Abstract
This chapter predicts the future of Melanesian people and ecosystems, based on comparative research in the urban area of Roviana. Households in Munda town were economically vulnerable and at risk of encountering poverty and other hardships. For example, while households with regular jobs earned 3.6 times more money per hour than rural households, the urban households with no regular job, who were the majority, earned the same level as the rural households. The amount of food production either per hour or per hectare was small in urban households with or without regular jobs and was much lower than rural households. A health risk was prevalent in the urban people who were economically vulnerable and suffering from low food productivity. This result suggested the necessity of taking action to conserve the rural lifestyle and give it a viable future.
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Notes
- 1.
All 202 household s in Dunde and 65 in Olive were visited by the author for interviews related to the following topics: (1) gender, date and place of birth, and occupation of all members, (2) reproductive history of all adult females, and (3) possession of modern goods (i.e., houses made with modern materials and possession of outboard motors, chainsaws, generators, and rainwater tanks). The following households were randomly selected and used for the collection of detailed data related to subsistence and dietary habits: 16 households (58 male and 53 female members in total) from Dunde and 15 households (60 male and 52 female members in total) from Olive. Five members of the town households had regular jobs, and 11 had no regular job.
- 2.
For example, a 3-year-old boy weighing 11.1 kg was considered as CU = 0.47. Comparatively, CU = 0.90 and 0.73 for a 36- or a 74-year-old female or male weighing 72.4 kg or 49.4 kg, respectively, reflecting different demands for energy . The food energy requirements of lactating or pregnant females were assumed to be 2100 kJ (500 kcal) or 850 kJ (200 kcal) higher than those of non-lactating and nonpregnant females, respectively, of the same age and body weight.
- 3.
Tukey’s multiple comparison test (P < 0.05).
- 4.
In either Dunde or Olive , household heads were interviewed about the duration (in years) of the fallow and cultivation period s for all garden s under use and abandon ed in the past year. To calculate land productivity, all crops harvested from the gardens were weighed every day for 14 consecutive days. The analysis of Olive (Chap. 4) explains the details.
- 5.
For the garden s in Olive on New Georgia Island, the length of cultivation of gardens under use, that of gardens abandon ed within the last year, and the length of the fallow period were 1.5 ± 1.0 (N = 22), 1.8 ± 1.5 (19), and 26.5 ± 33.2 years (15), respectively.
- 6.
Time allocation studies were conducted, based on modified spot-check observations for individual s, for all adult members aged 18 years or older in the participant household s (eight males and nine females in urban households with regular jobs, 18 males and 18 females in those with no regular job, and 26 males and 25 females in rural households). The households were visited every 90 min from 7:00 to 20:30 in Dunde and every 80 min from 7:00 to 20:20 in Olive , respectively, as discussed in Chap. 4. This survey provided 1071, 2268, and 3570 spot-check observations for town households with regular jobs, those with no regular job, and rural households, respectively. The activities of the participants were recorded in detail, and they were categorized into horticultural, cash earning , and “others” in the analysis.
- 7.
Health statistics have suggested that the prevalence of malaria in Western Province had decreased from a peak of 506 persons with malaria per 1000 population annually in 1994 to 58 patients per 1000 population annually in 2005; furthermore, a mass administrative survey was conducted soon after a disaster in 2007, with only 78.5 in 1000 population patients found to be positive for malaria (Malaria Department, National Gizo Hospital, personal communication).
- 8.
The height and weight of all of the participants were measured, to the nearest 1.0 mm using a field anthropometer (TTM, Japan) and to the nearest 0.1 kg using a portable digital scale (Tanita model 1597, Japan), respectively.
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Furusawa, T. (2016). Painful Lessons from Urban Ecology and Economics. In: Living with Biodiversity in an Island Ecosystem. Ethnobiology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-904-2_8
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