Coping with Drought in Rural Papua New Guinea: A Western Highlands Case Study

Abstract

The short- and long-term effects of climate change on Papua New Guinea's agricultural sector have generated significant debate in recent times. Current literature demonstrates that different population groups have differing levels of vulnerability and resilience to the flow-on effects of climate change, particularly drought. Yet different schools of thought on the country's food security and effects on livelihoods persist. This article draws on evidence from research conducted in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea as part of a bigger economic empowerment project to illustrate the vulnerabilities of one community of rural semisubsistence farmers to drought-induced food insecurity. It examines responses to drought, identifies modes of resilience, and discusses the implications for future actions.

Validating a Tailored Disaster Risk Assessment Methodology: Drought Risk Assessment in Local PNG Regions

“…Eight reputable literature sources detailing drought conditions around the time of each event indicated by the risk assessment (2015-2016 and 2019-2020) were analysed to determine the ground-truth of the drought event severity and impact. As two drought events were investigated, and eight sources were assessed for each event, a total of 16 sources were assessed overall Gwatirisa et al, 2017;Burivalova et al, 2018;Jacka, 2020;Varotsos et al, 2018;Schmidt et al, The records in the literature were not extensive for the 2019-2020 drought event in PNG. An array of records was available…”

“…It is widely reported that a strong drought event commenced in PNG at the beginning of 2015 and reached its peak during 2016 Gwatirisa et al, 2017;Jacka, 2020;Varotsos et al, 2018 Niño which occurred during these years. This strong El Niño phase was paired with a positive IOD phase; the interacting impacts of both climate drivers resulted in devastating negative rainfall anomalies across the entirety of PNG (Bhardwaj et al, 2021b).…”

“…Central and Gulf Province were indicated among the five most at-risk provinces by the risk assessment but were included in the most at-risk provinces described by the literature. This might have been because the majority (five out of eight) of the 'ground-truth' sources used to investigate the impacts of the 2015-2016 drought event focused on only one aspect of drought (meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, or socioeconomic), and thus did not consider the holistic impacts suffered by specific provinces like Central and Gulf Province Burivalova et al, 2018;Varotsos et al, 2018;Schmidt et al, 2021;Gwatirisa et al, 2017). Comparatively, the risk assessment methodology of this study incorporated indicators for all types of drought's impacts to provide a comprehensive risk level for each province.…”

“…-Data is available for recent years from PNG National Statistical Office. 1988, 1989, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2020) and (b) El Niño events (El Niño years being 1982, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2006, and Gwatirisa et al, 2017;Burivalova et al, 2018;Jacka, 2020;Varotsos et al, 2018;Schmidt et al,…”

The influence of emergency food aid on the causal disaster vulnerability of remote Indigenous food systems: a case study of the Bedamuni of Western Province, Papua New Guinea

“…Others have detailed the impact of hazards on PNG food systems and the logistical and operational aspects of EFA without questioning the underlying logic or effect on vulnerability (e.g., Allen and Bourke 2001, Cobon et al 2016, Gwatirisa et al 2017, Kanua et al 2016).…”