Women in Development: A critical analysis

In the early 1970s a general disenchantment with development efforts in Third World countries led to a search for alternative development strategies and a growing awareness that women, like the poor, were peripheral to the development efforts of major aid donors. In 1972 the United Nations designated 1975 as International Women's Year, highlighting the need to involve women in issues of economic development. During the past 20 years the 'women in development' approach, which seeks to recognise and integrate women in aid policies and programmes, has been incorporated into the aid practice of most development agencies. This paper traces the efforts of large aid agencies over the past two decades to integrate women into their aid programmes and discusses the main limitations and weaknesses of the WID approach

Cashing out, cashing in: rural change on the south coast of Western Australia

Over the past century the cultural and physical landscape of the Shire of Denmark on the south coast of Western Australia has been transformed by successive waves of in-migrants. The paper examines the period since the early 1970s when alternative lifestylers and early retirees, attracted by the district's natural beauty and low land prices, began moving in and acquiring former Group Settlement holdings. The activities of these and subsequent 'alternatives' and 'cashed out' early retirees settling in the district have raised the marketability of the Shire's cultural capital. These changes have occurred in association with broader processes of rural restructuring and changing notions of 'rurality'. Increasingly, Denmark's cultural and physical landscape has become a highly marketable product for consumption by Perth's affluent middle classes. In recent years land prices have risen rapidly as speculators and financiers seek to 'cash in' on the 'cashed out' society. The paper explores these issues and relates them to broader processes of economic and social change occurring at the national and internationa

Making a living: Land pressures and changing livelihood strategies among oil palm settlers in Papua New Guinea

Since the establishment of oil palm land settlement schemes (LSSs) in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, the settler population has increased significantly as secondgeneration settlers marry and raise families on their parents blocks. We explore how settlers are responding to demographic and socio-economic change in an environment in which opportunities for land-use change are limited. In the context of rising population pressure, LSS smallholders are developing innovative livelihood strategies by pursuing non-farm income sources, increasing food production, acquiring additional land and migration. The type of migration or land accumulation strategy depends on household access to various resources, especially social and kinship networks, and capital. Agricultural extension and rural development policies have not yet responded to this socio-agronomic transformation. We conclude that economic diversification amongst smallholders creates new opportunities for the oil palm industry to formulate more innovative and sustainable policies that strengthen the oil palm industry in PNG while facilitating broad-based rural development

Property rights for social inclusion: Migrant strategies for securing land and livelihoods in Papua New Guinea

This paper examines the broad range of informal land transactions and arrangements migrants are entering into with customary landowners to gain access to customary land for export cash cropping in the oil palm belt of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Whilst these arrangements can provide migrants with relatively secure access to land, there are instances of migrants losing their land rights. Typically, the land tenure arrangements of migrants with more secure access to land are within a framework of property rights for social inclusion whereby customary landowners’ inalienable rights to land are preserved and the ‘outsider’ becomes an ‘insider’ with ongoing use rights to the land. Through socially embedding land transactions in place-based practices of non-market exchange, identities of difference are eroded as migrants assume identities as part of their host groups. This adaptability of customary land tenure and its capacity to accommodate large migration in-flows and expanding commodity production undermines the argument common amongst proponents of land reform that customary tenure is static and inflexible. Before such claims are heeded, there must be more detailed empirical investigations of the diverse range of land tenure regimes operating in areas of the country experiencing high rates of immigration

Oil palm, food security and adaptation among smallholder households in Papua New Guinea

This paper is concerned with food security and access to land for food crop gardening among first and second generation migrant oil palm producers in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. We examine changes in food security due to the rapid population growth in the presence of growing demand for land for oil palm production. Despite oil palm providing the major source of income for most migrant households, food crop gardening remains a primary livelihood activity, particularly for women, and especially so, during periods of low oil palm prices. Rising population and land pressures pose a threat to household food security and have implications for the supply of food to the rapidly growing urban population in the province. The paper begins by describing how household food security and access to land have changed over the past two decades. Then the paper examines how smallholder households are responding to shortages of garden land through the intensification of land use, intercropping immature oil palm with food crops and seeking access to land beyond the oil palm block. The paper also considers the role that research, agricultural extension and the milling companies can play in supporting strategies to promote food security among smallholders

Changing land tenure and informal land markets in the oil palm frontier regions of Papua New Guinea: The challenge for land reform

This paper reports on the authors’ ongoing research with agricultural extension services, customary landowners and migrant farmers to develop a template for a Land Usage Agreement (LUA) that seeks to reconcile customary landowners’ and migrants’ differing interpretations of the moral basis of land rights. The LUA shows a way forward for land reform that builds on customary tenure while strengthening the temporary use rights of migrants to enable them to generate viable and relatively secure livelihoods. The paper concludes that land tenure reform should draw on what is already happening on the ground, rather than impose external models that do not accord with local cultural mores about the inalienability of customary land and its enduring social and cultural significance for customary landowning groups