AID/WATCH reported, recorded and produced a half hour radio documentary on Land rights and Environmental Campaigns in PNG. This was aired on the ABC.
The documentary, entitled ‘Come to my Village’ interviews landowners and campaigners in PNG on their attitude towards their land and development and AID/WATCH has subsequently distributed copies of the documentary to our networks in Australia, to increase awareness of the potential threat of Land registration programs in PNG and the Pacific, which aim to put a commercial value on customarily owned land.
Click here to listen to the documentary.
Our closest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, has over 800 languages and enormous cultural and biological diversity. Yet many Australians equate the entire country with the legacies of the Kokoda Trail, or the more recent images of a troubled Port Moresby.
In reality, more than 80 per cent of Papua New Guineans lead a customary lifestyle in the villages. Importantly, access to and ownership of traditional lands is amongst the most democratic in the world.
Increasingly, however, choice is being offered: life in the village, or in the town; customary lifestyle or cash crops and communal ownership of land or western-style land registration. This edition of Radio Eye takes us beyond the towns and tourist trails to hear from landowners and campaigners throughout PNG about their responses to change in their country.