ALERT UPDATE
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
World Bank Approves PNG Forestry Project Loan Despite Protests
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http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal
http://www.PNGweb.com/ -- PNG Rainforest Conservation Portal
12/22/01
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
The World Bank has approved its Papua New Guinea Forestry Project,
despite significant in-country and international concern regarding
its emphasis upon reforming and subsidizing continued industrial log
exports. The project is based upon the premise that better
monitoring and governmental logging approval processes will result in
a timber industry that conserves
biodiversity while promoting community development and well-being.
This comes at a time when illegal logging practices are rampant,
logging protestors are beaten and imprisoned, and after fifteen years
of similar failed reform efforts.
Late in the project development process, the World Bank removed all
support for development of policy that promoted alternative forest
management activities other than commercial logging by foreign multi-
nationals. This is the greatest tragedy of this unimaginative
project: just as the moratorium on logging wraps up, the Bank’s
project fails to seize the opportunity to diversify forest
management; to establish policy that allows a range of activities in
terms of ownership, scale, intensity, processing, etc. For the next
six years, the Bank has successfully guaranteed continued access by
international markets to PNG’s rainforest timbers, essentially for
free.
Given the project’s financial support for community and ecologically
based conservation projects through the GEF trust fund, Forests.org
is willing to give the project the benefit of the doubt - but only
for awhile. Should this project fail to rapidly reign in out of
control logging of the World’s third largest remaining rainforest,
the Bank’s emphasis upon reforming rather than dismantling industrial
forestry in PNG’s primary old-growth rainforests will be totally
discredited, and must then be reexamined. If illegal commercial and
environmentally damaging logging continues despite this project,
forest conservationists will demand an end to commercial logging and
log exports, and movement of the industry to community based small
and medium scaled management activities. In fact, given the
scientific certainty that commercial scaled logging in tropical
rainforests can never be ecologically sustainable, we will continue
to demand these policy changes regardless of the Bank’s subsidies to
highly environmentally damaging commercial logging.
Now that the project is approved, perhaps the World Bank will choose
to share with PNG and international NGOs the project’s content and
the conditions the government has agreed upon to receive the loans (I
was promised a copy of the project documents some eight months ago by
the Country Director – still waiting). Or perhaps this is asking too
much, and those that have labored for PNG’s rainforests for decades
are expected to blindly accept this project as the savior of PNG’s
rainforests. Not.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: World Bank Approves PNG Forestry Project Loan Despite
Protests
Source: Copyright 2001 Inter Press Service
Date: December 20, 2001
Byline: Emad Mekay,
WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (IPS) - The World Bank (news - web sites) has
approved a new segment of a loan
to
opposition from local landowners and environment activists who say
the project endangers the world's third largest rainforest.
In an electronic statement released Wednesday the Bank said it
approved a 17.36 million dollar loan and 17 million dollars grant to
the Southeast Asian country Tuesday. The money will go to a project
that will help improve conservation of important forest ecosystems in
the Southeast Asian country, one of the world's most biodiversity-
rich regions.
This should result in the long-term maintenance of biodiversity and
an increase in the well-being of forest owners, the bank said in a
statement.
But James Douglas, World Bank Task Manager for the project said that
protecting the forests will depend heavily on the efforts of the
Government, and its recent support of forest protection measures is
an encouraging sign. The forests cover 36 million hectares and is
home to thousands of plant species and hundreds of birds and animals.
In a statement released hours before the Bank made its decision on
the loan, Bank critics, environmentalists and lawyers of affected
landowners said the bank failed to adhere to its very own policies on
conservation.
Landowners in the Kiunga-Aiambak area of the Western Province in PNG
filed a complaint earlier this month to the Bank's Inspection Panel,
an independent forum for people directly affected by Bank funded
projects, to protest against the Bank's failure to adhere to policy
and commitments regarding rainforest conservation.
This is the first time such a claim has been lodged by landowners in
Papua New Guinea, a country of only five million people and is known
for its rich biodiversity. Local landowners say they have now
exhausted their options with the government of PNG and the Bank and
wanted a fair position from the inspection team who is yet to look
into the matter.
Landowners and Bank critics say although Bank loans to the government
of PNG include a moratorium on new logging as a condition, neither
the Bank or the government was honouring their agreement.
The owners claim that illegal logging, the new Kiunga-Aiambak road
project, the expropriation of the their forest by the state and the
logging company have all negatively damaged the lands there and
caused them economic, social, environmental and cultural loss as a
result of the illegal logging on their land.
In an electronic petition,
Forests.org, an environmental watchdog,
claimed that illegal logging along the Kiunga Aiambak road
has caused
environmental damage in the millions of dollars, as priceless logs
are unlawfully removed. Protesting landowners have been
imprisoned,
beaten and tortured, the group
said.
The claims couldn't be independently verified. Bank officials in its
Washington headquarters did not return phone calls on the issue.
Despite having been brought to the attention of the government and
the World Bank, nothing has been done so far to stop the illegal
logging operations, said The Centre for Environmental Law and
Community Rights Inc. (CELCOR), which represents more than 300
affected landowners in the Kiunga-Aiambak area of PNG.
The World Bank has not followed its policies nor held the government
of PNG accountable for meeting its forest conservation commitments
under the loan, CELCOR said.
"We feel that the Bank is not doing enough to address the governance
problem so far as the forest industry is concerned, said Damien Ase,
Executive Director of CELCOR. This has caused irreversible harm to
the claimants land and forests."
"It is high time institutions such as the World Bank follow their
approved operational policies to deal with governance issue and to
help PNG to achieve its constitutional ideal of fair and equitable
society and sustainable development for all, said Ase. Sustainable
economic and social goals will not be achieved until there is
transparency and accountability at all levels of government."
The Bank's decision to go ahead with further loans to the PNG
government is a blow to the landowners and the activists who saw a
freeze on the loan as a way to pressure the government to reverse
what they say is an ecologically damaging practice to the world's
third largest remaining rainforest.
To the PNG government, this is good news. The government has had
considerable success in attracting international support,
specifically gaining the support of the Bank and its sister
organisation, the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites), in
securing development assistance loans.
There has been little growth in the last half of the 1990s, with real
Gross Domestic Product in 2000 grew by three percent, not enough to
compensate for population growth, according to the Bank.
A new administration under the leadership of Prime Minister Mekere
Morauta in July 1999 has promised to toe the Bank's line and restore
integrity to state institutions, to stabilise the kina (the local
currency), to restore stability to the national budget and to
privatise public enterprises."
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