Ballard, in discussing the moral economy of resource ownership in Papua New Guinea states that
…for those of us for whom ties to land consist of casual contacts with small and often infrequently tended suburban gardens, one of the more difficult exercises in imagination is to conceive of the relationship between rural communities and the lands and the resources that they consider theirs (1997:47).
Often this is also a problem for policymakers for whom land and the resources on it are primarily economic commodities—to bring in much needed monetary income for state wealth—and only secondarily as part of an environment around which a society constructs its culture and lives its life.
In Solomon Islands land-based resource developments such as logging and mining are usually influenced by a land tenure system where about 87 per cent of the land is owned according to custom, leaving only about nine per cent to government ownership and the rest to individual Solomon Islanders. Only two per cent of the land is leased to foreigners. However, what is important to consider in the relationship between logging and land tenure is the nature of the politics of land ownership, the interactions within and between landowning groups that has affected, and been affected by, the logging industry.
Today, logging and land disputes are interrelated. Many logging companies come to Solomon Islands from Southeast Asia, especially from Indonesia and Malaysia where the state owns the land. Hence, they find it much easier to deal with the state or individuals rather than the tribe or clan. Consequently, they create individual landowners. On the island of Rendova, in the Western Province, for example, I found an individual who had left a job in the public service to become a full-time ‘landowner’ because, with logging companies around, it is a much more financially lucrative profession. In such a situation, the tribe is usually marginalised and denied access to the wealth accumulated through logging.
There are also cases where the state has found itself at the centre of land disputes. A classic example is the case of Pavuvu in the Russell Islands in the Central Province. Here, the British colonial government in 1905 leased Pavuvu Island to Levers Pacific Plantations. The original owners of the island, the Lavukal people of the Russell Islands had, for many years, demanded that the island be restored to them. However, their demands were ignored (Rose 1995:10). On 10 March 1995, the executive of Central Province granted Marving Brothers, a Malaysian registered logging company, a business license that allowed the central government to issue a logging permit for Pavuvu Island. The island’s forest was worth about US$120 million (Roughan 1997:160). The Lavukal people, assisted by non-government organisations such as the Solomon Islands Development Trust (SIDT), Soltrust, Greenpeace and Development Services Exchange (DSE) resisted the logging of Pavuvu. Company machines were sabotaged and workers were threatened. However, the central government sent in police officers to protect the company that is currently still logging on ‘government land’ (Roughan 1997; Tuhanuku 1995). Today, Pavuvu Island is still at the centre of intense confrontation between landowners, the central government, Central Province and Marving Brothers. In November 1995, Martin Apa, a Russell Island anti-logging campaigner, was murdered. So far police investigations have failed to find his killers although many suspect that the murder was connected to the Pavuvu Island logging issue.
This is only one example of land and boundaries disputes over that are now common throughout Solomon Islands, and particularly in areas where there are large-scale resource developments such as logging, mining, and plantation development. There's a need to take landowners and traditional land tenure systems seriously when planning national development programs. The large percentage of customary control of land also has implications for the state’s capacity to manage land-based resource developments. One of the major arguments in the logging industry is that the government in reality does not have control over landowners’ decisions to exploit the forest resource in the way they wish. In the case of the forestry industry, first, it signifies the fact that in Solomon Islands the state is weak in comparison to civil society (Kabutaulaka and Dauvergne 1997). The state does not possess the kind of power and authority over society that one would find in, for example, the hierarchical chiefly system of Tonga. Second, the nature of current logging practices in Solomon Islands indicates that ‘people’s’ control over resources does not necessarily mean that it will be well managed. In fact, the case of forestry in Solomon Islands proves the opposite.
Another factor that characterises the relationship between logging and land tenure is the alienation of women, not only as land users, but as custodians of land. In the matrilineal societies of Guadalcanal, Ysabel and Roviana (on New Georgia island) women traditionally had authority as custodians of land. However, throughout Solomon Islands I have not yet found a logging agreement in which women have been included as signatories. This is because men have always been promoted as landowners and income earners.