High in Simbu Province, where the Bismarck Range Forest rises green above the valley, a landowner once stopped Philip Kaupa mid-stride and pointed to a lone tree. “This tree my grandfather planted is still standing. Now, I want my grandchildren to see the trees I plant today”, the man told him. For Philip, the moment distilled a philosophy carried since childhood, one where forest and family share a single inheritance. “My dedication to conservation started from growing up surrounded by the forest and the deep cultural connections with it”, he says. That inheritance, and the land degradation eroding it, led him to co-found Dika Suna Nature Conservation Inc. (DNC) in 2018.
A forest under pressure
Increasingly, that inheritance is not guaranteed. Simbu holds some of Papua New Guinea's richest rainforest yet has lost nearly a third of its cover since 1972 to small scale logging and agriculture; a decline now compounded by small-scale loggers pushing into the margins, and by the fires still lit each dry season to clear land, a customary habit that Philip's own work is trying to change. He once negotiated with a small-scale loggers offering short-term income to clear trees forest near a DNC project site; a community meeting on the risks; lost water sources, eroding soil, threatened sacred sites, led villagers to reject the offer, on Philip's conviction that protecting nature and protecting people's livelihoods and culture are, in the end, the same task.
Roots that hold the land
Selected from more than 300 Pacific applicants for Kiwa Initiative support, DNC channels that resolve into Project Green Lungs, reforesting 200 hectares of indigenous species across six community sites that villages plant, monitor and own, anchored by a hub teaching native-tree propagation and climate-resilient farming. “It's not just about restoring the forest, it's about restoring our connection to the land and passing it on to future generations”, Philip explains. The same conviction shaped the Golba Protected Area, part of the Bismarck Range Corridor, where customary landowners who once resisted restrictions ultimately proposed the protection themselves. “True leadership is about listening and empowering others to take ownership”, he reflects, a lesson later echoed in Papua New Guinea's 2023 Protected Areas Act.
A living economy, changing mindset
Conservation, for Philip, has always meant livelihoods as much as habitat. Alongside coffee grown beneath native canopy, DNC's Community Beekeeping Project trains women and youth as hive managers. Among them is Maryann, a mother of four who once struggled to make ends meet and now manages her own life and trains others in her village. A shift Philip describes as proof that conservation and economic dignity can grow from the same root. Nearby, a young volunteer named John Waike has learned to pair GPS mapping with customary boundary knowledge and now leads DNC's youth group in turn. That resolve now reaches beyond Simbu, as Kiwa's support lets Dika Suna Nature Conservation share nursery techniques with counterparts elsewhere in the Pacific. For Philip, success isn’t counted in numbers, but in something far harder to quantify. “I want DNC to be remembered not just for the trees we planted or the land we protected, but for the mindset we’ve changed; a belief that people and nature can thrive together”, he says.
