COUNTRY : PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Papua New Guinea, abbreviated PNG, is the biggest country in the South Pacific, Oceania. It is also grouped under the Indo-Pacific region. The total land mass is 462,850 square kilometres and the total population is 8.20 million. The country is known for its diverse cultures as a result of more than 800 different languages. There are 2,000 tribal communities.  There are 22 provinces and 89 district. For example, Kerowagi district in Simbu province, has 11 tribes, 88 clans, and three different languages. The tribal social groups are endowed with a tribal land with traditional demarcated land boundaries. All the renewable and non-renewable resources, forests, rivers, creeks, seas, minerals, etc., belong to the tribal people. The Government owns only 3% of the total land mass. 

 There are 2.5m smallholder coffee farmers (400,000 households, depending on coffee farming as cash generating activity). 100,000 people are involved in small scale alluvial gold mining for their livelihoods. The Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) has issued up to 100 small scale alluvial gold mining leases to the tribal landowners but undeveloped as a result of lack of finance to invest in advance knowledge and mining technologies. The production capacity per person per day is estimated to from 5g to 10g of gold. All the available natural tropical rain forests and biodiversity are owned by the tribal communities.