Abstract
The central problem of this chapter is the effects of a drought on people of the Pio-Tura region of Papua New Guinea, caused in parts of the Pacific by the El Niño Southern Oscillation in 1997. The chapter proceeds from an outline of social life, weather and climate in the Pio-Tura region to an ethnographic account of the 1997 drought and its aftermath there. Seasonality and environmental change are then considered with regard to history and mythology in the Pio-Tura region. Forms of contact and development in the region have centred on Haia village. High rainfall has a marked influence on the weather, climate and landscape of the Pio-Tura region. The study of weather gives rise to multiple linkages in space and time. Narratives of environmental change in the Pio-Tura region cannot be taken at face value by Euro-American climatologists, conservation practitioners, or anthropologists.
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