Community Development and Resource Conservation in the Trans-Fly Region
Geographical location:
Asia/Pacific
Asia/Pacific > Pacific Ocean > Papua New Guinea
Summary
The project will improve the livelihoods of some 12,000 people living in three sub-districts of Western Province, one of the poorest regions in Papua New Guinea. While the province is rich in natural resources, a number of legislative issues and capacity constraints on the part of government agencies and local communities prevent many of these resources being utilised on a manner that guarantees the equitable and sustainable livelihoods of the region's people.
The project will assist communities in developing sustainable livelihoods of the region's people, e.g. sustainable business enterprises through participatory identification of natural resource potential. It will empower communities to manage business finance and sustainability issues and assist the formation of strong local community organisations to develop local development plans. These plans will be used to advocate for increased service provision to the area and empower local people to tackle external threats to their resoures.
Background
The project will improve the livelihoods of some 12,000 people living in three sub-districts of Western Province, one of the poorest regions in Papua New Guinea. While the province is rich in natural resources, a number of legislative issues and capacity constraints on the part of government agencies and local communities prevent many of these resources being utilised on a manner that guarantees the equitable and sustainable livelihoods of the region's people.
The project will assist communities in developing sustainable livelihoods of the region's people, e.g. sustainable business enterprises through participatory identification of natural resource potential. It will empower communities to manage business finance and sustainability issues and assist the formation of strong local community organisations to develop local development plans. These plans will be used to advocate for increased service provision to the area and empower local people to tackle external threats to their resources.
Objectives
Overall objective: communities in the Transfly region with improved livelihoods through sustainable use of natural resources.
The project will contribute to the overall objective by empowering and building capacity for communities to identify and develop business opportunities based on the natural resources around them. The region is rich in natural resources with the potential for sustainable exploitation and marketing for income. These include forest and aquatic resources such as timber, candlenut, essential oils, fresh and dried meat and fish, local handicrafts, etc. The business opportunities will provide increased income to communities in a sustainable way by identifying those resources with the potential to be harvested and marketed and identifying monitoring mechanisms to ensure that resources are not depleted in the long term.
Two specific objectives have been identified to assist in attaining this overall objective as follows:
- Increased community income from sustainable use of local natural resources. Increased income is a priority for communities to address the poverty issue in the region. The project will increase community income at least three fold, through assisting in a 300% increase in small businesses that directly benefit local communities. In addition businesses that directly (and separetly) benefit women in the community will be increased five fold.
- Communities able to advocate for better service provision and act against threats to their livelihoods. Business development cannot proceed in isolation of other infrastructures and services, and therefore the project will address these issues by assisting communities and local government to develop sub-district local development plans that can be used to: lobby for increased service provision to government and others; identify and target external threats to resources; and attract external investment and financing to the area.
