PNG Government Urged to Axe Forest Plan, Impose Moratorium

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PAPUA NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS

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4/23/99

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Title: Axe forest plan, Govt urged

Source: The National

Date: April 20, 1999

Byline: By KEVIN PAMBA

PORT MORESBY: The World Wide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace have urged

the Government abolish the National Forest Plan, claiming it

"overestimates" the benefits of industrial logging.

After a review of the plan, the two non-government organisations

(NGOs) released a report that claims that "the purported benefits of

industrial logging in the form of infrastructure development, job

training, national revenue and technology transfer are overestimated

and in fact outweighed by the cost to ecological and social integrity

of the country."

The NGOs have made nine short-term recommendations and five long-term

recommendations to the Government for the forestry sector.

They said if the short-term recommendations are followed through,

"they would help rectify long standing problems in the agencies that

administer PNG's natural resources and would put on hold some

processes that would benefit from examination and reform".

"In addition, they would bring forest sector practice up to basic

international scientific and industrial standards," they said.

In the short-term they want the government to;

* Withdraw the existing National Forest Plan and begin the process for

a revised approach to forest planning as outlined in their long term

recommendations;

* Redraw existing maps to identify areas where industrial logging

would be inappropriate in terms of nationally or locally determined

constraints such as biodiversity values, landscape sensitivity (as

outlined in the Logging Code of Practice), community requests for

alternative uses or conservation and other relevant factors;

* Ensure that a development options study involving the systematic

analysis of the natural and human resource context and associated

constraints to development takes place prior to suggesting

identification or allocation of areas for industrial logging;

* Impose a moratorium on new Forest Management Agreements and

extensions of existing agreements until the capacity to manage PNG's

natural resources is effectively developed;

* Develop new standards for socially responsible and environmentally

sustainable forestry which will apply to all logging plans and which

are consistent with internationally recognised principles for

independent, performance based certification;

* Ensure compliance of existing concessions with the logging code and

existing calculations of sustainability. In particular, permitted

harvest rates must be reduced in regions such as the Gulf and Western

Provinces and East and West New Britain, where they allegedly exceed

what can be sustained, particularly under the existing 35-year cycle;

* Process the backlog of community-based applications for Conservation

Areas or Wild Life Management Areas and alter existing maps to include

approved protected areas;

* Establish an independent, third party forestry operations inspection

capacity, including community monitoring of company compliance and

reforestation designed to ensure that industrial logging operations

comply with PNG law and the new standards for socially responsible and

environmentally sustainable forestry; and

* Where industrial logging is the landlord's chosen development

option, the Government should ensure that it meets new forest

management standards.

The long-term recommendations, the NGOs said require a more

fundamental change in how the forests are being managed.

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