If 1997 was a ‘failure of governance’ and a ‘triumph of the citizenry of Papua New Guinea’, what does this teach us about the sort of policies that might be developed in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere to deal with the next ENSO event? What are the ‘facts’?

Based on the evidence of past severe ENSO events and on evidence from remote areas in 1997, we conclude that considerably greater numbers of people, mainly small children and old people, would have died in Papua New Guinea in 1997 if there had been no interventions at all. The additional loss of life in 1997 due to the drought and frosts was greatest in the most isolated areas, where people do not have access to markets for cash crops, to government services, to information, and to effective political representation. Without AusAID’s relief program, many more people in these places would have died.

On the other hand, AusAID’s program probably damaged the long-term capability of the Papua New Guinea government to deal with future ENSO events. For many reasons that were justifiable in the circumstances, AusAID rode over the top of the inadequate responses of the Papua New Guinea government and put a well-oiled military operation into action. Many educated Papua New Guineans have jokingly suggested to me that Papua New Guinea was completely ‘useless’ in 1997 and had to be rescued by Australia from its own inadequacies.

If we argue that a policy of no intervention, or minimal intervention should be followed the next time, many people would starve and some would do it in public! Given the great attraction of disasters to the Australian and international media, it would be very tough governments, in Papua New Guinea and Australia, that could stand by and do nothing, with nightly TV pictures of people dying on the screen. Here is the dilemma: do nothing and watch some people die; do almost everything because the Papua New Guinea government cannot, and destroy local morale and the confidence that a crisis can be met with local resources.

However, this need only be a dilemma if Australian policy continues to be one of waiting until Papua New Guinea policy fails and then coming to the rescue with programs that resemble something out of Apocalypse Now. The solution would appear to be a joint bilateral agreement between Papua New Guinea and Australia to make policy together. The policy would recognize the strengths and weaknesses of both countries and would seek to use the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of both parties and approaches. Australia could continue to provide the advanced technical assistance, climate prediction, communications, satellite imagery, specialized aircraft, and even perhaps corporate memory. Papua New Guinea could provide local-level monitoring and liaison, knowledge of the country, knowledge of agricultural systems, language skills and so on. Papua New Guinea policy must recognize the importance of the private sector and its role in importing and distributing rice and flour, which are essential to the food security of the country. Both countries should make policies that ensure that rice and flour continues to be imported into Papua New Guinea and retailed at reasonable prices.

Elements of this approach were adopted by the Australian relief program in 1997 when circumstances demanded it. PNGDF soldiers were placed aboard ADF helicopters to act as interpreters, after a bunch of helpful bush-knife wielding villagers, who offered to unload a helicopter, terrified the ADF crew who mistook them for primitive savages with a blood lust. Australian monitors with experience in rural Papua New Guinea (a number were ex-patrol officers) were posted to provinces to work directly with provincial drought relief committees, where they were accepted and valued. The approach continues to be followed in a number of other ways. The responses to the next ENSO event will benefit from the detailed knowledge that was collected during 1997. Papers on the drought were presented to the PNG Food and Nutrition 2000 Conference, with the proceedings published by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (Bourke et al. 2001).

A more sympathetic view needs to be taken of Papua New Guinea’s inability to act like a developed country when it comes to natural disasters. Papua New Guinea is not a developed country and the establishment view of disasters will not work there. Australia and Papua New Guinea must make new policy together, policy that draws upon the best of the establishment view of disaster management and the best of the alternative view.