Social Evaluation Study for the Milne Bay Community-Based Coastal and Marine Conservation Program png/99/G41 Jeff Kinch April 2001 unops contract for Services Ref

There are an estimated 48 languages in use in and around Milne Bay with 33 of these languages being Austronesian. Thirty-one of these have orthographies developed which covers approximately 92% of the population, whilst 29 of these languages have some literacy materials and/or other languages written for them (Division of Education, 2000).

All four of the languages spoken in the three CBMMCAs of Zone 1(see Table 8) are Austronesian and belong to what the linguist Ross (1988) calls the Papuan Tip Cluster, one of four clusters of Western Melanesian Oceanic. The Misiman language is the only member of the Misiman family (Fellows 1894; Bartlett 1955; Callister et al, 1987; Callister, 1993). It is spoken by approximately 14,000 people who live on the islands of Misima, Panaeati, Panapompom (CBMMCA 2) and the numerous islands scattered throughout the East and West Calvados Chain (CBMMCA 3) of the Louisiade Archipelago. The language of Nuakata (CBMMCA 1), known as Alina Nu‘ata by the inhabitants and considered a dialect of Kurada by some, is spoken by approximately 1,000 people from the Kurada and Bwasiyaiyai regions of southeast Normanby Island (Moore 1961; Moore n.d). Tewala is spoken by the East Cape Communities (CBMMCA 1) (Ezard 1984; Ezard 1997). Tubetube is spoken throughout the Engineers (CBMMCA 2) and at Ware (CBMMCA 3) (Anon. 1897; Bible 1928; Ezard 1977; Ezard 1977; Gunderson and Gunderson 1987a,b; Lithgow 1987; Canavan et al, 1991; Guy n.d.). Throughout Zones 1 and 3 there is also considerable knowledge of Dobu, the main United Church (previously Methodist) lingua franca, and English is reasonably well understood throughout the Province. In addition to their mother tongues, many people speak three or four regional languages, commonly the neighbouring languages.

In common with all Southern Massim peoples, the people in the Zones are matrilineal, so that clan membership, territorial rights, inheritance and succession to leadership are determined through the female line. The clan is the largest matrilineally defined group identified as having rights over land. The minimum matrilineally defined group is called the tini in Misima (parts of CBMMCA 2 and 3), susu in the Engineers and Ware (also part of CBMMCAs 2 and 3), and huhu in Nuakata (CBMMCA 1) and comprises all people born to one women, a person retains this identity throughout his or her life. It was traditionally forbidden to marry with any member of the same clan and the father's immediate family, though these marriages are now sometimes seen.

MacIntyre (1989, 1990) has described the clan as the most important social unit with brother-sister solidarity as the basis for hamlet ownership, inheritance and residence. Generally, clans are politically autonomous, with separate hamlets and territories. Each had its own trading alliances, often based on marriage or totemic clan relationships, with hamlets on other islands. Clans and matrilineages were not ranked.

In terms of identity, matrilineage membership is more significant than location, since membership automatically confers rights to land and residence on several islands. MacIntyre notes that, “A person may live in any of three or four hamlets on any of the Bwanabwana Islands and still be living in his or her own hamlet (MacIntyre 1983a).” However, as a visible group, a susu only emerges in the context of the formation and breakage of alliances such as marriage and death (MacIntyre 1983a: 81). The senior man of the susu administered/looked after the matrilineage's wealth, while the land was controlled by his sisters.

Men and women have equal rights over land but men manage lineage land whereas women are the controllers or organisers of garden production. Decisions about garden sites, land to be forfeited because of feasting debt, land to be given for gardens to non-clan members and in-laws are made jointly (Gerritsen and MacIntyre, 1986). Any disputes over land are likely to be explained by reference to various feasts, transactions of valuables or outstanding mortuary debts. Therefore, the successful hosting of memorial activities is instrumental in gaining rights to land previously held by another lineage.

1. 
   Rights held by those sub-clans that were the original settlers of the land in that area (i.e. their history indicates that their ancestors were the first or among the first to arrive in that area). These 'rights' are complete ownership of the land and everything on it (unless portions of land or specific areas of food trees, cash crops or rights to garden land have been given away to other sub-clans). This land is in very large continuous areas starting from the sea and going inland to encompass garden slopes and bush land.
   

2. 
   Rights held by sub-clan owners who have been deeded land by the original landowners, for feasts (or other services) done generations ago. Usually these feasts can no longer be remembered and there is only an oral history that sometime in the past the land passed from the original 'settlers' to the sub-clan that came to the area later on. These rights are the same as in 1 above, that is, the land and everything on it is recognised as totally belonging to the newer sub-clan. This land is generally in continuous and joined slabs of multi-purpose land and may include areas where houses are built, the land immediately surrounding a house, garden land and bush land. The difference between categories 1 and 2 is often vague as both categories generally have a very long history in the area and may own equal amounts of land (sometimes sub-clans in category 2 may even own more land than those in category no 1).
   

3. 
   Rights held by those who have carried out the proper methods of feasting for a landowner sub-clan, and after feasting, have been given certain rights through the proper customary channels and arrangements. The feasts conducted are generally extensive and lavish, conducted over many years but are generally within living memory, with details usually able to be given - i.e. who the feasts were for, how much was given etc. The right acquired is the right to own portions of land (that is, the land and everything on it is owned). This land is generally not in continuous and joined multi-purpose land (i.e. it may be a garden slope and a separate 'block' in the village etc). This land is not considered to completely belong to the new sub-clan owners for it can be claimed back by the original landowners if all the feasts done for them are exactly reciprocated. However it is hardly ever reclaimed because the debt that the original sub-clan needs to repay is so high they don't bother. Increasingly today this category of ‘resource’ ownership is uncommon because landowning sub-clans are loathe to give away land and would rather repay the feasts or else give ‘user rights’ as outlined below in 4.
   

4. 
   Rights held by sub-clans who have had good relations with the landowners and/or have done some feasting for those landowners. These feasts are generally not extensive and are within living memory. The rights given are not land ownership but rather permission to live and garden on certain sections of the land and/or to own or use certain areas of food trees and cash crops. Again these rights can be ‘revoked’ if the landowning sub-clan reciprocates the feasts done for them. This is probably the broadest, most common, and most flexible category of resource ownership. For example rights may include permanent use of a garden area (i.e. basically amounting to owning the area), non-permanent use of a garden area where permission needs to be sought before gardening commences, ownership of food trees or simply user rights to food trees. The exact nature of ownership depends upon the agreement reached between the sub-clans involved. As stated above, this category is becoming increasingly common as landowning sub-clans recognise the value of their land and so would rather give away ‘user rights’ than the land itself (i.e. as in category 3 above).
   
5. 
   Rights held by children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, whose landowning father (or grandfather/great-grandfather) is still alive, even though they have not done any feasting to appease their patriarch’s sub-clan. These ‘rights’ include village living areas, gardening areas, and food trees all located on the landowner’s land, but never land ownership. These rights have generally never been officially declared or given by the landowning sub-clan and are only held on the basis that no-one in the landowning sub-clan is willing to ‘rock the boat’ and challenge these rights. By ‘officially’, it is meant that a customary process of feasting by the non-landowning sub-clan for the landowning sub-clan, followed by a communal meeting where all the elders of the landowning sub-clan agree to give away certain portions of their resources, has never occurred. Instead what happens is that the particular patriarch whose children or grandchildren are in question, may ‘give’ rights to his children without consulting his brothers and sub-clan members. This of course creates confusion and resentment not only between the two sub-clans involved but also between the patriarch concerned and his fellow sub-clan members. As no feasts have been conducted (i.e. no customary payment has ever been made), the only way that the landowning sub-clan can take the rights back is through confrontation (i.e. either through applying indirect pressure upon the non-landowning sub-clan to have them conduct feasts, or else through more direct confrontation aimed at persuading them to move out of the area). Since Misimans avoid confrontation as much as possible, the latter rarely if ever happens. Therefore, this category of right ownership is becoming increasingly common, exacerbated by land shortage, and the immense cost and effort involved in successfully hosting feasts.
   

The remaining three are not relevant yet to the CBMMCAs:

6. 
   Rights held by the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren and great great grandchildren of a landowning sub-clan (with the original landowning patriarch having long since passed away), even though feasting has never been done for the landowners. This category is almost identical to 5, however it has the added complication that the new sub-clan does not even have a closely related and living relative amongst the landowning sub-clan. Again, these ‘rights’ include village living areas, gardening areas, and food trees but not land ownership. These rights may be several generations old, and title is claimed through a history of continuous use or occupation. This is non-traditional and basically amounts to squatting on the land. This category is also increasingly common especially where the landowning sub-clans have weak leadership. Often the population of these sub-clans that are 'squatting', outnumbers the landowning sub-clans. This category is even harder to resolve than category 5 because the elder generations of both sub-clan groups (i.e. the landowners and the ‘squatters’), died long ago and only the oral claims of the younger generations (whether real or fabricated) and their degree of aggressiveness in confrontation, are left to determine the right and wrong of the matter.
   

7. 
   Rights held by outsiders (generally non-Misimans but sometimes Misimans who have extremely weak kinship ties to the landowning sub-clan), who are simply squatting on the land. These rights range from using gardening land, to collecting from food trees. These are not really rights at all (i.e. none of the community members, whether landowners or non-landowners themselves, have given explicit permission), and again this category only exists because of Misiman people’s generous nature and tendency to avoid confrontation. This category is not common.
   

8. 
   Rights held through private purchase of land or leasehold through the use of money or a similar Western and non-traditional form of transaction or agreement.
   

Traditionally, any disputes over land are likely to be explained by reference to various feasts, transactions of valuables or outstanding mortuary debts (Gerritsen and MacIntrye, 1986). While the principle of matrilineality underlies rights to clan land, rights to the land of patrilineal relatives are achieved by giving feasts and gifts at ceremonies honouring the dead of a father’s clan. According to matrilineal inheritance, normally a married man has no rights to pass land on to his children, instead they must pass to his sister’s children. Cash has put pressure on the matrilineal system of land ownership as males have increasingly attempted to ensure that the capital goods they have accumulated with cash directly benefit their own, rather than their sister's, children. This has often meant that they have stayed on their father's land and tried to ignore the traditional rules whereby this might be done legitimately.

Food is the centre of all sociability and the significance of giving and receiving food permeates every aspect of social life within the CBMMCAs. The living are enmeshed in relations of alternating indebtedness as they mourn and honour the dead of their own clans and of the clans they have married into. Feasts are usually held in the post-harvest period from September to December when there are plenty of yams for presentations and for eating.

In-law presentations are another important factor in hosting feasts. Both men and women should both give things to their spouse’s family. These presentations are given with much fanfare with many people mobilised when delivering presentation goods. Goods are meticulously recorded and will be reciprocated when needed. Feasting is a very time consuming activity, and requires much preparation with people normally sailing off to other islands to acquire pigs, vegetable foods and ceremonial objects.

Women have a relatively prominent role in public life, are prominent in village affairs, and women’s groups continue to be an active part of every community. The Colonial Administrative Officers had a lot to say about the prowess and social standing of women:

As mentioned earlier, the people of the CBMMCAs belonging to the Southern Massim do not have ranked clans or chiefs unlike the well-documented cases from the Trobriands in the north. Traditional leadership was divided into three categories. The first being men who were warrior leaders and only had leadership roles in times of battle and raiding. The second were men or women of renown. These were political negotiators, and were known as generous feast-givers and firm controllers of alliances and marriage. Considerable organisational skill plus a forceful personality were needed (Kinch 1999; Whiting, 1975; Gerritsen and MacIntrye, 1986). The final category of traditional leadership dealt with men who were married to several women, thus having influence in resource use decisions.

One important aspect of traditional authority structures within the CBMMCAs is that leaders are only the first among equals. Generally, even if you are a successful buisnessman or well educated you are grounded to the general level of all community members. A leader 'leads' by encouraging consensus and by virtue of the respect that others have for him/her as a person; ie. literally by virtue of the relationships which he/she builds and maintains. Therefore, election of leaders does not necessarily depend upon a person’s actual gifts or abilities, or even his moral character, but rather people's perceptions of them and considerations such as whether he/she is seemingly fluent in English or 'wise' in the ways of dealing with white people and government. Another major consideration is 'equability', that no clan is seen to hold the majority of the power. In some places, a Ward Councillor will often be elected from a minor clan, to ensure that none of the major landowner clans hold sway over the others (see Byford, 2000).

Throughout the CBMMCAs respect for a person is exemplified in an attitude of obedience or appropriate behaviour to authority, and deference for the position that person holds, whether elected or appointed. To confront someone in a position of authority shows disrespect for the person, the position and the authority that goes with it. The complex societal structure combined with a close-knit community where everyone else knows everyone and his/her deeds and character contributes to the great importance people place on relationships and social harmony through the correctness of these relationships. Open conflict is avoided as much as possible, in an attempt to keep surface harmony.

Education and literacy levels are reasonably high throughout the Milne Bay Province. All the CBMMCAs have established orthographies and considerable material has been produced in their own languages. Misiman and Dobu is well understood throughout the Zone 1. English is also reasonably understood as well with most people having had at least a grade six education. There should be no difficulties for the MBP with implementing a suitable conservation strategy.

All of the populations of the different islands included in Zone 1 have rich oral histories involving complex movements of groups or segments of groups between islands. For example, in the case of Tubetube in CBMMCA 2, the original settlers are believed to have come from the South Cape/Fife Bay area of Suau via Ware Island (CBMMCA 3) (Seligman, 1910). The early settlers on Tubetube are said to have traded extensively with the Louisiades and Panaeati (CBMMCA 2), and a group of Panaeati later came and settled on Tubetube (MacIntyre 1983). Just as some Tubetube people are said to be the descendants of Panaeati people, so also some Panaeati are said to be descended in the recent past from the Engineer Group (Berde 1974). In more recent years, however, the focus of Tubetube trading and intermarriage has shifted to Duau (Normanby) (Zone 3).

In terms of inter-provincial migration, Milne Bay is, on balance, an out-migration Province, with the major stream of out-migrants heading for the NCD. Milne Bay Province has been experiencing net out-migration for several decades and the magnitude of this movement has been sufficient to offset natural increase by about 0.3% per year. Although migration is significant from a Provincial point of view, on a national scale it is relatively insignificant. Milne Bay ranks lowest of all Provinces in terms of number of in-migrants from elsewhere in PNG, and 15^th out of 19 in terms of gross migration flow. Of all PNG's Provinces, Milne Bay is among the least affected by inter-provincial migration (Hayes and Lasia, 1999).

The population of Milne Bay has grown significantly from 100,157 at the time of the first national census in 1966. From 1980 to 1990 the estimated increase was 18.7% with 61% of people living in the islands (Hayes and Lasia, 1999). The provisional population count for Census 2000 was 196,044 (Panta, pers. comm). The estimated population figure for the year 2020 is 307,200.

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (the average number of children per women aged 15-49) was 6.1 births in 1971, which decreased to 5.1 births in the 1985-1991 period (Hayes and Lasia, 1999). Fertility in Milne Bay still remains high enough to ensure that each generation is approximately twice the size of the previous one. The rate of natural increase in Milne Bay Province has remained stable hovering around 2.5% (Hayes and Lasia, 1999).

The age and sex composition of a population is the result of past patterns of births, deaths and net migration. Milne Bay has a youthful population with 42% of the population under 15 years of age and only 5% aged 60 and over (Hayes and Lasia, 1999).

The transition from high to low mortality has stalled in Milne Bay as it appears to have done elsewhere in PNG. The reason for this stalled mortality transition requires further, detailed examination, but may possibly be linked to increased levels of poverty.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite figure based on 4 figures (i) life expectancy at birth, (ii) gross enrolment ratio grades 1-12, (iii) adult literacy rate, and (iv) gross domestic income. In Milne Bay conditions for human development are currently at a low level. (NPO, 1999), though the Province is better placed than the national average. However, PNG rates the lowest in the Pacific region. In 1996 the HDI for Milne Bay was 0.42 for MB and 0.36 for PNG, with and overall rank of 5 (NPO, 1999). Improvement in the HDI may be necessary to show benefits of the MBP to particpating communities.

In 1996 the Real Domestic Factor Income per capita for Milne Bay Province was estimated at K994. This was calculated on the average income on a per capita basis and includes total imputed monetary value of subsistence. It should be noted that this indicator is an aggregate figure and needs to be interpreted carefully as it is usually a skewed distribution of a few wealthy people living at a level far above the average value while the majority of households live below it. It should also be noted that income is not the sum-total of human life, and therefore, is not a really good predictor of the quality of life. In other words, there is no automatic link between increases in income and progress in human development. Mitchell et al (2001) estimated that the actual annual cash requirement per person in rural Milne Bay for a basic standard of living is K150 per person or K750-K900 per household. Most communities in the CBMMCAs do not achieve this, averaging around K500 per household.

Population figures for the CBMMCAs in Zone 1 in 2000 are listed below. These were collated from the Provincial Data System kept by the Management Information Services of the Milne Bay Provincial Government.

See Appendix 2 for population breakup by age groups for the Engineers and the Deboynes (CBMMCA 2) and Ware and Anagusa (CBMMCA 3). Current data were unavailable for Nuakata and East Cape (CBMMCA 1) and for Brooker (CBMMCA 3) and subsequently are not included.

By international conventions and government policies, decisions about family size belong to the couple, not to the government or to outside programs. This principle is stated clearly in PNG's official population policy. Government programs in conjunction with the MBP can assist families who wish to limit their family size by providing education and health services.

PNG as a whole, and Milne Bay in particular, are quite favourably situated with respect to the potential impact of population growth. In MBP today there are 13 persons per km² (compared with PNG at 8 persons/km²; Fiji with 43persons/km² and Tonga with 131 persons/km²). As a whole Milne Bay Province is not likely to run out of arable land in the near future. Currently non-arable land accounts for 69% of all land, whilst the remaining 31% is divided into 22% low intensity use and 9 % high intensity use (Mitchell et al, 2001). Around 70% of this arable land has a very low ratio of cropping period to fallow period (Hide et al, 1994).