ACTION ALERT
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Australia Promotes Rainforest Destruction
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
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-- Forest Conservation Portal
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March 16, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
The Australian government is promoting expansion of Papua
New Guinea’s
(PNG) rapacious rainforest logging industry by supporting
a forestry
trade fair.
Traditionally, Australia has been a supporter of PNG
conservation efforts and a critic of the industrial
logging industry.
As Australia’s own forests dwindle (see
http://forests.org/spacific/
for recent coverage of logging cutbacks resulting from
years of over-
harvest), it appears that the Aussies have eyes on PNG’s
rainforests.
These magnificent forests constitute the third largest
rainforest
wilderness in the World.
They are undergoing a logging boom fueled by
mafia like Malaysian logging cartels.
Recent Australian acquiescence to removing PNG’s
moratorium on new
logging, reneging on conservation financing, and now
trying to get a
piece of the logging action all demonstrate shockingly
bad judgment
and represent a major shift in policy. Under no conditions must
Australia be allowed to export their own atrocious land
management to
Papua New Guinea.
If donors – particularly the World Bank and
Australia - were to end their subsidies to the industrial
log export
industry, it would likely end or at least be smaller and
less
damaging. The
forest conservation movement must reject subsidies for
industrial logging dressed up as biodiversity
conservation projects.
These programs only entrench and legitimize the final
destruction of
the World’s most important ancient primary forests.
Please send an email to the Australian Prime Minister
from his web
page at http://www.pm.gov.au/your_feedback/feedback.htm
(the site was
down today but hopefully will be back up soon). Urge him to cancel
Australian government participation in the forestry trade
fair, to end
subsidies for industrial logging in Papua New Guinea, and
to support
local efforts to establish a community-based eco-forestry
sector.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Australia's
Promotion of Logging Papua New Guinea Condemned
Source: Copyright
2002 Environment News Service
Date: March 16,
2002
Byline: Bob Burton
CANBERRA, Australia, March 15, 2002 (ENS) - Support by an
Australian
government agency for a Papua New Guinea (PNG) trade fair
promoting
the logging industry has angered environmentalists but
been welcomed
by the timber industry’s peak lobby group.
The seminar, which opens next Tuesday in the PNG capital
Port Moresby,
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 a logging 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.
Other sponsors include timber industry equipment
suppliers Stihl and
Hastings Deering.
Papua New Guinea contains the world’s third most
extensive tract of
forests with nearly all of it held as customary land by
the country’s
five 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.
The advocacy group PNG Forest Watch, charges that logging
is damaging
the ability of communities to gain access to clean water
and gather
traditional foods 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 says.
With the depletion of the forests elsewhere, PNG’s
forests are
attracting interest from major industrial logging
companies.
According to Dick McCarthy, executive director of the PNG
Forest
Industry Association, $US270 million worth of forest
products are
exported from the country, most of it as raw logs shipped
to Japan and
China.
One company, Malaysian owned Rimbunan Hijau, accounts for
pproximately
60 percent of all exports, he said.
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.
But 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 Australian Government’s Trade Commissioner for PNG,
Michael Boyle,
insisted that while Austrade is organizing the trade fair
they are not
sponsoring the event. Details of the costs incurred for
the event, he
insisted are “commercially confidential.”
While Austrade is keen to promote a greater role for
Australian
companies in the PNG forest industry, the Australian
government’s own
overseas aid agency, AusAid, has expressed deep
misgivings about
funding forestry projects in PNG.
In a report on the current four year aid program, Ausaid
stated
“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,” Ausaid
said.
Boyle refused to comment on whether Austrade’s support
for the logging
industry despite opposition by Ausaid reflects the
agency’s view that
concerns about environmental and social impacts are
misplaced.
The PNG Eco-Forestry Forum describes Austrade’s support
for the
logging fair as “disappointing and hypocritical.”
“It is very disappointing when we see overseas
governments who could
help PNG out of its current crisis, support the very
source of our
distress,” they said in a statement.
Lee Tan, who is Asia-Pacific coordinator for Australian
Conservation
Foundation, believes Austrade’s support undermines the
efforts of
those seeking to reform the timber industry.
“It will further frustrate non-government organisations,
local
communities and other sectors of the PNG civil society
who have been
working hard to reform and restructure the logging
industry. PNG is
going to suffer more - socially, environmentally and
economically from
half-baked projects like this support for the FIA,” she
said.
With the dramatic escalation of the rate of logging over
the last 20
years, accusations of mismanagement and corruption over
timber
concessions have proliferated. In 1988, PNG Justice
Barnett undertook
a Commission of Inquiry into the forest industry. While
the inquiry
was under way Barnett himself was stabbed almost to death
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
while 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.”
Greenpeace has been working with PNG villagers to
encourage eco-
forestry and discourage industrial logging. A woman from
Aewa village
told Greenpeace workers, "After the bush was
destroyed, landowners
raised their complaints but six policemen came with guns.
Villagers
fled into the bush in fear of losing their lives. Police
threatened to
shoot both men and women to protect company’s operation
on their
land."
Arnold Kombo, a community leader in Nangumarum, East
Sepik Province,
told Greenpeace, "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."
McCarthy of the Forest Industry Association believes the
widespread
accusations of corruption levelled against the timber
industry are
exaggerated. “I just think it is a total over
exaggeration." he said.
"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," said McCarthy. "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.
The Eco Forestry Forum hopes that in the wake of the
controversy over
the trade fair, the Australian Government will re-assess
its role.
“We urge the Australian government to back out of the
loggers trade
fair and to come up with some concrete plans to constructively
engage
in positive support for forestry reform,” they said.
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