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Papua New Guiena is challenged to develop and manage it’s vast energy resources and the environmental and public policy issues associated with commercialisation of the resources, particularly the nature of energy mineral rents and benefit-sharing frameworks. By ABEL A SIMON THE anticipated LNG project is estimated to yield a bulky K300 million a year and by 2040, when the project is over, it is estimated that it would have produced a massive K200 billion. It now appears a stalemate situation for resource owners as giant developers ExxonMobil and government elites vie for resource benefits from the indigenous custodians of the land. Resources utilisation and managing its benefits has become a conflicting issue and presents a predicament for resource and environmental sustainability in Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is challenged to develop and manage its vast energy resources – the environmental and public policy issues associated with commercialisation of the resources, particularly the nature of energy mineral rents and benefit-sharing frameworks. One example is the landowners’ complaints about their lack of equitable participation and benefits. Even the trend at which the economy is progressing, particularly the wealth from energy resources, is a grave concern because fewer benefits are retained in the country. What is natural resource management?Natural resource management refers to how decisions concerning resource policy are made and how resources may be developed for contemporary and future needs. Moreover, natural resource management is a set of technical and managerial practices which utilise resources in order to satisfy people’s basic needs and wants under prevailing socioeconomic situations. By advocating resource management, we are promoting sustainable resource use. Resource sustainability, on the other hand, is an integral part of resource management, and refers to the use of natural and physical resources in ways that resources and the environment support life indefinitely. Managing the LNG project’s resources needs government regulators and developers to play a critical role in order to prevent volatile frustrations from affected communities and decrease the potential for conflict. While LNG is a long term economic prospect for Papua New Guinea, it could easily be jeopardised if the rightful landowners and communities are not satisfied with their benefits and equities.
Resource systems and linksNatural resources such as the forest and other plant life, the ocean, natural biodiversity, fisheries, birds and other wildlife, minerals, gas and oil, and the land; guarantee the cultural heritage and sustenance of traditional livelihoods from nature and are just as important for Papua New Guinea, given their subsistence, cultural and monetary value. Obviously, the abundance of natural mineral resources makes Papua New Guinea one of the richest countries in the world. The bond between our ancestors and their natural environment was extremely important as their livelihoods depended on how they interacted and utilised their natural surroundings. Constraints to Resource projectsMany resource projects in Papua New Guiena have succumbed to miserable failures due to a lack of clear networking with aligned governmental agencies. It is more so the ineffective oversight and lack of accountability of resource projects that becomes a hindrance in managing them. There are some reasons why resource projects fail in Papua New Guinea. First, political instability and politics are severe impediments to the development of resource projects, their implementation and the equitable distribution of wealth. Politicians emphasise production at the expense of strengthening key resource institutions such as the Mineral Resource Authority and the National Gas Corporation and so on, which results in the inability to sustain their legislations and gains over the long term. Second, decentralisation and participation of project beneficiaries are believed to increase the possibility of project success. However with the lack of participation and local involvement, natural resource extraction projects will not move forward easily. Decentralisation improves the planning and implementation process and facilitates more effective and positive community participation. Third, differing agendas impact on the potential for the success of a project. The principal actors in resource-based or donor-funded projects try to achieve different and sometimes contradictory agendas, than those of the local government and the community. When the agendas of key actors differ, the project’s success and benefit sustainability will suffer. The most important agendas of key players and their likely influence on the projects are seen in the earlier stages of benefit sharing and in the development of a memorandum between resource owners and the developers. Fourth, sustaining the LNG project’s benefits will depend on the ability to generate wealth to sustain the project itself, and the beneficiaries at the national, provincial and local-level governments. Political and socioeconomic climates cripple projects from institutional factors and inadequate individual and organisational capacity to undertake transparent management of project activities. Finally, resource related issues can inevitably involve conflicts of interest and tension between and amongst groups of people. This partly emerges from issues of resource ownership and distribution of intended benefits. These are unavoidable and can cause ongoing conflict in PNG. Participation of landowners and resource owning communities and other key stakeholders in resource development is vital. When resource management decisions are made, policies are formulated and approved, legislation is drafted and passed, and lastly development projects are endorsed. These processes are comparatively less difficult than the actual enactment of these policies and projects to reap the intended benefits. For example, the Mining Act 1992 and the Oil and Gas Act 1998 are seen as puppet legislations by many resource owners because anything after six feet below the ground does not belong to them, thus diminishing their rights over the resources they are custodians of. These laws and environmental policies and their enactment have become an impediment to sustainable economic growth in rural PNG. In this case, the form, structure, and the operational guidelines by which resource management institutions are established and operate, clearly affect the implementation and management of resource policies. Institutional arrangements can have strong political biases, which result from bribery, corruption, lack of transparency and negligence of public duties.
ConclusionIs the National Government trying to monopolise the LNG project? We should make use of the decentralisation reforms that are already in place so that provincial administrations, local-level governments and resource owners have more power and fair entitlements to their resources so that the sustainable benefits are realisable at the community level. Papua New Guinea requires an overhaul of the institutional arrangements practiced at the top bureaucratic level of the government and the respective resource extraction departments in order to see a strong economic and environmental sustainability growth. These changes will contribute towards sustainable management of Papua New Guinea’s natural resources and will greatly increase equitable participation between the state and the resource owners, and those communities affected. Abel. A. Simon is a cadet researcher in the Social and Environmental Studies Division at the National Research Institute.
This article was published with permission from National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea. NRI website can be accessed at www.nri.org.pgWhat do you think about this article? Add you comments and views below: |