scholarly journals Editorial

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius Ary Mollet

<p>Today, the Asia Pacific region is one among the fastest growing region in the world with strong economic growth. Due to globalization, world economy has undergone significant changes. While Europe’s economic growth has been slowing down, Asia Pacific’s consistently shows an impressive growth. In the next few years, the economic growth in the region will remain strong, in parallel with improving living standards in the region. With its huge population and strategic location, Asia Pacific offers many opportunities for countries outside the region to embark on collaboration and economic cooperation.</p><p>Papua and PNG are integral parts of Asia Pacific and play a strategic role in the region. Papua and PNG share commonalities in terms of economic development’s approaches. Both regions rely on extractive economies which depend on the exploitation of natural resources. Papua and PNG posses enormous and extraordinary biodiversity, unique to the region. But natural resource-based development has not only threatened but also undermined any effort to protect region’s diverse flora and fauna. With the emergence of Asia Pacific as a new economic powerhouse, the growth has transformed indigenous communities and their livelihood including their economic, cultural and social institutions as well as their relationship with their environment.</p><p>Moreover, although Papua and PNG are resource-rich regions, both have a substantial number of populations who live in poverty or extreme poverty. Income distribution in Papua and PNG demonstrates that there is a striking gap between the poor and the rich. On top of that, the provision of basic services such as education and healthcare is still unevenly distributed. While cities are generally well-served, some areas in the hinterland suffer from a lack of teachers and medical personnel. The fundamental challenges faced by Papua and PNG lie precisely in these aspects: economic, social, cultural and environmental.</p><p>Considering the importance of human development and biodiversity in Papua’s and Papua New Guinea’s contexts, efforts are needed to develop the region, while at the same time, to save and protect region’s immense diversity by improving the quality of life, promoting sustainable development in all sectors, preserving natural resources, and improving community awareness. Furthermore, there is a need to conduct more research and studies related to above mentioned components in order to support better development efforts in the region.</p><p>Papua and PNG have been collaborating in the education sector for a long period, which takes the form of research collaboration, student exchanges, seminars and symposia. This long standing collaboration has strengthened bilateral relations between Papua and PNG. This symposium has persist this tradition as well as add a new tone in the framework of knowledge sharing between educators in Papua, PNG and abroad by bringing together some crucial issues in social sciences and biodiversity in Papua and PNG. Additionally, this symposium is also an important moment for Cenderawasih University as the symposium will be held to commemorate the university’s 53rd anniversary and to celebrate 40 years of diplomatic relations between Papua-Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.</p><p>Cenderawasih University was established on November 10th, 1962. Cenderawasih University is the oldest university in Papua and has committed to develop its human resources and determined to implement the Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi or the Three Principles of Higher Education which focuses on education, research, and contribution to society. This momentum of holding International Conference on Social Sciences and Biodiversity of Papua and Papua New Guinea in Cenderawasih University was vital given that some distinguished experts are gathered from around the world presenting their finest research. We highly expect that this event had inspiring researchers who are interested in exploring further research on the social sciences and biodiversity around Papua and Papua New Guinea.  </p>

Author(s):  
Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor

For several years, some of Mexico’s most influential literary figures associated mountains with the presence of certain characteristics: wildlife, botanic variety, and most importantly, backwards and/or mysterious indigenous communities. Order and civilization, it seemed, for writers like Ignacio Altamirano and Manuel Payno, ceased to exist in mountainscapes. For these writes, mountains constituted social afterthoughts—places lacking history and dynamism, places that did not matter. They were, in Braudelian terms, the margins of civilization and factories that supplied human resources to cities. Such portrayals were not derived from reality, however. Far from solely being dull or dangerous sites where banditry and romantic indigeneity prevailed, Mexico’s mountains were, between the colonial era and the Porfiriato, the places where dramatic transformations took place. Impresarios’ mastery of Mexico’s natural resources fueled the country’s economic growth during the 19th and 20th centuries. Concomitant with this growth came dramatic alterations of the country’s landscape that left much of Mexico’s environment in disrepair. Mountains, thus, have histories. They are not landscapes where civilization parts ways with society. Such an argument has relevance in parts of the world like Latin America, where nearly half of the people who reside there live at elevations above sea level, and where only 7 percent reside under an elevation of 1,000 meters above sea level.


1995 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Herb Thompson

The uniqueness and importance of island tropical moist rainforests, such as that of Papua New Guinea is well recognised. It can be safely argued that tropical islands with their rainforests and adjacent coral reefs may well comprise the most biologically rich complexes of ecosystems on the planet. Therefore, those who pursue economic growth or developmental processes on these islands must be particularly cognizant of the environment. This paper examines, with particular reference to Papua New Guinea, the relationship between development and the environment. Papua New Guinea incorporates the largest continuous tract of lowland tropical moist rainforest in the Southeast Asia/Pacific region. The forestry sector in Papua New Guinea is described. This is followed by a conceptualisation of the environmental/economic dilemma. It is then argued that economic criteria and legal/juridical policies, used by international agencies and the State to resolve the problem of forest degradation, have proved to be a failure in Papua New Guinea. Those people most affected, villagers and peasants, have no control over the incursion of international capital and are forced or enticed to sell off their own and future generation’s customary land rights. Social relationships have been commercialised in a most effective manner. In return the villagers receive roads without maintenance, schools without teachers and royalty agreements without payment. To date no consensus has yet been achieved on the relationship between the protagonists of economic growth and those of ecological or social sustainability


Antiquity ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 68 (260) ◽  
pp. 604-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Pavlides ◽  
Chris Gosden

The growing story of early settlement in the northwest Pacific islands is moving from coastal sites into the rainforest. Evidence of Pleistocene cultural layers have been discovered in open-site excavations at Yombon, an area containing shifting hamlets, in West New Britain's interior tropical rainforest. These sites, the oldest in New Britain, may presently stand as the oldest open sites discovered in rainforest anywhere in the world.


Tsunami ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
James Goff ◽  
Walter Dudley

The 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami was a significant puzzle for scientists who finally cracked the cause, but it also marks the most recent event of many that can be dated back to at least 6,000 years ago where the skull of the oldest tsunami victim in the world was found. Papua New Guinea was also the starting point for the most remarkable navigational feat in the world, with Polynesians moving rapidly east into the Pacific Ocean, their settlement of the region being punctuated by hiatuses caused by catastrophic tsunamis approximately 3,000, 2,000, and 600 years ago. It was on isolated Pacific islands that humans first came into contact with the deadly Pacific Ring of Fire. Settlement abandonment, mass graves, and cultural collapse mark their progress.


Kevin Patrick analyzes how Indigenous readers and audiences are not passive consumers of non-Indigenous mainstream comic book superheroes. As such he analyzes how superhero, The Phantom, has been actively metabolized and transformed by Indigenous communities throughout Australasia, Papua New Guinea.


Author(s):  
Amir Kalan

This chapter focuses on a memoir and a film that narrate the experiences of Kurdish writer Behrouz Boochani in an Australian refugee camp in Papua New Guinea in order to show how genres organically develop out of human engagement with social and historical circumstances. The author discusses the novel and the film as examples of how writers' interactions with the world impose rhetorical orientations and nurture genre formation. This chapter illustrates that, as opposed to the dominant view of rhetoric as a means of persuasion, the essence of rhetoric and genre formation is engagement with what the author calls “phenomenological autoethnography.” The author argues that studying writing in times of crisis makes the phenomenological and autoethnographic foundations of writing visible because in crises rhetoric is unapologetically used to resist injustice and build resistance through “poetic realism,” which consists of fluid genre practices that can help capture the complexities of human experience.


Zootaxa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4411 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
WILLIAM T. WHITE ◽  
ALFRED KO’OU

An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyan fishes (sharks, rays, and chimaeras) of Papua New Guinean waters is herein presented. The checklist is the result of a large biodiversity study on the chondrichthyan fauna of Papua New Guinea between 2013 and 2017. The chondrichthyan fauna of Papua New Guinea has historically been very poorly known due to a lack of baseline information and limited deepwater exploration. A total of 131 species, comprising 36 families and 68 genera, were recorded. The most speciose families are the Carcharhinidae with 29 species and the Dasyatidae with 23 species. Verified voucher material from various biological collections around the world are provided, with a total of 687 lots recorded comprising 574 whole specimens, 128 sets of jaws and 21 sawfish rostra. This represents the first detailed, verified checklist of chondrichthyans from Papua New Guinean waters. 


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Yearwood

AbstractOriginally intended to provide an accessible overview for colleagues in Papua New Guinea, this article outlines the emergence of the continental division of the world in classical antiquity. In medieval Europe this survived as a learned conception which eventually acquired emotional content. Nevertheless, the division was still within the context of universal Christianity, which did not privilege any continent. Contrary to the views of recent critics, the European sense of world geography was not inherently ‘Eurocentric’. While Europeans did develop a sense of continental superiority, Americans, Africans, and many Asians also came to identify themselves with their continents and to use them as weapons against European domination. The application of the division to Melanesia is also considered.


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