.
... However, at odds with the predictions of the 'developmental' leadership agenda, this highpoint also coincided with the period of civil unrest known as 'the Tensions'. Indeed the rise in proportion of MPs with tertiary education up until 2001 corresponded with the postindependence breakdown in political governance, declining government services, unstainablelogging, and deteriorating fiscal situation conditions(Moore 2004;Frazer 1997). ...
This article examines the key attributes of members of parliament from Solomon Islands. Drawing on bio-data on MPs, interviews and election results, the authors’ findings show that politicians are getting older, have atypical education levels and are from an increasingly diverse range of occupational backgrounds. The authors also find that, while Solomon Islands MPs are a political elite of sorts, they remain tightly tied to their communities. They consider the implications of these findings for research on developmental leadership, political professionalisation and elite theory. They argue that none of these three literatures adequately captures the political trajectories of politicians in Solomon Islands but that this case study contributes to research in these areas.
本文探讨了所罗门群岛议会成员的一些重要属性。作者根据对议员们传记、访谈和选举结果等资料的研究，发现政治家年龄越来越大，教育水平不太典型，职业背景愈益多样。作者同时发现，所罗门群岛议员虽属政治精英，但与各自的社群都保持紧密的联系。作者讨论了这些发现对于发展型领导人、政治职业化及精英理论所具有的意义。作者指出，这三方方面的文献都未能捕捉到所罗门群岛政治家的政治轨迹，而本研究却对此有所贡献。
... The British development model was kept unchanged at independence, with the important exception of the introduction of logging on customary lands in the early 1980s, when the Mamaloni government allowed loggers to negotiate access rights directly with landowners, with the state acting as regulator. 57 In the following years logging became the most significant export-earner in Solomon Islands and the incidence of social conflict at the local level increased, as communities became divided over the unevenly distributed and unsustained gains from the destruction of their habitats by logging companies. Nevertheless political leaders in the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s made sure they continued to use state revenue for patronage; therefore personal wealth accumulation was relatively modest in the upper echelons of government and the anti-logging movement never quite managed to become national in scope. ...
The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (ramsi), an Australian-led state-building intervention, has attracted considerable attention in policy-making and scholarly circles world-wide since its July 2003 inception. ramsi was lauded by the Development Assistant Committee of the oecd as a model for good practice to be followed by state builders elsewhere because of its perceived success in halting violent conflict and fostering a return to economic growth. The mission has had its critics too, but much of this criticism has centred on whether it was paying sufficient attention to the Melanesian social and cultural context. Such accounts fail to recognise that ramsi should not be viewed as a technocratic exercise in state building and capacity development by outsiders, but rather as a political project that seeks to transform the social and political relations within the Solomon Islands. This contribution critically examines the nature of this political project by focusing on the ways in which political power is (re)produced. By attempting to narrow the political choices available to Solomon Islanders, ramsi's programmes have ended up limiting the prospects for a sustainable political accommodation to emerge in the Solomon Islands. The deployment of coercive force in moments of acute crisis, as a way of managing the contradictions of attempts to build a ‘state’ through the production and reproduction of social and political power conducive to this project, reveals that rather than being a recipe for ‘good’ governance, ramsi remains a form of emergency rule.
Legal scholars, economists, and international development practitioners often assume that the state is capable of 'securing' rights to land and addressing gender inequality in land tenure. In this innovative study of land tenure in Solomon Islands, Rebecca Monson challenges these assumptions. Monson demonstrates that territorial disputes have given rise to a legal system characterised by state law, custom, and Christianity, and that the legal construction and regulation of property has, in fact, deepened gender inequalities and other forms of social difference. These processes have concentrated formal land control in the hands of a small number of men leaders, and reproduced the state as a hypermasculine domain, with significant implications for public authority, political participation, and state formation. Drawing insights from legal scholarship and political ecology in particular, this book offers a significant study of gender and legal pluralism in the Pacific, illuminating ongoing global debates about gender inequality, land tenure, ethnoterritorial struggles and the post colonial state.
Because a population’s ability to respond to rapid change is dictated by standing genetic variation, we can better predict a population’s long-term viability by estimating and then comparing adult census size (N) and effective population size (Ne). However, most studies only measure N or Ne, which can be misleading. Using a combination of field and genomic sequence data, we here estimate and compare N and Ne in two range-restricted endemics of the Solomon Islands. Two Zosterops White-eye species inhabit the small island of Kolombangara, with a high elevation species endemic to the island (Z. murphyi) and a low elevation species endemic to the Solomon Islands (Z. kulambangrae). Field observations reveal large values of N for both species with Z. kulambangrae numbering at 114,781 ± 32,233 adults, and Z. murphyi numbering at 64,412 ± 15,324 adults. In contrast, genomic analyses reveal that Ne was much lower than N, with Z. kulambangrae estimated at 694.5 and Z. murphyi at 796.1 individuals. Further, positive Tajima’s D values for both species suggest that they have experienced a demographic contraction, providing a mechanism for low values of Ne. Comparison of N and Ne suggests that Z. kulambangrae and Z. murphyi are not at immediate threat of extinction but may be at genetic risk. Our results provide important baseline data for long-term monitoring of these island endemics, and argue for measuring both population size estimates to better gauge long-term population viability.
This thesis is about the young men who joined the militant groups during the conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003). Interviews with ex-militants and court transcripts are employed to examine the reasons why young men decided to take up arms in the conflict. The findings are used to challenge journalistic and some scholarly accounts of the conflict that have interpreted the motives of the men who participated in it primarily in terms of greed and criminality. Such accounts are informed by an influential scholarly literature that emphasises the role of economic factors in civil wars in developing countries, commonly known as the ‘greed and grievance’ literature. The information presented in the thesis is also engaged to investigate some of the broader propositions made in the greed and grievance literature—especially the proposed relationship between ethnicity, resources and conflict—in the particular case of the conflict in Solomon Islands.
While the role of greed and criminality in the conflict cannot be disregarded, there were other motivating factors that were equally, if not more, important. Foremost of these are the ex-militants’ own conceptions of history and of the places of their respective peoples in the historical processes of colonisation, development and nation-building. The ‘objective’ history of the Solomons indicates that there is some merit to the grievance-based narratives of ex-militants: we can see how and why these narratives have emerged. A central theme for ex-militants from both sides of the conflict is the historical relationship between their respective peoples and ‘the government’. Both sides draw upon a rich tradition of resisting the state, particularly its perceived imposition upon kastom and local sovereignty over land and resources. Both sides also engage with discourses of development, highlighting perceived inequities in the distribution of primary resource rents, the geographical pattern of development, and the provision of government services.
There are other important aspects of the Solomons conflict that are obscured by the focus on greed and criminality. Foremost of these are culturalist explanations for some of the types of violence perpetrated by men in Solomon Islands and in other parts of Melanesia. These explanations problematise the Western conceptions of violence and crime that inform the greed and grievance literature. Moreover, while the so-called greed thesis may usefully enable us to see some aspects of the Solomons conflict in terms of ‘greed for the group’, the research reported here suggests that the emergence of island-wide identity groupings in Solomon Islands has been driven by the history of colonisation, uneven development and exposure to ‘other’ Solomon Islanders, as well as by the desire to capture primary resource rents. By giving a voice to some of the young men who participated in the Solomons conflict, and by providing an historical context for their stories, we can see that there is a strong need to move beyond greed and grievance if we are to understand the deeper roots of the conflict.
This chapter analyses the inscription of East Rennell on the World Heritage List, explaining how the values for which the site was listed and the site’s boundaries influence conservation efforts. The chapter then explores the site’s protection, laying a foundation for more detailed analysis in later chapters. It outlines the threats to the site, and the Solomon Islands government’s plan to address those threats. Key social, cultural, and economic issues influencing World Heritage conservation in Solomon Islands are also discussed. The chapter argues that in the design of conservation initiatives, the economic constraints of the government, the development aspirations of the East Rennellese people, and Solomon Islanders’ reverence for the rights of customary landowners cannot be ignored.
This chapter explains the context for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the Pacific, laying a foundation for more detailed analysis in subsequent chapters. It examines the types of heritage sites prevalent in the Pacific, and the key threats to such places. It then explains how a legacy of colonialism in the region is the creation of legally plural States, in which both customary and State laws apply. The scope for World Heritage to be protected under customary and State legal systems is also assessed. This includes analysing the economic, social, and political context within which those systems operate. The chapter argues that greater understanding of how customary and State laws operate and interact is needed to strengthen the protection of Pacific heritage.
This chapter considers the potential for East Rennell to be protected under the Protected Areas Act 2010, and identifies key issues that may arise if the Act is implemented there. It argues that the relationship between the legislation and customary law must be carefully considered in the preparation of the site’s management plan and the selection of its management committee. Other legislation relevant to the conservation of East Rennell is also analysed, including laws concerning logging, mining, fishing, and biosecurity. The chapter explores the legal, economic, and cultural factors that affect the ability and willingness of the government and customary landowners to utilise these laws to protect World Heritage. Some suggestions for strengthening East Rennell’s protection under legislation are provided.
Drawing upon findings in previous chapters, this chapter identifies key lessons from Solomon Islands’ experience and the Pacific more broadly. They concern the involvement of Pacific Island States in the World Heritage Convention regime, the nomination of Pacific sites, and the protection of Pacific World Heritage. The chapter also discusses some options that could be implemented within the ambit of the Convention regime, which could potentially strengthen the protection of World Heritage in the region. A key theme of the chapter is the need to better harmonize international, national, and local perspectives on World Heritage conservation. In addition, the integral role that local communities play in the protection of East Rennell under both customary and State law must be acknowledged.
This chapter summarizes the findings, suggests ways to harmonize the interactions of humans and the natural world of Melanesia, and proposes how this system sustainably benefits the people of Roviana. Successful strategies for harmonizing community welfare and biodiversity will probably include (1) the use of diversified strategies to allow villagers to continue to receive benefits from ecosystem services, (2) the strategy that balances both low-risk and risk-prone methods of earning income, (3) conservation of biodiversity and land in a method that supports these strategies, (4) building and continuing consensus related to the sustainable management and wise use of the forest, and (5) integrating traditional leadership and knowledge for achieving these conditions. Additionally, external support is needed to empower the community with internal diversity toward harmonized interaction between humans and the natural world. Responses to external negative impacts on the island’s resources may also cause the villagers to think about how they can manage the land sustainably. Recent global forest conservation initiatives can play important roles, only when they are conducted in accordance with the internal diversity. Lessons from the Solomon Islands will be useful for other societies.
The lure of income from logging is strong in Solomon Islands, and many communities have succumbed, ceding their forest rights to commercial enterprises. This has led to widespread destruction of the natural forests in Western and Choiseul Provinces. This destruction of forests, combined with an increase of climate change impacts has resulted in communities experiencing droughts, landslides, a deterioration of their water supply, and soil erosion. In an effort to provide communities with pro-forest alternative livelihoods to unsustainable logging, The Natural Resources Development Foundation (NRDF) has developed a suite of activities that are leading to improved forest management and increased household income. Among others, NRDF is promoting beekeeping and as a complementary activity, women’s savings clubs. These activities positively reinforce each other and communities have seen incomes rise considerably while the forests have remained intact. The paper will discuss the mechanics of NRDF’s interventions as well as present data on their impact on households in Solomon Islands.
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Based on our research in two Solomon Islands communities and two Li ethnic minority’s communities on Hainan Island, China, this chapter aims to clarify what factors are beneficial and which are nonbeneficial to environmental preservation and community welfare under rural development projects, focusing on basic human needs, eco-commons, indigenous risk avoidance, environmental justice, and consensus formation. From the changes in environment and community life, the four communities were dichotomized, owing not to the countries or the development projects, that is, commercial logging in Solomon Islands and cash-earning arboriculture and tourism in the Li territory, but to the pace of transition from subsistence economy to cash economy. The two communities, one each from Solomon Islands and the Li territory, have experienced rapid transition to accord with the development plans by their respective government but have faced increased interhousehold differences in income and other various unexpected consequences against environmental justice and basic human needs. In contrast, the remaining two slowly developing communities have innovated environmentally sound land-use strategies with their sense of eco-commons and indigenous risk avoidance, and these strategies have gradually increased their income. It is concluded that the coexistence of traditional subsistence activities and introduced cash-earning activities is necessary for guaranteeing and upgrading the inhabitants’ living conditions and beneficial to environmental sustainability and that the development agents, particularly the governments, are needed not to play paternalistic roles excessively but to contribute to capacity building of the local communities.
This study discusses the nature of power relations in the Solomon Islands logging industry. It examines how stakeholders struggle for control of the industry, and how that influences logging outcomes.In particular,the study examines howthe contestation for control between stakeholders affects the participation of indigenous landowners and the nature of their benefit from the industry.It shows that the ownership of a huge percentage of the country's forest land does not guarantee control of the logging industry. This is because of the relative nature of power relations and the complexity of both internal and external factors that influence the ability of a particular stakeholder to exercise power.
The role of landowners is important given that more than 80 per cent of forest land in Solomon Islands is customary-owned and indigenous landowners have either influenced,or have the potential to influence,the logging industry in a significant way.The industry has had an immense impact on the country's economic, social and political landscapes over the past two decades, and had both negative and positive impacts on the lives of many Solomon Islanders.
The involvement of foreign compames,the weakness of state policies and administration,the lack of political will to make changes, the role of non-government organisations (NGOs), and the involvement of foreign governments and international aid agencies have all contributed to the political, economic and environmental legacies of the Solomon Islands logging industry in the past two decades.
It is often argued that Solomon Islanders are not benefiting as they should from the industry. Proponents of this argument usually assert that if there is an increased landowner participation in the logging industry,there would be better outcomes. The term 'better outcomes' is often used to refer to good environmental practices and greater economic returns for landowners and the country in general. However,while it is true that landowners should participate meaningfully, the study shows that because of the continuous struggle for control-both within landowning groups and between Them and other stakeholders-landowner participation may not necessarily produce better outcomes.
Further,the nature of power relations is such that it is not possible(and indeed not desirable) for one particular stakeholder to have control over the logging industry.Different stakeholders may have power over certain aspects of the industry and not others.While landowners, for example, have control over land,they often do not have access to nor control of financial and technological capital, or the making of policies and legislation. The study argues that the ability of stakeholders to exercise control over the industry is determined by both internal and external factors.
While this study deals specifically with logging in Solomon Islands, the experiences outlined here may contribute to an understanding of the politics of land-based natural resource development in general.
Solomon Islands' forests have high levels of biodiversity and are an important component of the country's culture and custom. The forests are under threat due to decades of unsustainable logging. Under Solomon Islands' law, logging companies need approval from the government and the customary landowners before commencing logging. This case note summarises two cases in the Solomon Islands High Court brought by an association of landowners to protect the 'cloud forest' of Kolombangara Island. In the first case, the High Court held that the association had standing to seek an injunction to prevent a company from logging without obtaining the necessary government approvals. The second case, which has not yet been finally determined by the Court, challenges the legality of the approvals subsequently granted by the government. These cases potentially pave the way for further public interest environmental litigation in Solomon Islands.
This article investigates the applicability of the influential economics of civil war literature to the case of the conflict which occurred in Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003. It is argued that a modified version of the greed thesis resonates with particular aspects of the situation in Solomon Islands, particularly during the latter phases of the conflict when a variety of actors, including politicians, businessmen and ex-militants, were clearly benefiting from the instrumentalisation of violence and disorder. The underlying causes of the conflict have much to do with historical patterns of uneven development which have created overlapping boundaries of social-economic inequality and ethrticity. As is the case with other recent armed conflicts in Melanesia, issues of land, identity, ethnicity and socioeconomic justice were central to the conflict.
Corruption is a popular topic in the Pacific Islands. Politicians are accused of it and campaign against it. Fiji's coup leaders vowed to clean it up. Several countries have "leadership codes" designed to reduce corruption, and others have created specialized anti-corruption agencies. Donors, the World Bank, and NGOs such as Transparency International have made it an international issue. Yet there is often disagreement about what constitutes corruption and how seriously it matters. What some view as corrupt may be regarded as harmless by others. Existing laws have proved difficult to enforce and seem out of step with public opinion, which is often very suspicious of corrupt behavior among island elites. As well as talk there is silence: People fear the consequences of complaining. The dangers of anti-corruption campaigns became apparent during the "cleanup" following Fiji's 2006 coup. So what counts as corruption in the Pacific and what causes it? How much is really going on? How can we measure it? What types are present? Are gifts really bribes? Is "culture" an excuse for corruption? Is politics-in particular, democracy-intrinsically corrupt? In clear and concise language, this work attempts to answer these questions. The author takes a comparative approach, drawing on economics, law, political science, and anthropology, as well as literature and poetry from the region. He looks at Transparency International's studies of National Integrity Systems and at newer research, including events since the Fiji coup. Interpreting Corruption is a highly accessible and approachable look at an age-old problem. Those interested in the Pacific Islands and public integrity will find it remarkably comprehensive as will students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, and political studies.
The tropical forests of Oceania are an enduring source of concern for indigenous communities, for the migrants who move to them, for the states that encompass them within their borders, for the multilateral institutions and aid agencies, and for the non-governmental organisations that focus on their conservation. Grounded in the perspective of political ecology, contributors to this volume approach forests as socially alive spaces produced by a confluence of local histories and global circulations. In doing so, they collectively explore the multiple ways in which these forests come into view and therefore into being. Exploring the local dynamics within and around these forests provides an insight into regional issues that have global resonance. Intertwined as they are with cosmological beliefs and livelihoods, as sites of biodiversity and Western desire, these forests have been and are still being transformed by the interaction of foreign and local entities. Focusing on case studies from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Gambier Islands, this volume brings new perspectives on how Pacific Islanders continue to creatively engage with the various processes at play in and around their forests.
This paper draws upon Michael Watts’s work on governable spaces and “economies of violence” in the Niger Delta (2004a,b,c) and Colin Filer’s concept of the “ideology of landownership” in Papua New Guinea (1997) to explore how resource capitalism has been at the heart of violent conflict in post-colonial Melanesia. This schema of the political ecology of violence is elucidated with reference to three governable spaces – landownership, indigeneity, and nationalism; four different resource–industrial complexes – mining, oil and gas, logging, and oil palm; and the region’s three most serious conflicts to date – the Bougainville conflict, the Solomon Islands ‘ethnic tension’, and on-going violence in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, particularly in Enga and Southern Highlands provinces. It is argued that in each of these places the story of violent conflict is ineluctably one of resource capitalism and its engagement with local socio-political contexts. In sharp contrast to the resource determinism, state-centrism and ahistoricism of much of the ‘resource conflict’ literature, attention to governmentality and scale highlights the highly contextual and contingent nature of resource-related violence in Melanesia. The diverse experiences of different regulatory approaches to the encounters between resource complexes and governable spaces across time and space are also examined, giving rise to policy implications for governing resource conflict in Melanesia.
In recent years, various forms of inter/transnational state-building have become increasingly common as a way of managing the perceived risk posed by dysfunctional governance in so-called fragile states to Western security. In Solomon Islands, the Australian government has led a robust and expansive regional intervention, designed to build the capacity of the Solomon Islands government and bureaucracy to provide more effective governance. Dominant approaches to state-building link state failure with a failure of development and typically involve considerable efforts to promote economic development through the establishing of institutional structures seen to be supportive of liberal markets. Though economic activity has expanded considerably in Solomon Islands following the initial 2003 intervention, much of this has occurred in the unsustainable logging industry, whose expansion is reliant upon primitive accumulation. Therefore, to the extent that the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands' (RAMSI) state-building programmes have supported market-led growth, they have unwittingly acted to mitigate the risk to primitive accumulation. However, the logging boom occurring on RAMSI's watch is likely to lead to future social and political instability, either as a result of resource-depletion or due to bottom-up forms of social conflict around the destruction of local habitats.
Independent Solomon Islands inherited lands that the colonial state had acquired and dedicated for forest use. Solomon Islanders became increasingly wary of the government's intentions regarding control of these lands and, by the late 1960s, as political consciousness increased, resistance grew to government purchase and reservation through legislation. Pressure by Solomon Islanders caused the colonial government to limit its attempts to control the forest resource for the public good, a process that accelerated after independence in 1978. Since then, in the face of an expanding Asian market for timber, the claims of resource owners and a revenue-seeking central government have seen frantic logging of customary land by mainly Asian logging companies, with little tangible return to Solomon Islanders. Provincial governments and rural communities are already demanding control of public lands, a demand that may be resisted by the central government as timber on customary land is worked out and plantation forests mature.
The reform of the public sector is a prominent issue in all of the Pacific island economies surveyed here. Efforts are being made generally to improve management accountability and service delivery and to streamline operations in the civil service. It is in the area of public (business) enterprise reform where significant gains could be achieved more quickly. All of the Pacific island economies have adopted policies to improve the performance of their public enterprises through commercialization, corporatization or privatization strategies. The main constraint to further progress is not a technical one but rather a political one. There is a need to generate a greater understanding of the issues and for wider acceptance of the need for serious reform. -Authors
The book partly grew out of essays written for an extension course on Pacific land tenure systems run by the University of the South Pacific in Honiara. Some material was prepared especially for the publication. The 31 chapters are presented under the following headings: introduced changes; group projects; alienated land; resource exploitation; minority rights; town land; traditional ownership; and land registration. -from WAERSA
A distinctive feature of Melanesian resource development is the key position held by land rightholders and a distinctive problem is the need to ensure that such rightholders receive a fair share of benefits from such development. The experiences of the Solomon Islands government in Rennell, Guadalcanal and North New Georgia resource projects and of Vanuatu's in dealing with urban land are examined. Focus is put upon issues of compulsory land acquisition, on the methods of landowner incorporation and on equity in benefit sharing. It concludes that landowners have, clearly, de facto bargaining leverage in most projects but that governments also have a wide range of instruments available to control the flow of such benefits. -Author