Responses to a Drought in the Interior Lowlands of Papua New Guinea: A Comparison of Bedamuni and Kubo-Konai

The ways that people experience, respond to and pattern recovery from major climatic aberrations must be understood within the context of existing socioeconomic arrangements and the ethos that informs these. This paper describes immediate and longer term impacts of a major drought on two populations—Bedamuni and Kubo-Konai—in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Though they occupy similar environments, are culturally related and reliant on similar technology and resources, these two populations differ in density, intensity of land use, and social complexity. The drought of 1997 affected one of the populations much more severely than the other. A comparison of effects on subsistence regimes, mobility and social life in the two areas suggests that these were mediated by understandings people held of relationships with both the environment and other people. Bedamuni pattern their lives around an expectation of favorable returns on effort, emphasising security of tenure to protect those returns. Kubo-Konai, in contrast, pattern their lives around an expectation that availability of resources will be often in flux, and emphasise means of ensuring security of supply. These understandings are reflected, respectively, in risk-prone and risk-averse strategies of subsistence and sociality which directly influence vulnerability and responses to disruptive events.