Legal Toolkit for the Lovongai Community in Papua New Guinea

Photo Credit: Lovongai Community and People’s Planet Project

Situation

The Lovongai indigenous community living on New Hanover Island in North East Papua New Guinea, a remote and underserved area, are the stewards of an important biodiversity hotspot that forms part of the coral triangle in the region. Since 2006, the island has seen a civil war across the twelve different indigenous clans, stemming from land disputes exacerbated by logging companies. The logging activities can be attributed to Special Agricultural and Business Leases which were initially promoted as a way to support local agriculture, but the programme has led to widespread corruption as well as massive and ongoing deforestation. The lack of assistance from the government has forced many Lovongai community members to adapt to extensive forest and resource loss, livelihood change, land tenure modification, and associated social changes within a context already challenged by climate change. The rampant logging also fuels corruption and conflict in the area, preventing the country as a whole from developing.

ILP’s Action

ILP’s volunteer lawyers created a legal toolkit on national legal frameworks on logging, land ownership, acquisition of land titles and associated land rights to help the community better understand their rights and the legal remedies they can use to challenge violations of these laws. The toolkit also provides information on the legal mechanisms that the community can avail of to enable them to bring complaints in cases of violation of indigenous peoples’ rights.

Impact

The legal toolkit has enhanced the capacity of the Lovongai community to defend their land rights and protect Papua New Guinea’s remaining forests from logging companies. It also empowers them to seek justice in instances of environmental harms and to hold the government accountable for violations of its human rights obligations to indigenous peoples. The community is currently learning how to use geospatial mapping tools to identify their land boundaries and progress their land ownership claim, following which they will put the toolkit into practice.