Table of Contents
At first glance, the 1997–98 drought in Papua New Guinea was a natural disaster. Between December 1996 and March 1997 the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), which is the standardized difference in surface air pressure between Darwin and Tahiti and is the oldest and simplest measure of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon in the Pacific, fell from +12 to –25. This is the most spectacular fall in the SOI in the post-1950 history of ENSO events. In Papua New Guinea, usually one of the wettest and cloudiest places on the globe, rainfall declined across much of the country. Crops withered and died, local sources of drinking water dried up, and bushfires burned from the coast to the crests of the main mountain ranges, destroying economic trees, sago stands and dwellings. Above 2000 metres altitude, night time temperatures repeatedly fell below zero.
By October 1997 a partial assessment estimated that 150,000 people were eating ‘famine’ foods. By December, this estimate, based on a second nationwide assessment, had risen to 260,000. A further 980,000 people were assessed to be eating poor quality food in reduced quantities. Many people were forced to walk for hours to collect drinking water of questionable quality. Death rates in isolated places almost certainly increased, many schools closed, many health centres were not staffed and had no medical supplies anyway. In some centres town water supplies were threatened. The hydroelectric station at Sirinumu was forced to stop generating (in order to conserve drinking water in the dam) causing serious power failures in Port Moresby. The Ok Tedi mine closed for seven months because the Fly River became un-navigable and the Porgera mine closed for six weeks through lack of water for processing, resulting in a severe loss of hard currency to the Papua New Guinea economy.
From another point of view, however, 1997–98 was a national disaster for Papua New Guinea. The Papua New Guinea government was unable to come to terms with the severity and extent of the drought. For a number of weeks it did almost nothing and was forced into taking action by the international aid-giving community and in particular by the Australian government which paid for assessments and mounted a large assistance program, implemented by the Australian Defence Force (Lea et al. 1999; Barter 2001). Some provincial governments, missions, NGOs and large numbers of ordinary citizens did respond, and offered help to a hungry rural population. But mismanagement of the Papua New Guinea economy, exacerbated by the Asian economic crisis, saw the kina fall from around $US0.72 to $US0.48 between September 1997 and April 1998, and many citizens associated the fall of the kina with the drought. It is not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the precipitous fall in the value of the currency, and its continued decline to below $US0.30, set in train forces which contributed to the fall of the Skate government in 1999. Not the least among these forces were dramatic price rises for imported foods consumed largely in urban areas.
The ‘dominant’ or establishment view of natural disasters is that, although they are attributable to nature, good public policy, backed up by advanced geophysical and managerial capability, can prevent or ameliorate the impacts (Hewitt 1983). The net impact of a natural event is seen as the outcome of a ‘battle’ between the forces of nature and the institutional and technical counter forces of the state. This view of natural disasters sees good public policy, emergency measures, plans and relief and rehabilitation as critical. While scientific insights are important they are to be subordinated to action, usually carried out by military or quasi-military organizations.
The establishment view of natural disaster accords with the experiences of disaster events in developed countries. For example, much of the discourse around the recent bushfires in Australia is of a quasi-military character with ‘headquarters’ receiving ‘intelligence’ from satellites and aerial ‘surveillance’, ‘bombing’ from the air and fire ‘fighters’ ‘attacking’ the infernos, which are the work of a dangerous and malevolent Nature. Volunteer fire fighters are lauded as heroes. After the fires have abated, policy questions are debated. Many of them are about resources, regulations and control. Government departments and politicians manœuver for the greatest advantage or the least amount of blame.
But in developing countries, such as Papua New Guinea, the establishment view of natural disasters may not apply. In these countries, resources are chronically stretched, effective centralized control of education and health services, let alone quasi-military and military forces, is always questionable and technical capabilities are poor or non-existent. Hewitt argues that the establishment view may even warp and constrain other possible views of the event and hence better ways of managing future events. In arguing this point, Hewitt suggests that in developing countries, the outcome of a disaster is not as dependent upon the geophysical processes and existing policies as it is upon the values of the society and its institutions and the ‘conditions of everyday life’. This alternative view implies that the expectations placed upon the Papua New Guinea state in 1997 by the international aid-giving community and the media were unrealistic and to a large extent unfair. It also explains why the responses to the disaster by Papua New Guinea civil society received little recognition during and after the event, even within Papua New Guinea.
This chapter first examines some of the reasons why the Papua New Guinea state was unable to quickly come to terms with the 1997–98 drought. Secondly, it describes how Papua New Guinea citizens responded to the event. Thirdly, it discusses what can be learned from the 1997 event for future policy-making, both in Papua New Guinea, in Australia and elsewhere. A fundamental dilemma is revealed for those who must make policy in Papua New Guinea and in neighboring relief-giving countries, such as Australia. If the establishment view does not apply, and it is argued that it does not in Papua New Guinea, how does the Papua New Guinea state and the international aid-giving community offer assistance to people who will be left to manage as best they can with their own resources? What alternative policy choices might be available?