Corporate community development in Pacific focus of study

The private sector’s role in community development in the Pacific will be the focus of a three-year project led by Massey’s Regina Scheyvens and Glenn Banks. The Development Studies researchers won $890,000 from the Marsden Fund to undertake fieldwork at two mining sites in Papua New Guinea and two Fiji tourism sites.

“The Pacific is a fascinating place for us to examine the role of the private sector, especially large corporates, in bringing about community development,” Professor Scheyvens says.

The study will investigate if community development initiatives of mining and tourism corporations can bring about “locally meaningful” development. A team of researchers will get the perspectives of the corporation and rural communities in which they operate – and will eventually develop strategies for more socially sustainable corporate development practices.

The mining and tourism industries share key attributes as both intensively use natural resources, especially land and water, important to local communities, and are economically dominant sectors – making their role in the Pacific complex. “The image of these mining companies is that they go up there and make a huge mess, and trash cultures, but it’s a lot more complicated,” Associate Professor Banks says.

Both industries contribute significantly to local development in the Pacific – sometimes providing far more than governments, donors or non-governmental organisations. For example, they develop infrastructure such as roads, provide educational scholarships and fund health clinics.

“Our project looks critically at the role of the private sector in doing community development, but we are also interested in contributing to their understanding of how they can do a good job when they do this community development work,” Professor Scheyvens says.

“We will interview people within the corporations to get their perspective on what they think they’re doing, why and how it’s evolved, and then work with the communities to get their view on what’s worked, and what real benefits or costs they are experiencing as a result of these development programmes,” she says.

She is also interested to see whether businesses – which are profit-driven – understand social and cultural aspects of development as well as other developmental actors, such as non-governmental organisations, might.

Professor Scheyvens and Associate Professor Banks, from Massey’s School of People, Environment and Planning, explain that the NZ Aid Programme has refocused on providing assistance through and to the private sector in the Pacific making their project extremely topical – especially as the Government’s Partnership Fund for International Development, which supports sustainable development in developing countries, is in November accepting applications from the private sector for the first time.