Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Political Ecology of Large-Scale Logging Initiatives

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Doctoral student Jason Roberts, under the supervision of Dr. Jerry Jacka, will undertake research on the local processes, effects, and responses to large-scale logging in subsistence horticultural communities. The research will take place on New Hanover Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG), an excellent test site for exploring the expansion of international logging in the Asian and Pacific region. The international logging industry has recently developed a much greater presence throughout PNG as previous sources of timber in the Southeast Asian tropics have been progressively logged out. As well, the conditions for international business have become more favorable with the enactment of natural resource driven development policies within PNG. These national policies coincide with local desires for improved socioeconomic benefits, and natural resource extraction remains one of the few means by which many Papua New Guineans can hope to realize these goals. Studies have demonstrated that large-scale logging in the tropical forests of developing countries is detrimental to these ecological systems and the human populations that depend upon them for subsistence. What is not as clear is how local people and local landscapes respond to the enduring effects of logging.Using ethnographic and ecological research methods, this study compares the results of clearcut and selective logging development schemes on New Hanover Island. Participant observation and interviews at various scales, from the local to the national, will examine changing livelihoods and development policies under different logging and related agricultural development regimes. Ecological sampling techniques and remote sensing data analysis will quantify changes in local forest structure and growth, as well as changes in local subsistence production. This study combines theoretical interests in development and globalization, political ecology, and land-change science to inform our understanding of the relationships between natural resource based development, forest sustainability, and horticulturalist resilience. It is designed to promote interdisciplinary conversations in both the social and natural sciences by producing theory and data about the interconnections between social and environmental change that could be used to inform future policy.