Global imperatives and local desires: competing economic and environmental interests in Melanesian communities

Abstract

Since the 1970s, people in Melanesian countries have been beguiled by the prospect of economic development that would enable them to participate in a world market economic system and so allow them to progress, to improve their standards of living and to take their places as independent nations in a modern world. The forms of participation available to them and those encouraged by international capital entailed the extraction of natural resources – minerals, timber and fish. In these enterprises, the ‘developers’ provided the capital and the Melanesians provided the resources and sometimes the cheap labor. These projects were also viewed as ways of supporting emergent independent national governments through equity agreements, taxes and royalties. ‘Development’ referred to both the economic and the political processes facilitated by resource extraction by multinational corporations. Globalization, like ‘development, ’ is a loose term that describes or theorizes the processes whereby economic activities in these small islands are constituted within a broad financial and political landscape that is shaped by the distant, ‘developed ’ nations and their linked corporations. It encompasses the financial, economic and political

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