Monograph Abstracts

Compensation for Resource Development in Papua New Guinea

Editor: Susan Toft
Date: 1997
Place: Canberra and Boroko
Publishers: National Centre for Development Studies and Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Project (Australian National University) and Law Reform Commission (Papua New Guinea)

Abstract

Compensation, as payment for wrongdoing causing harm or loss, is a well-used customary concept in Papua New Guinea and can be seen as a form of conflict management. Demands for high compensation payments in exchange for the use of land have become a problem hindering development. The claims are engendered by what may be described broadly as environmental presence on the part of developers. Claimants are landowners and the communal land tenure system in Papua New Guinea means that virtually native citizens are landowners. Land is owned by kin groups and is passed on to successive generations. So people alive at any time are custodians and have the right to use land but not necessarily dispose of it permanently. This volume deals with land compensation as it applies to resource development and is therefore essential reading for potential developers and investors in Papua New Guinea. It is part of a research project, which expects to propose guidelines, possibly leading to legal reform, for solving issues surrounding the need to compensate landowner groups for the use of their land.

Contents

1. Introduction: Compensation: Or Moving Swiftly Over Broken Ground, Andrew Strathern
2. Patrons or Clients?: Aspects of Multinational Capital-Landowner Relations in Papua New Guinea, Susan Toft
3. Shame, Compensation and the Ancestors: Response to Injury in Hanuabada and Bena, Cyndi BanksEveryone (or No One) a Winner: Gender Compensation Ethics and Practices, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi
4. Landowner Compensation: Policy and Practice, Tony Power
5. Two Sides of the Coin: The Case of Forestry, Hartmut Holzknecht
6. Cheques and Balances: Compensation and Mining in Papua New Guinea, Richard Jackson
7. The Principles of Compensation in the Mining Industry, John Burton
8. The Impact of Compensation and Relocation on Marriage in Porgera, Susanne Bonnell
9. Indigenous Response to Environmental Impact along the Ok Tedi, Stuart Kirsch
10. Compensation, Rent and Power in Papua New Guinea, Colin Filer