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SIP / SIIR Vanimo & Kilimeri

SIP / SIIR Pio-Tura / Pawaia

INFORMING EU-POLICY

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THE FUTURE OF RAINFOREST PEOPLES — Papua New Guinea Working Group — (FRP—PNG)

• Researchers of the FRP-PNG Working Group have adopted a number of standardised methods and protocols, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

• This methodology facilitates comparison, thus augmenting the power of the individual ethnography, and situating our work within a regional, national and global context.

• The development of such a comparative perspective contributes to the understanding of complex phenomena such as local impacts of conservation and development projects, human ecology and the intimate relationship between people and rainforest.

‘Policy that works for Forests and People — Rural Community Survey Form’ is a detailed set of research questions on issues of land ‘use’ and forest ‘management’ in rural communities. They were prepared by Dr. Colin Filer and Professor Paul Sillitoe at the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea in the form of a questionnaire for the IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) Country Study with the same title. This questionnaire was answered by social scientists working predominantly in rural areas throughout Papua New Guinea. By incorporating these questions into our methodology, the results of FRP-PNG research can be compared to these existing data.

APFT Minimum Protocol is a list of questions on community and social organisation, subsistence and nutrition prepared for APFT-FRP researchers working in rainforest areas around the world. It represents the basic categories of ethnoecological research and was prepared by the Scientific Council of the project.

Kent Guidelines for Research are a set of research questions in human ecology and anthropology designed as a check-list for the individual researcher working across disciplines in the social and natural sciences. This first draft was prepared by Dr.Christin Kocher Schmid, Dr. Oliver Kortendick and Dr. Laura Rival at the University of Kent at Canterbury for APFT / FRP researchers.

FRP-PNG Methods Work Sheets are the result of teamwork by FRP-PNG researchers to adapt the above methods and and develop methodologies which are suited to research in anthropology and human ecology in Melanesia. Approaches are both qualitative and quantitative. They are highly standardised and focus on specific themes, such as:

• demography
• ethnobiology
• material culture
• ‘human use areas’ and human use transects.

We are making our Methods Work Sheets available on this webpage as they are produced. Please acknowledge the source if you use them.