The landslide catastrophe in Enga, PNG, will reverberate for years after the emergency phase. I was invited by the 7am podcast to talk briefly about the broader context of an event like this in the highlands. The things I tried to highlight are the remoteness/lack of basic services; how years of tribal fighting will complicate … Continue reading
Last month, a Queensland archeology professor and his three PNG colleagues, all women, were kidnapped from their field site in remote Western Province and held for ransom. PNG Prime Minister James Marape described the hostage-taking as unprecedented, a “random, opportunistic crime”, but there’s rather more to it. The backstory is interwoven with political, economic and … Continue reading
Revisiting Tari, albeit long distance, for The Guardian. Recent killings of women and children in a village outside Tari deserve to be seen in the context of the spiralling social emergency playing out there. This plugs into the same issues wrote about in my long feature on PNG’s Resource Curse for The Monthly last year. … Continue reading
It’s almost 10 years since I went to PNG for the first time. One of the stories I was investigating on that first trip was what ExxonMobil’s looming, massive, much-hyped PNG LNG (liquified natural gas) project would mean for the people at its highlands source, and for the country. A dozen trips older and wiser, … Continue reading
Sadly The Global Mail’s archive has been shut down, but visitors to this blog note that I have today restored links to all my blogged PNG/Global Mail stories. Note these snapshots are a bit clunky and some images have vanished so keep scrolling past the blanks or you may miss lots of text! TGM was … Continue reading
Pacific islanders have always been sustained by the ocean. Might it now make them rich? And at what cost? Jo Chandler reports from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, on the world-first commercial project to mine the deep sea bed. https://web.archive.org/web/20150318111209/http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/mining-the-abyss/760/index.html Continue reading
Foreign treasure hunters have descended on the battle-scarred and economically bereft Pacific island of Bougainville, as jockeying for its natural riches intensifies. Hot on their trail: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police. By Jo Chandler https://web.archive.org/web/20140825065236/http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/canadian-mounties-investigating-on-bougainville/753/index.html Continue reading
Notebook & Narrative by Jo Chandler 