By DENNIS BADI and JOHN BROOKSBANK
Mount Bosavi in Southern Highlands and the land around it are amongst some of most remote parts of Papua New Guinea.
There are no roads, no Government services and the communities live an essentially subsistence lifestyle that has changed little in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.
Ever since members of the Staniforth Smith expedition of the Papua Administration first stumbled, disorganised and lost, into the Fogomaiyu area in 1911 there has been little change other than that brought by the Evangelical Church of PNG - who established a mission station, VHF radio and an airstrip at Dudesa on the slopes of Bosavi in recent decades.
The local people think that governments have forgotten about them since that time. However, nowhere in the world does time stand still and people in the area are eager to embrace any feasible development opportunity whilst at the same time accommodating their traditional practices.
Its remoteness and lack of any form of development has brought the Bosavi area to the attention of scientists and conservationists, to whom the region is a biological goldmine. This interest and that of the WWF Kikori River Programme has led to the formation of a community based organisation - the Kosuo Orogo Resource Owners Association - to facilitate a range of sustainable activities.
The Association has been the recipient of some support from American NGO's and was one of the reasons the National Government had the confidence to recently declare two Wildlife Management Areas (WMA's) at Libano and Sulamesi, covering 80,000 ha on the slopes of Mount Bosavi. They were assured that this well organised local community organisation would be able to manage these WMAs through village committees according to the WMA rules that were endorsed as part of their establishment.
The establishment of a WMA does not however in any way preclude local communities from carrying out farming activities so long as they are compatible with the other conservation related practices that they have agreed to in the management of their land.
Fogomaiyu is a lowland Kosuo and Fasu -speaking village, 200 metres above sea level, east of Mt Bosavi and one kilometre from the Hegigio River that downstream becomes the mighty Kikori River. It is also home to Heni Kuyu, once a didiman or agriculture officer with the Southern Highlands Provincial Government.
Heni has worked closely with Henry Bamo, one of the driving forces behind Kosuo Orogo Resource Owners Association, to initiate a range of sustainable income earning activities with his fellow villagers. Both Henry and Heni have proven the dream that is possible to exploit their wildlife sustainably, demonstrating to their people that conservation is not bad after all and money can be made.
Henry Bamo, once a community development worker who received training from the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Heni carried out community awareness and encouraged people to work on and with their land if they wanted development. Fogomaiyu people boast about their rich forests and wetlands but these also have great agriculture potential.
The people have adapted their traditional subsistence self-reliance to cash cropping, and without government or any financial support have started to develop agriculture projects anticipating a good market with the nearby Kutubu Oil Project communities and companies. They have started fishponds, a crocodile pen & vanilla farming along with fruit and vegetable growing projects. To them their natural resources are the fuel for development.
The approach of the Fogomaiyu people is in startling contrast with their Fasu neighbours in the petroleum development licence, who receive large amounts of money as royalties and equity dividends but this has unfortunately only resulted in a handout mentality, laziness and a deterioration of diet through a move to trade store bought processed food.
Heni Kuyu has already sold two freshwater crocodile skins to a buyer in Kikori for K254, with assistance from the CDI Foundation. His group have another eight juvenile crocodiles getting fattened up in their pen ready to grow to a marketable size.
As Geoffrey Kosu, a CDI agriculture officer says," K254 might not seem a huge amount of money but to people in Fogomaiyu with no other source of cash income it has a much higher value."
However, the Fogomaiyu people may not remain isolated for much longer. The Kutubu LLG Special Purpose Authority proposes to build a road from nearby Waro to the village. Heni said, "We are now ready for a road link after many years of struggle, walking and crossing the Hegigio River to sell our produce and to go to school. We are now organised and ready for the development opportunities that will come with this road".
Henry and Heni are change agents, who with very little assistance from NGO's such as CDI Foundation or the WWF Kikori River Programme can make a lot of difference to a much larger group of people. They realise that communities should not wait for development but to go after it. "Life is a rat race and the winners are those who avoid the trap," Henry says.
It is hoped that communities like Fogomaiyu, who have chosen to control what kind of development is right for them, will benefit from their resources for many years to come.
Henry adds, "without our rich natural environment many of our socio-economic issues would have a far greater negative impact on our lives."
WWF Kikori River Programme has given a 1 year grant to CDI Foundation to support agriculture development in Mt Bosavi area. Fogomaiyu village is a success story. They have 2 proposed WMAs - Henamo and Kosuo.



 

 

 

Previous | Back to Top | Next