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In October 2005, my Google protected areas alert showed several links to the creation of new protected areas in Papua New Guinea (PNG). As I clicked on the links, I was already wondering if this issue could be my master's research topic in Summer 2006. I had no idea that the timing of this press release would be the focus of my efforts to understand who was actually achieving conservation in PNG.

The year 2007 marks the twentieth anniversary of the release ofOur Common Future,commonly known as the Brundtland Report. The need for building environmentalconsiderations into decision making, a central theme in the Brundtland Report, is no longer abold proposition, but a basic necessity. Without the ability to monitor and assess changingenvironmental trends and their interactions with human development, navigating the sea ofglobal change would be reduced to reactive crisis management—hardly an effective way totackle policy issues with such profound relevance for the planet.

The deliberate and careless disposal of plastics is a growing concern in Papua New Guinea. Koi (2005) discusses the environmental impacts of plastics, and the different waste management alternatives, including the 5Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, and rethink.