thegardenandbeyond:the$dry$season,theoktedishutdown ... dry season and ok tedi shutdown cle… · !...
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The Garden and Beyond: the Dry Season, the Ok Tedi Shutdown, and the Footprint of the 2015 El Nino Drought
Dan Jorgensen
Department of Anthropology University of Western Ontario London, Canada N6A 5C2
September 24, 2015 Introduction Despite early warnings from various sources that 2015 would likely witness a strong El Nino drought in PNG and adjacent areas, most people and responsible authorities were caught unawares and unprepared for what appears to be the beginnings of a “dry season” that may rival or surpass the 1997-‐98 event in extent and severity. Though systematic reporting is lacking so far, anecdotal evidence suggests that the early stages of a drought with associated killing frosts have struck hard, and not only in areas previously affected. Though nobody can forecast weather events with absolute certainty, there is an emerging consensus that the current “dry season,” as it is locally called, may last until March 2016 or beyond. Although it took some time before initially scattered reports found their way into the national press, today’s news stories tell tales of bush fires in many different locations, garden failure and hunger, concerns over drinking water and health, and a general picture of hardship affecting large numbers of Papua New Guineans. Government efforts (through, for example, the NCD) are now engaged, local people are calling for assistance, and plans for relief efforts are taking shape. In this paper I offer a preliminary snapshot of what the emerging drought looks like in the western part of the country with which I have been associated for a number of years: the Telefomin District of Sandaun (West Sepik) Province and adjacent areas of the North Fly District in Western Province. This is a part of the country that has not yet received much attention in the media, though it was seriously affected in the 1997-‐98 El Nino drought, as well as in some milder dry spells since. This area has a number of overlapping but distinct characteristics. Geographically, it comprises the mountains and valleys giving rise to PNG’s two largest rivers, the Sepik and the Fly. Ethnically, it is populated by related groups generally known as the “Min” peoples. Economically and historically, it comprises what may be best termed the “hinterland” of the Ok Tedi Mine – the area in which the mine’s economic and social impact has been strongest, and from which most of the mine’s workforce is drawn Jorgensen 2006). It is from this hinterland that most of the population of western PNG’s largest town – Tabubil – originates. Apart from a special-‐purpose road connecting Tabubil with the river port of Kiunga, the entire region is landlocked and
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only accessible by air. The region’s western margin is defined by the border with Indonesia about 10km west of the Ok Tedi Mine.
Min Country: the Ok Tedi Hinterland On reporting and communication possibilities One of the lessons of the 1997-‐98 drought was that lack of coordination and poor information often hampered attempts to deal with the crisis in a timely fashion (see, for example Thompson 1997). In an attempt to learn from past experience, researchers who collaborated on addressing and studying that drought have formulated a relatively simple tool – a two-‐page form – for conducting rapid drought impact assessments, and the core of my paper presents the results of my application of assessment tool to the Min area over the last couple of weeks (attached at the end of this paper; Allen and Bourke 2015). The form is broken down into three main areas for assessment:
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• Food Supply • Water Supply • Health Impact
Each of these areas is rated on a scale of 1 to 5, which can be combined to assess the overall situation. This is accompanied by a quick checklist of additional impacts (e.g., bush fires) and villagers’ responses (using alternative resources, relocating, or receiving financial or other assistance from wantoks elsewhere). The resulting assessment is summarized in a Situation Report, which may also include such details as means of access through existing transportation networks. The usefulness of this tool is that it is easy to apply and allows us to distinguish, for example, between areas in which food is short but drinking water and health are adequate, and those where gardens may be sufficient but poor water supply puts health at risk. This level of detail may be crucial in planning responses to local situations. As a compact electronic document (less than 50kb), it can be filled out with a smartphone and rapidly emailed to a centre for compilation and analysis. The digital form draws on one advantage compared with the 1997-‐98 drought: mobile phone coverage is available for most areas, including those that are difficult to reach. The potential of mobile phone reporting has already been felt informally, where Facebook postings (see especially Scott Waide’s FB page) were one of the earliest ways of spreading the news of the drought’s impact. Wednesday’s Post-‐Courier editorial sees the value of mobile phone very clearly in these circumstances:
Dispatching a team to remote parts of the province to do a quick assessment of damages might not be necessary if the relevant agency already has a field officer on site equipped with a smart phone. (page 2, Sept 23, 2015)
Not only could such an approach be quicker to mobilize: it might also reduce the cumbersome and expensive business of arranging transport (and allowances) for larger teams that would have to move from place to place over a period of days or even weeks. The hope is that the ready availability of pooled information may help coordinate efforts by multiple actors and agencies. Initial drought assessment The picture that I present here is based on interviews with villagers, and consultations with government officers, in Telefomin District, and these are complemented by interviews conducted in neighbouring areas of the North Fly District. At Telefomin Station I was shown samples of damaged crops brought in from surrounding villages (through the kind cooperation of John Kalan of DAL), and I was also shown examples of damaged crops and wild “famine foods” in my own visits to local villages.
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In all, I compiled assessments for seven different locations in the area, including:
• Derolengam village (near Telefomin Station) • Telefolip village (Telefomin valley) • Kobramin/Oksimin (Framin – upper Sepik) • Kubrenmin (Brantevip, in Eliptamin valley) • Tilkale village (Tifalmin, Ilam valley) • Bultem village (between Tabubil town and Ok Tedi Mine) • Tumolbil village and station (near Indonesian border)
The preliminary picture that emerges from these assessments is that in most locations:
• food is manageable with some difficulty by resorting to second-‐ or third-‐choice sources; future prospects look bad;
• there is adequate drinking water, but with increased travel and concerns about quality in some locations;
• there is an increase in diarrhea and enteric illness, but with no deaths directly attributable to the drought.
There are, however, variations within a relatively small geographical area, with quality of water supply playing a significant role in local health. Food shortage may vary independently of this, suggesting that we need as much detailed local reporting as possible to understand what is happening and how to deal with it. Food crops and gardens The Min landscape is mountainous with relatively narrow and deep valleys, and subsistence is based on a wide scatter of gardens at several different altitudes. People distinguish between a lower hot zone and a cooler zone at higher elevations, and the ideal is for each household to have land in both zones. Some frost and hail damage was reported for two villages with very high gardens (Derolengam and Kobramin/Oksimin), but most crop damage was due to drying in lower elevations.1 The preferred staple for most of the area is taro, with sweet potato sometimes predominating, as at Tumolbil and Tilkale. Reports from all locations indicate that taro was profoundly affected – it has little drought resistance and effectively vanished from the diet in August.
1 This is in strong contrast to the situation reported for the frost-‐damaged portions of the Highlands provinces, but is consistent with reports coming in from the northern slopes of the central ranges (Bourke, pers. comm.).
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Stunted taro planted at the start of the year
Taro’s vulnerability is especially serious because the first part of the plant to be affected is the stalk – the “stik taro” that people rely on to replant after harvest. Because the drought kills off their planting stock, the response throughout the area has been to replant taro at swampy or streamside locations in the cooler high country whenever possible – even replanting stalks from immature gardens. People are protecting their planting stock but have given up on producing taro to eat until after the drought. This strengthens the potential for recovery, but does nothing for short-‐term survival.
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Withered taro stalks Sweet potato is also severely affected. Outright garden failure has yet to take place in most parts of the region, but throughout the area the earliest impact of the drought is evident with shriveled tubers infested with insects and their larvae. These tubers are often discoloured, and spoiled; at least two pigs reportedly died after eating them. New plantings fail because there is not enough moisture for vines to take root.
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Spoiled, shriveled and insect-‐infested sweet potato Cassava (tapiok) has fared better and has become the main food source after sweet potato declined, despite the fact that it is regarded as inferior. Like sweet potato, cassava has also been infested by insects, but to an apparently lesser extent. Some areas are relying partly on bananas, but even these are reported to be yellowing and dying (e.g., Tilkale). In Tumolbil famine foods such as wild yams and wild bananas are now being regularly sought out.
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Miyum, a wild yam-‐like “famine food” There is little or no food for pigs – and in some places people have already eaten most of them. Dogs are no longer fed, and are dying; fishponds are dry. The heaviest impacts, regardless of crop, are at lower elevations where heat is the greatest, and on eastward-‐facing slopes that receive strong morning sun, and these factors account for differences between locations relatively close to one another. At low-‐lying Tumolbil, bushfires have been especially destructive, destroying gardens and bush. Local people still bring food for sale to public servants – but it consists of “famine foods” such as wild yams and bananas. The gardens no longer provide enough food to sell. As it is, market sales have ceased throughout the surveyed area, sometimes in response to LLG instructions.2 Food shortages have forced several schools to close or to go on half-‐day schedules, with reports of fainting due to hunger, particularly among children. Finally, it is necessary to point out that bushfires have been frequent, and in some instances have destroyed gardens and garden houses, as well as forest areas used as fallow reserves. Such fires have been especially worrying in Framin, Tifalmin, and
2 This is true at Bultem, although Wangbin, another village on the outskirts of Tabubil still maintains a small market frequented by those few townspeople who remain after the repatriation exercise.
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Tumolbil. Reports say that Urapmin, situated between Tifalmin and Telefomin, suffered very heavily as a result of a large bushfire that swept across a prime mountain garden area and over the slope to the other side. I was told that the entire community relocated their gardening activities to a location near one of the streams still running, but I have no further information.
Bushfires
Water Water supplies are much more variable than food supplies across the region, but the situation is rarely one of out and out shortage. Three of the villages surveyed had stream-‐fed water supplies (Derolengam, Kubrenmin [Elip], and Bultem), but in each instance they were not operating at normal capacity because of silting or shortage of rain, or both. The Derolengam system was being repaired during my visit, and was expected to be working again shortly, and there was similar talk about Bultem’s water supply being only temporarily out of commission. At Kubrenmin, however, the water supply system has broken down – people rely instead on the Elip River, which is fairly close to the village. Telefolip, on the other hand, had been relying to a large extent on rainwater held in tanks, but they became depleted during the dry weather, and a number of them are said to have cracked after they dried out. The result is that villagers undertake 90-‐minute round trips to a stream whose water is discoloured and smells. This water is
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said to cause an increase in diarrhea and other illnesses. Framin is in a similar situation because nearby streams have dried up. Tilkale in the Tifalmin valley warrants special mention: its usual water sources have dried up, and it is now obliged to rely on the Ilam, the main river in the valley. Here the problem is not inconvenience, but the fact that the water is affected by upstream drilling activities associated with mineral exploration. Local people say they have complained to the company about this, but with no effect. Health Enteric diseases are reported throughout the area, and in some cases fainting spells associated with weakness and hunger have occurred. Until now, however, no deaths have been reported – with the exception of two unconfirmed rumours of deaths that may have taken place because of the closure of the Tabubil Hospital. These stories, however, point to another aspect of the drought that affects local conditions but arises at some distance from most of the communities under discussion: the closure of the Ok Tedi Mine. Ok Tedi’s closure and its impact The Min area is also subject to drought-‐related effects at a scale determined by the economic importance of the Ok Tedi Mine. As awareness of an impending drought was taking shape, OTML abruptly ceased operations at Ok Tedi (OTML 2015). The chief reason given was that dry weather had reduced the level of the Fly River to the point that it was no longer possible to ship concentrate to market, or to bring in fuel and food supplies to Tabubil. Closing the mine had direct and indirect effects that reverberate across the region. The workforce was laid off or retrenched except for a caretaker contingent, managers, and security personnel. Lowered water levels meant that the local hydro dam could not operate, putting more pressure on fuel stocks. Partly to ease pressure on food and fuel supplies, local contractors were terminated, and a number of business houses were instructed to scale back operations and dismiss or lay off staff. With the rapid arrival of mobile squad units, the mandatory “repatriation” of OTML employees and their families to their “home” locations began. In one of PNG’s most extraordinary spectacles of recent times, Tabubil went from being the leading town of western PNG to a virtual ghost town overnight.
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Tabubil in better times….
In the remainder of the paper I sketch the direct and indirect effects that mine shutdown has on the resilience and capacity of Min communities to successfully negotiate the current drought and its challenges. These include the loss of incomes, the shifting of urban populations to rural villages and their already-‐reduced food producing capacity, and social tensions arising from these situations. To those must be added the rapid erosion of the regional transport network, the elimination of physican-‐attended hospital services, and the closure of key educational institutions.
Tabubil residents awaiting flights to take them back to their “home” areas
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“Homecoming” in hard times Taken together, the seven villages surveyed received between 100 and 110 households returning from Tabubil – the equivalent of adding two additional villages to the local population.3 The situation of the returnees themselves varies from case to case. Those directly employed by OTML were eligible to receive their entitlements if they were retrenched; employees who were laid off, and might possibly return, are paid an “allowance” of 30% of their normal pay until the situation is resolved. Employees with families who lived in company housing were effectively evicted at short notice, though some were able to transport some of their belongings to their rural villages. Those who were employed as contractors to the mine generally received no financial compensation at all, and are simply out of work. Some returning families had built houses in their villages to return to; others, especially younger workers and their families had not (yet) done so, and had to find accommodation where they could. The reception they received depended in part on their relations with village kin, but also on the presence or absence of places for them to stay. In some instances returnees were bluntly told to pay rent or live in tents, as returning workers near Oksapmin Station are said to have done. Some have moved into hastily constructed bush material houses. Whether or not Tabubil returnees had houses, virtually none of them had established gardens. As a result, they either depend on food from already hard-‐pressed village relatives or must live on whatever store goods their cash incomes (or savings) can provide. In one instance known to me, a returnee asked to be allocated a portion of his relative’s gardens. The response was that this would be possible – for K4000. Resentments between villagers and erstwhile affluent townspeople sometimes come to the fore in these situations. Elsewhere, a returnee attempted to squat on unoccupied land and was summarily evicted.4 The village of Bultem offers a special case. It is a peri-‐urban village located along the road connecting Tabubil and the Ok Tedi mine site. Villagers are landowners entitled to royalty payments and other benefits, but as many as 25 households lived in town as OTML employees, often renting their village houses to migrants from elsewhere. Now that such employees are obliged to vacate their homes in town, there is strong pressure in Bultem for migrants to make way for them. Additional tensions arise as villagers take up some of the remaining cash-‐earning opportunities migrants enjoyed until now. These difficulties may grow with the suggestion that landowners’ royalty payments will be reduced – or even discontinued – as long as
3 I was able to get fairly reliable counts of returning households by having people name returning employees, but it was impossible to get more accurate accounts of the numbers of people because many villagers themselves were uncertain of the precise composition of returning families. This is in part because urban households often looked after children who were fostered with them. 4 This situation prompted villagers to begin drafting an LLG by-‐law forbidding such squatting.
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the mine remains closed. One possible outcome could be a secondary exodus of many of Bultem’s numerous settlers, who may be obliged to return to their home areas. Many Tabubil residents are aware of these difficulties, and some have sought to find alternatives to a return to their villages in the middle of a drought. In cases where returning villagers had married outsiders, it is not unusual for the spouse to elect to return to her/his home outside the region, often taking the children with them. While this need not spell the dissolution of the marriage, it is seen as a potential break. Even in instances where both partners are from the same village in the survey area, a number have chosen to either move to another location or to distribute family members in multiple locations. So, for example, one man sent his wife back to their village to live with her uncle while trying to establish new gardens (an unpromising task at present) while he sought out cash-‐earning opportunities in Kiunga. Where children are involved, educational opportunities are important, and most village schools are either closing or lack space to accommodate returnees’ children. In the case of this family, their children were fostered out to relatives in Port Moresby so that they might be able to continue attending school. Taken together, the return of workers and their families to their “home” villages has put significant additional pressure on village food production and housing.5 Many returnees who have their own houses and cash reserves will likely settle in well, although this should not be taken for granted. The drought and transportation problems One of the byproducts of lower water levels on the Fly River is that both Tabubil and Kiunga were experiencing severe fuel shortages. This is crucial for Min people because the entire region is landlocked and only accessible by air. At Tabubil OTML ceased allowing air carriers to refuel with local stocks, preferring to keep reserves intact. Large carriers now must ensure that incoming flights carry sufficient fuel for a round trip, while MAF has been obliged to fly in drumstock from Tari in order to continue its flights – a factor that has reduced the number and raised the cost of flights to Min destinations. A similar situation exists in Kiunga, with the small carriers (e.g., Central Air) making extra flights to bring in fuel from the Highlands – the costs of which are passed along to their customers. As a result, the cost of a charter flight (e.g., to bring in tradestore goods) to Telefomin and similar locations has risen to K8000 – a cost that effectively rules out further charters or imposes very steep price rises for goods in Min
5 Here and elsewhere I put “home” in quotation marks because many Min families in Tabubil have resided there since the 1980s. Given that their children and children’s children are likely to have been born in town, the notion that their parents’ ancestral village is “home” should be treated with some skepticism – as they and their village kin sometimes point out.
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villages.6 Relying on cash reserves will likely be more costly and less reliable than anticipated. Additional impacts When Ok Tedi shut down, a series of services that it supported were also closed, the two most significant of which were the schools and the hospital. Rightly regarded as the best medical facility in western PNG, the Tabubil hospital was a crucial regional centre for medical care, providing services to the town’s residents as well as villagers from throughout the region. With its closure, physician-‐attended medical and surgical facilities became unavailable overnight to the surrounding population, with the only remaining alternatives often being local health care centres (without physicians) or no care at all. Many people throughout the region had benefitted from these services in the past, but they are now gone – just as it seems likely that the need for medical treatment may rise as a result of growing water problems. Conclusion: the garden and beyond There is no doubt that the most immediate and obvious effects of the El Nino drought are visible in people’s gardens, and the first half of this paper was aimed at showing that. But I also think that the predicament of Min people and the drought’s effects on them go beyond a purely local focus on garden production and drinking water. I have tried to show this by talking about the ways the drought-‐related shutdown of the Ok Tedi mine has had an impact throughout its hinterland. This is most evident in the return of laid off or retrenched residents of Tabubil to their villages of origin. The combined effects of their loss of wages and their presence in an already drought-‐stressed village setting serve to magnify El Nino’s disruption of rural livelihoods. Min villagers have for some years been strongly linked to an important network of economic relations centring on Ok Tedi – as has Western Province and the nation as a whole. I would argue that in this sense there are two droughts that Min villagers must cope with: the drought that threatens their crops, and the drought that jeopardizes their linkage to the mining economy and, with it, their economic and practical relation to the world beyond their valleys. This picture suggests that we must think beyond the garden when understanding what the drought means to Min people and take their dependence on a surprisingly fragile regional economy into account when calculating El Nino’s costs. Acknowledgements Thanks to all the villagers who answered my questions and helped me in any number of ways, including Stan Tinamnok, Mark Muli, Simon Sol, Tonda Sol, Beksep Dagayok, Yon Dagayok, Terry Yon, Kaiku Beksep, Dagasim Binengim, Tegemsep 6 This passage refers to the state of affairs in mid-‐ to late-‐September. A favourable break in the weather could change this, though the long-‐term outlook remains uncertain,
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Aduyok, Koina Obrisim, Robinok Brolim, Trondi Oyanengim, Yun Trondi, Mipi Sumengim, Gons Samson, Robert Dripal, Wilisep Dripal, Deron Dripal, and Steve Sumengim. There is also an extended Min Facebook community online to which I am grateful. Warren Dutton and Deryck Thompson were excellent company and sources of ideas and information, as was Angela Macmillan. In Telefomin I am grateful to John Kalan of DAL, and HCO Jack Wantum for comment, information, and discussion. Bryant Allen and Michael Bourke provided the drought assessment form mentioned here, a copy of which is attached at the end of this paper. In Port Moresby Andrew Moutu of the National Museum and Art Gallery first motivated me to write something on the drought before leaving the country, while Amanda Watson was a good friend and source of stimulation. Finally, Paul Barker of the INA offered a home for this effort – though I am unfortunately unable (due to scheduling complications) to take up the invitation in person. Georgia Kaipu of NRI was crucial in securing the necessary permissions and clearances, and I remain, as always, indebted to her. As should be clear, this is a preliminary effort, and all the usual qualifications apply. References: Allen, Bryant, and Michael Bourke (2015). F D Impact Assessment Form ver 1. (see attached document at the end of this paper). Jorgensen, Dan (2006). Hinterland history: the Ok Tedi Mine and its cultural consequences in Telefolmin. The Contemporary Pacific 18(2):233-‐263. Ok Tedi Mining Ltd (2015). El Nino Toksave – Resetting the Business and Dry Weather Action. Tabubil: OTML. Thompson, Deryck (1997). The Logistics of Food of Food Distribution in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Unpublished manuscript.
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PNG Uniting Church Frost and Drought Impact Assessment, 2015 Location
Province District LLGA Village(s)
Latitude Longitude Altitude
Surveyor: Name Institution/employer Mobile phone Date
Situation Report Print a brief summary of the situation at this place. Food supply assessment (Clearly circle one number that best describes the situation here) Unusually dry, but no major food supply problems 1 Some inconvenience. Staple food is short but other foods available 2 Difficult, with food short and some famine or unusual foods being eaten 3 No food in gardens, famine food only being eaten 4 Extreme situation. No food available at all. 5 Print a brief justification for your assessment score for the food supply situation.
Water supply assessment Unusually dry, but no major drinking or other problems 1 Some inconvenience; usual water source not available; or water tastes salty 2 Difficult, water available but at a greater distance than normal and takes longer to collect 3 Conditions bad, water in short supply or possibly polluted 4 Extreme situation. Water very short or too salty or polluted to drink 5 Print a brief justification for your assessment score for the water supply situation.
Health impact assessment Unusually dry, but no health problem 1 Some inconvenience, dry skin, sunburn or other minor health problems 2 Difficult, with disabled and old people and children unwell, increase in diarrhoea. 3 Conditions bad, more people sick, lies of disabled, old people and children at risk 4 Extreme situation. Many people sick, small children, disabled and old people dying 5
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Print a brief justification for your assessment score for the health situation.
Other impacts of frost/drought (Tick and print very brief notes) Schools closed, teachers gone
Cash crops damaged Fires burned fallows Fires burned houses etc Social unrest Other events Responses by villagers Eating non-‐staple foods Eating famine food Travelling long distances for water
Buying food with cash savings Killing and selling pigs Fishing to obtain cash Making plans to move (where?)
Other responses External assistance received (Tick and print very brief notes on quantity, when received and adequacy Assistance from government, church, NGOs (names)
Food received from family and wantoks (where do they live)
Remittances of money from family or wantoks (where etc)
Other observations -‐Print brief notes on, for example, local food markets (changes in volumes, prices, items offered for sale), the security situation, movements of people.