03/04/02 -- Papua New Guinea Logging Abuses

UPDATE

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Papua New Guinea Logging Abuses – Business as Usual

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

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March 4, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

It is business as usual in the Papua New Guinea timber industry.

Following the abandonment of the logging moratorium by the government,

World Bank and Australia; the free for all rainforest liquidation sale

has intensified. The government - having secured new funds from the

World Bank, after making the requisite meaningless forest conservation

pledges – has now proceeded to violate their laws and promises. We

are witnessing the beginning of yet another failed PNG commercial

logging reform program. Industrial forestry will never bring

development to PNG; but rather will leave a legacy of devastated

ecosystems, lost biodiversity and undermined livelihoods.

Read below how the World Bank’s support for better monitoring of the

industry is already being flaunted and discredited, and how the

Australian government is financing expansion of the lawless, predatory

rainforest logging. Donor subsidies for commercial logging,

masquerading as forest and biodiversity conservation projects, must

end. The World Bank invests tens of millions of dollars in subsidies

to ensure continued industrial log exports, yet takes over eight years

to assist the government to develop their Biodiversity Conservation

strategy – a small $180,000 project. Enabling industrial logging is

not a biodiversity conservation strategy. PNG’s future development

and environmental sustainability depends upon ending these shameful,

flawed conservation policies, and urgently pursuing the following:

• Establish a timeline to permanently end industrial log exports

from PNG, and a process to transition the industry to small and medium

scaled community and certified forest management.

• Establish a Commission of Inquiry with broad discretionary power

to investigate all aspects of the logging industry and make necessary

recommendations, including possible criminal prosecutions.

• End donor subsidies to industrial log export. Redirect donor

funds to transitioning the industry to sustainability and community

based production and protection, cushioning the economic impact upon

the government and landowners of doing so.

• The PNG government must develop and implement forest policy,

legislation, regulations and guidelines for more ecologically

sustainable, small to medium scale, community-based eco-forestry

management.

All our survival is intimately dependent upon maintaining ecosystems –

in PNG and elsewhere. In this regard, we are all Papua New Guineans,

as well as citizens of the Earth.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

ITEM #1

Title: Ogio tries to bend the law for logging company

Date: February 26, 2002

Forests Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Michael Ogio has tried to

reach the law, by directing the National Forest Board to grant a

logging concession to a company called ASB Timbers.

But the Chair of the National Forest Board has written to the

Minister, saying Mr Ogio has no power to direct the Board on this

matter and the Minister was ignoring the wishes of the local forest

owners. The letter also makes it clear that the project has been

deemed to be commercially unviable.

The letter from the Board criticizes a Ministerial Direction dated 3rd

December 2001 in which the Minister instructed the National Forest

Board to approve ASB Timbers as the developer of the Josephstaal

concession in Madang Province.

The letter, dated 11th December 2001, advises the Minister that:

1. His Directive was not legal, as any decision on the allocation of

the project is a matter for the National Forest Board to determine,

not for the Minister.

2. The Minister had already been told by the Forest Board that the

landowners have not agreed to logging in their forest and indeed 30

land groups have formally asked for their forest areas to be excluded

from logging.

3. The Directive was also commercially impractical as the project area

is too small to sustain a stand-alone sustainable forestry project.

PNG Forest Watch says the Minister’s action also directly contravenes

recent NEC decisions on the Forest and Conservation Project and on the

Forestry Action Plan. “Both the Plan and the Project include a

requirement that the Josephstaal project be shelved until there has

been a review of other options and alternative approaches to forest

utilization” says the group.

Forest Watch is calling on the Minister to give a full explanation on

the matter.

“The Minister should explain the full nature of his relationship with

ASB Timbers and why he has tried to bend the law, ignore landowner

wishes and breach his own Government policies”, says PNG Forest

Watch.

Port Moresby, 26th February 2002

Contact: Lukautimbus@global.net.pg

Note for Editors: PNG Forest Watch has given copies of both the

Ministerial Direction and the letter from the Chair of the National

Forest Board to the PNG Eco-Forestry Forum from where copies can be

obtained (phone 323 9050, fax 323 0397).

ITEM #2

Title: Ogio has acted unlawfully to favour ASB before

Date: March 5, 2002

Minister for Forests, Michael Ogio, already embarrassed by his

repeated attempts to push for a logging permit in Madang Province for

a company called ASB Timbers, unlawfully granted the same company

permission to log in Western Province.

In a letter dated 22nd December 2000, the Minister purported to grant

approval for ASB Timbers, through its parent company Advance Synergy

Development, to log 380,000 hectares of forest under a Timber

Authority for the Trans Island Highway.

This would have been the largest logging concession in PNG. But it has

now been stopped by the National Forest Board, as the Minister has no

power to grant Timber Authorities and followed none of the proper

procedures under the Forestry Act.

The Minister’s errors were pointed out him in a letter from the

National Forest Board, dated 28th March 2001, which told the Minister

that he had acted “contrary to both the current forest policy and the

relevant forest legislation”.

ASB Timbers is the same company that Ogio has on three occasions tried

to award the Josephstaal concession in Madang Province. On each

occasion the Forest Board has blocked the Minister as he has failed to

follow proper procedures and has acted in breach of government

policies and the landowner’s wishes.

“In trying to give ASB Timbers the right to log in Western Province

and the Josephstaal concession, the Minister was acting outside his

powers, was ignoring all proper procedures under the Forestry Act and

was in breach of Government policies”, says PNG Forest Watch.

“The Minister must come clean and explain both why he seems unable to

follow proper procedures and why he continually tries to promote ASB

Timbers”, says the forest activist group.

Port Moresby, 5th March 2002

Contact: Lukautimbus@global.net.pg

Note for Editors: PNG Forest Watch has given copies of the Ministers

letter dated 22 December 2000, the letter to him from the National

Forest Board dated 28th March 2001, and a document showing that ASB

Timbers is a subsidiary of Advance Synergy to the PNG Eco-Forestry

Forum from where copies can be obtained (phone 323 9050, fax 323

0397).

ITEM #3

Title: Australia Hit for Backing PNG Logging Seminar

Date: March 4, 2002

Byline: Bob Burton

CANBERRA, Mar 3 (IPS) - The Australian government's support for a

trade fair at a seminar this month, organized to promote an expansion

of Papua New Guinea's controversial logging industry, has angered

environmentalists but been welcomed by the timber industry's peak

lobby group.

The seminar, scheduled for the PNG capital of Port Moresby in two

weeks time, is being organized by the PNG Forest Industry Association

(PNGFIA) in an effort to counter the loss of key markets and promote

overseas investment in an industry mired in controversy.

In conjunction with the seminar, the Australian Trade Commission

(Austrade) is organizing a forestry trade fair to "showcase

Australia's leading products and services applicable to the forestry

industries" and is a member of the seminar organizing committee.

The executive director of the PNG Forest Industry Association, Dick

McCarthy, welcomes the support of Austrade. "Australia is really

looking at establishing those trade links back into the industry

because Australia is a big market for sawn timber from PNG,'' he said.

However, McCarthy declined to reveal details of Austrade's support to

the timber industry association seminar. "That is a silly question I

know that is extremely sensitive to Australia", he said.

The trade commissioner for PNG, Michael Boyle, insisted that while

Austrade was co-organizing the trade fair, it was not sponsoring the

whole event. Details of the costs incurred for the event, he insisted

were "commercially confidential".

Environmental groups are dismayed by Austrade's support for a seminar

promoting logging in PNG. "It is inappropriate. It is quite clear that

the logging industry has a destabilizing effect on the governing of

PNG and on the economy,'' said Greenpeace's Papua New Guinea

campaigner, Brian Brunton.

The advocacy group PNG Forest Watch charges that logging is having a

major impact on the ability of communities to gain access to clean

water and gather traditional food and medicines. "It is the local

people who are suffering, a human population that already has the

lowest quality of life in the Pacific region,'' the group argues.

While Austrade is keen to promote a greater role for Australian

companies in Papua New Guinea's forest industry, the Australian

government's own overseas aid agency, AusAid, has expressed deep

misgivings about funding forestry projects in that country.

In a report on the current four-year aid program, Ausaid stated that

the "management of forests is a particular concern - continued

Australian support for forestry projects will be dependent on the PNG

government implementing policies that address the longer term social

and environmental costs of logging".

Papua New Guinea has the world's third most extensive tract of

forests, nearly all of it held as customary land by the country's 4

million people. Eighty percent of its people use forests - which cover

more than 60 percent of the land area - for timber and non-timber

products.

But because of the depletion of the forests elsewhere, PNG's forests

have attracted the interest of major industrial logging companies.

According to McCarthy, 270 million U.S. dollars worth of forest

products are exported from the country a year, most of it as raw logs

shipped to Japan and China.

However, accusations of mismanagement and corruption have proliferated

with the dramatic escalation of the rate of logging.

In 1988, Justice Thomas Barnett, following persistent criticism of

foreign timber companies, led a Commission of Inquiry probe into the

forest industry. While the inquiry was under way, Barnett himself was

almost stabbed to death outside his Port Moresby home -- and the

records of the National Forest Authority were destroyed in a fire.

In his damning report, he wrote that some of the logging companies

"are now roaming the countryside with self assurance of robber barons;

bribing politicians and leaders, creating social disharmony and

ignoring laws in order to gain access to, rip out, and export the last

remnants of valuable timber".

The current prime minister, Mekere Moratu, acknowledged the problem in

introducing his first budget in late 1999. "Governance has been

particularly poor in the area of forestry with the side effect of

promoting corrupt practices and undermining environmental

sustainability,'' he told parliament.

In April 2001, a World Bank independent review team investigating

forest management reported that the PNG Forest Authority was

"incompetent at almost every level of the forest management process".

McCarthy believes the widespread accusations of corruption leveled

against the timber industry are exaggerated: "I just think it is a

total over exaggeration - there is various hype around at the moment

because some of the vested interests are unhappy with some of the

decisions that have been made.''

"The major problem with the forest industry in PNG is not the forest

industry - there are vested interests from the NGOs and the

consultants who work for the donors who make sure that you leave PNG

in a state of continual perplexity and never allow anything here to

develop rationally because that keeps certain people in work,'' he

said.

However, the controversy over forestry escalates. In one recent case

study PNG Forest Watch revealed that 12,000 cubic meters of logs had

been felled and approved for export even though no logging permit had

been issued to the company.

Brunton is adamant in saying that when the Australian government

insisted late last year that funds from the World Bank be released to

the PNG government, it missed a chance to help prevent further

mismanagement of the forests.

"The Australian government is essentially propping up the illegal

logging industry by assuming an uncritical posture and not insisting

on major reforms,'' he pointed out.

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