I recently travelled to Solomon Islands with members of the School’s State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program (SSGM) to participate in the inaugural ‘Panatina Seminar’ which was scheduled to take place on 24 and 25 July. Unfortunately the event was cancelled at very short notice due to a no confidence motion which was subsequently withdrawn after the Government successfully pushed for it to be debated at a time inconvenient to the Opposition (due to the latter’s lack of numbers). Unperturbed we hastily organised an alternative, albeit much more modest, event at the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education which took place on the evening of 29 July. I spoke to a short paper on Land Reform in Melanesia . The event was attended by around 100 people, including students, NGO representatives, public servants, judges and politicians. The presentations stimulated some interesting discussion and the event was given extensive coverage on the evening television news and in the Solomon Star. The latter reproduced Jon Fraenkel’s presentation on the proposed political party integrity legislation, a timely topic given that one of the objectives of the proposed legislation is to stabilise governments by reducing the excessive use of no confidence motions!
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A diverse group of Melanesianists make up new blogosphere entrant, The Melanesian.
In another act of shameless self-promotion, I would like to draw people’s attention to the recently published edited collection titled Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands
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Edited by ANU’s Sinclair Dinnen and Stewart Firth, and jointly published by ANU E Press and Asia Pacific Press, the volume is the first detailed work published since the ‘Black Tuesday’ riots of April 2006, the events of which form the central focus of the collection. Collectively the chapters raise important questions concerning the nature of the postcolonial state in Melanesia, including the role of the state in resource management issues, and the politics of ‘cooperative intervention’ and ’state building’.
As you can see from Matt’s posting below, last Thursday’s RMAP argument raised some very interesting discussion on the question: are secure resource rights the key ingredient for indigenous groups to benefit from resource related development?
If I was to glean an answer from the discussion, it might be something like: yes, but…
The first Argument of the year and what a cracker! Congratulations to all those involved, particularly the three panelists, John Burton, Jon Altman and Jess Weir, and the convenor, Sango Mahanty.
I would like to briefly expand on the comment I made about indigenous resource rights and sustainable development using logging in Solomon Islands as an example. I should have prefaced my comment by stating that Solomon Islanders are some times described as living in harmony and balance with their environments. The anthropologist Edvard Hviding, for example, has been criticised for his overly romanticised portrayal of human-environment interactions in the Marovo lagoon area. While some Marovo villagers may well be busy harmonising with nature, others are busy inviting in the rapacious Malaysian logging companies.
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