Papua New Guinea

It is well known that the World Bank has been a major force in the destruction of the rainforests of the world by financing destructive projects. The decison taken yesterday of approving a controversial forestry project seems to show that the Bank is still far from truly embracing participatory forest conservation and management.

CDC Capital Partners is a major actor in Papua New Guinea’s oil palm plantations. A former UK foreign aid programme, it later became a public private company and invests in PNG through Pacific Rim Plantations Ltd., holding 76% of its shares. Pacific Rim Plantations Ltd. owns and manages about 23,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in three locations: Northern Province (Popondetta), Milne Bay Province (Alotau) on PNG’s north coast and at Kavieng on New Ireland island. It operates in joint venture with the PNG government, which has a 20% stake.

Papua New Guinea's (PNG) rainforests are of global significance, comprising one of the last major tropical rainforest wildernesses in the World. Within a mere 1% of the world's land mass, it is estimated that PNG contains 5-8% of global biodiversity and that seventy five percent of this valuable forest is still standing. However, these forests are once again under threat.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) possesses one of the planet's largest remaining tropical rainforest. At least seventy-five percent of its original forest cover is still standing, occupying vast, biologically rich tracts over 100,000 square miles in all. Its forests provide the habitat for about 200 species of mammals, 20,000 species of plants, 1,500 species of trees and 750 species of birds, half of which are endemic to the island. It has been estimated that between 5 and 7% of the known species in the world live in PNG.

The Australian SBS Television Dateline programme has produced a documentary concerning fraud, incompetence, corruption and human rights violations by transnational logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea. The documentary exposes widespread cases of loggers raping local women at the barrel of a gun and landowners being forced to sign legal documents, also at gunpoint. The programme states that police are on logging companies' payrolls and that foreign loggers "are a law unto themselves" in their logging concession areas.

The state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) comprises the eastern part of the island of New Guinea and a series of smaller islands in the Bismarck Sea and the Coral Sea in the Pacific region. It holds one of the largest intact wilderness areas on Earth. Both natural and cultural diversity used to thrive in that country. The wide variety of microclimates and landforms existing in its more than 462,840 square kilometres have made it possible for several forest types ranging, from lowland mixed forests to mangroves along the coast.

What follows are extracts from the findings of an environmental and social impact assessment of logging operations in the west coast of Manus province, carried out in 1997 and during January 2000, which details the impacts of logging.

A coalition of non-government organisations is calling on the Government to make some fundamental changes in the forest industry. They are calling for the continuation of the current moratorium on new logging concessions until reforms are in place to deal with the many problems in the sector.

Indiscriminate logging has been the main cause for the decline of Papua New Guinea's rainforests, that the government has been unable to stop in spite of the announced moratorium on the activities of timber companies. Unfortunately, this is not the only depredatory economic activity that affects the country's forests. Mining is also producing important impacts at the local level. For example, Freeport-Rio Tinto's mining operations at Ajkwa River's watershed has had severe effects on the environment and the level of mercury in this river is four-times higher than the maximum allowed.

The announcement by Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Mekere Morauta in December 1999 of his intention to impose a moratorium on new logging and extensions, and to review existing logging concessions was enthusiastically received by national and international environmental NGOs, as well as by local small sawmill operators, which consider that any new large-scale logging concessions should be stopped in a country that has already lost more than 10% of its forests because of this depredatory activity (see WRM Bulletin 30).

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Mekere Morauta has announced the intention of the new government to impose a moratorium on new logging, and to review existing logging concessions, many of which are thought to have been improperly granted and implemented. The announcement was well received by environmental NGOs, which consider that it is time to halt any new large-scale logging concessions in the country.

Papua New Guinea still contains one of the major tropical rainforests in the world, hosting high levels of biodiversity. Together with the government's policy regarding forests -which considers them as a mere source of roundwood to be exported- and its collusion with powerful forestry companies (see WRM Bulletin 22), the activities of foreign logging companies constitute a threat to these rich ecosystems and to the people that inhabit them.