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PAPUA NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS

East Sepik Wokabaut Sawmill Project--"We All Work Together"

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

7/5/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

As alluded to occasionally, while industrial forestry abuses continue to be

the norm, there does exist a growing movement for more sustainable

ecotimber. Papua New Guinea is one country leading the way with community

based, local forestry management efforts. Here is a piece from the

Rainforest Information Centre's World Rainforest Report, July 1996 version

which is just up on the WWW at:

RIC's WRR Issue Number 34

http://www.peg.apc.org/~ricwww/wwrr/Index.html

We will be passing along several, though not all of the pieces as in the

past, from the magazine which is a central chronicler of the rainforest

movement.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Papua New Guinea

A Wokabout Sawmill Project

in the East Sepik

"We all work together": Balancing community needs

with the bottom line

by Darren Gladman

The AusAID-funded Walkabout Sawmill project initiated by the Village

Development Trust and the Rainforest Information Centre in PNG's Morobe

Province has been well documented in WRR. Here is an account of a

landowner-initiated walkabout project in the East Sepik.

"We all work together. Whatever we come up with we discuss it with the

people. That is the way we are running this project." So says community

leader Arnold Kombo. Arnold and other villagers from Nangumarum in East

Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, have been running a successful portable

sawmilling operation for six years.

The project started with the cutting of timber on land owned by the people

of Nangumarum. Then, as word of the wokabout somill (as the sawmill is

called) spread, landowners from surrounding villages began to invite the

project to come an cut trees on their land. No trees are cut without the

full support of the customary landowners. In turn, the customary landowners

constantly monitor the sawmilling in their forests and receive fair payment

for the timber.

"After six years of operating their own wokabout somill, they have shown

they do not need to sell their forest to destructive transnational

companies"

Community participation has been the key to the success of the project,

explains community leader Chris Yafanduo: "The wokabout somill is something

new to the community which I'm very proud of. I see that the community is

well involved in the changes that are taking place".

The Nangumarum villagers have not been formally trained in ecology or

forest management. When they fell trees, they choose those which are

accessible and can be sold easily. Training in forest management would

enable them to select trees according to ecological considerations.

The people of Nangumarum use two wokabout somills to cut their timber. The

sawmill is carried manually into the forest and set up adjacent to the

trees to be felled. On average about three or four trees are cut before the

sawmill is moved on, leaving behind a gap in the forest canopy of up to

twenty metres by twenty metres. With disturbance of the canopy kept to a

minimum, the rainforest is better able to recover.

The trees are milled on the spot and the timber is carried out along narrow

bush tracks. No new roads are needed for their sawmilling project. The

sawmills operate up to a kilometre away from existing roads, so that the

cut timber is carried out of the bush by hand and then by road. The work of

carrying timber is usually done on the weekend by community youth groups,

church groups or wom ens groups as a way of raising funds for community

projects. The sawmill has provided much-needed employment for the people of

the village and has helped arrest the trend of young people leaving the

village to look for work in the cities.

The sawmill also provides timber for community projects, a village home

building scheme, and as any visitor to the village can see, it is a source

of pride for the village. Initially the sawmill was intended to provide for

a village house building project. After discussing their needs, the

villagers decided that a village timber yard should be established and all

timber sold at the market rate.

The house building project continued, with timber purchased from the

village timber yard. Two sawmills each produce about a cubic metre of

timber per working day. About half the timber is sold locally from the

timber yard, and half is sold in the nearby town of Wewak.

The project has also exported timber to other urban areas. Because making

money was not the sole reason the project was set up, little profit is made

at the moment. The sawmill project we have here is not for the sake of

making business aloneO, says Arnold Kombo. "We use this project as vehicle

to bring in revenue and we direct those funds into the community and

building our villages. We've got to have good schools built up, we"ve got

to have an improved housing system, health services and all the most basic

services we need".

When the sawmilling project commenced, it was the first of its kind in the

region. There was little access to training programmes and the project

would probably not have survived if its staff did not already have

experience in mechanical repair and small business management. In future,

any newly-established sawmilling projects like this one will need improved

access to training programmes in equipment maintenance, business man age

ment and ecoforestry management.

The bottom line

After six years of operating their own wokabout somill, the people of

Nangumarum have shown that they do not need to sell their forest to

transnational companies for destructive logging to supplement their

livelihood.

Arnold Kombo explains why the village has chosen ecoforestry: "I really

object to the idea of having large com pa nies here because I know very

well it is not going to bring something goods. I have seen quite a number

of them. They were doing logging where so much destruction was done with

trucks making feeder roads. There was destruction like trees cut down

unnecessarily, small trees and vegetation cleaned up, eventually leaving

the land barren and then having grasses growing instead of trees. In places

the water sources became dry and people had to go so far away to look for

water.

"We would not like to see the natural environment pass away. The future

generations will never see it again. We would like to keep the natural

beauty to remain as it is today. So for that reason we have to care for the

environment as well as making benefits like taking wood out to improve

homes by building houses, residences or community buildings or any other

projects. So in large scale logging I see a lot more disadvantages than

smaller operations like the wokabout somill we have here in Nangumarum

village".

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You are encouraged to utilize this information for personal campaign use;

including writing letters, organizing campaigns and forwarding. All

efforts are made to provide accurate, timely pieces; though ultimate

responsibility for verifying all information rests with the reader. Check

out our Gaia Forest Conservation Archives at URL=

http://forests.lic.wisc.edu/forests/gaia.html

Networked by:

Ecological Enterprises

gbarry@forests.org