Globalisation, community development, and Melanesia: The North New Georgia Sustainable Social Forestry and Rural Development Project

Abstract

This paper is about globalisation, the state, and community development in Melanesia. The paper draws on the concept of “weak state–strong society” and explores the influence of the Christian churches, non-government organisations, and kastom in shaping development and social change in a Melanesian society. The paper takes Solomon Islands as its focus and a case study is made of the North New Georgia Sustainable Social Forestry and Rural Development Project – a re-afforestation program established on the island of New Georgia in the late 1990s. Through this case study, the emergence of a locally-derived and locally-based approach to community and resource development is examined. Since the eighteenth century, the fortunes, practices, opportunities and power of Pacific societies have been significantly influenced by changes in the strategic, economic and normative order at the global level. This will obviously continue to be so. But, as in the past, this will not simply be a “fatal impact” of powerful global forces on local vulnerable societies but a “messy entanglement” in which it will matter how particular societies, and the South Pacific collectively, organise their response or create opportunities (Fry 2000, 2).