Land Reforms Aim To End Stalled Development In Papua New Guinea

Don
Wiseman, RNZ Pacific Senior
Journalist

Reforms
to land laws in Papua New Guinea should ensure that
landowners have more control over their land.

New
legislation introduced by the country’s Deputy Prime
Minister John Rosso would reform six land-related
laws.

Rosso says the changes are essential to securing
the country’s future and safeguarding the rights of
landowners.

Prime Minister James Marape commended
Rosso for spearheading the reforms.

“Land is our
people’s greatest inheritance-our playground, our home, our
heritage. Every Papua New Guinean is connected to a piece of
land somewhere in this country. We must protect it,” Marape
told parliament.

RNZ Pacific spoke with its PNG
correspondent Scott Waide about the government’s motivations
for the changes.

(This transcript has been edited
for brevity and clarity.)

Scott
Waide: The Lands Department has been, for want of a
better word, terminally ill, for many years. It has had
legislation that dates back to the colonial era.

Papua
New Guinea has moved on [and] moved forward with a lot of
things. But the [land] legislations have been a hindering
mechanism for any form of large scale development, like
farming [and] real estate development. Those laws have been
a hindrance to much of that development, and also the
mobilisation of customary land.

Previously, with the
old laws, customary landowners could not adequately mobilise
and get loans to develop their land, because the laws [and
banks] did not recognise customary land ownership, and the
accompanying attempts to allow for that development of
customary land.

It has posed a lot of complications in
terms of mining development, logging [and] farming. The
changes that have been introduced allow for both protection
of customary landowners and the possibility of them
venturing into large scale businesses.

Don
Wiseman: It has being brought in by the Deputy Prime
Minister John Rosso. What specifically is he going to do?
You have outlined the issues that have existed over land for
a long time, but are they going to be overcome with this new
legislation?

SW: Yes, many
of the problems that have existed for many, many years –
from a very, very old system, a manual system, when the rest
of the world is operating digitally.

We have had
instances where they have been dual titles issued, issued
titles over land that have gone missing, because people are
reproducing those titles manually.

There is an
electronic system that has been introduced as well within
the Lands Department, and that is meant to reduce the
instances of corruption that have long existed.

A lot
of the reforms have happened very quietly within the Lands
Department. The other reforms that complement the
development of housing, which is a big need in Papua New
Guinea, support the development of customary land as
well.

So customary land owners can partner with
government or with private organisations and develop
housing, cheap housing for other Papua New
Guineans.

DW: Prime Minister James Marape says
this will save the land that is still held, but it is
clearly not going to undo a lot of the mistakes from the
past, and they have been so many of those, particularly to
do with the forestry and so on.

SW:
Yes, that is a an issue that I have spoken to a few
land experts as well around. And that is going to be a huge
challenge to undo all of that.

The other side to it is
that there are customary landowners who also sell their own
land for cash. The legislations that have been put in place,
in the some of the policies have actually banned the sale of
customary land to individual parties as well. So, it offers
some level of protection for customary land
owners.

There needs to be a lot of awareness as well
for customary landowners to understand how the law benefits
them, and that is going to also take a
while.

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