TAVOLO

Located at the southern edge of the border between east and west New
Britian, Tavolo has been a long term partner community to FORCERT and has helped guide us as much as we have helped support them.

Our partner community Tavolo, located on the South Coast of New Britain Island, on the border of East & West New Britain Provinces, is actually made up of three neighbouring villages; Tavolo, Mukus and Lausus, who have close relationships a/o through clan bonds and intermarriages.

These three villages are further broken up into very small hamlets, with a total population of just over 1000 people, divided into 15 clans. As for all our partner communities, they depend on food gardens, and hunting & gathering for their survival, with some cash income from the sales of surplus garden food and fish. They also get seasonal income from the sales of betelnut, the fruit of a palm tree, which is chewed widely in PNG and is a mild stimulant. Tavolo has developed a Community Action Plan which identifies other income sources like rice cultivation and sales of dried cacao beans, and FORCERT has assisted the community to find support for the start of these additional cash crops.

Tavolo has been committed to nature conservation since 1997, when they protected 2,000 hectares of their customary owned land under a so called Wildlife Management Area. In 2007 they started working with FORCERT and they now have a sustainable land use plan for their land that covers 22,000 hectares.

As part of their land use planning process, the community did a High Conservation Values assessment and put Community Conservation Laws in place. A special Conservation Committee is responsible for the enforcement and monitoring of these laws.

The large and rich forest on Tavolo’s land is still luring logging companies, and keeping them out is almost a continuous battle for the community.