By Rich Gregory
Just across Torres Strait lie some of the world's most intact and undisturbed tropical rainforests. New Guinea — the world's largest tropical island — has incredibly diverse microclimates, ecosystems and subcultures. The island supports one of the world's richest concentrations of endemic species.
The sources of tropical timber in South-East Asia are dwindling because of unsustainable logging. The world's multinational paper-producing companies are now focusing their attentions on New Guinea's virgin rainforests. Other ecological threats are emerging in the areas of uncontrolled mining and oil exploration. Multinationals have shown a total disregard for the indigenous people and their environment.
The 1990 final report of the Commission of Inquiry into the PNG Timber Industry, chaired by Justice Tos Barnett, revealed that multinational companies were bribing high-level government officials, cheating the government out of millions of kina in taxes, avoiding paying royalties to landowners, blatantly violating environmental controls, fabricating environmental impact statements, not following reafforestation programs and using funds allocated for community development to build further timber extraction facilities.
Barnett said that these companies were "roaming the countryside with the self assurance of robber barons, bribing politicians and leaders, creating social disharmony, and ignoring laws in order to rip out and export the last remnants of the province's valuable timber".
Companies such as Japan and New Guinea Timber (JANT — a subsidiary of the Honshu Paper Company) are clear-felling rainforest and taking only the best hardwood timbers for woodchips. They are logging slopes of 50 degrees (by law they must be 30 degrees or less), causing massive erosion and silting of rivers. They clear-fell to the very edges of rivers despite being legally required to leave 50 metre buffer strips.
Following the Barnett report, a two-year moratorium on new timber permits was announced by the then forest minister, Karl Stack. In the first year of the moratorium, virtually every application for a new permit was exempted from the ban. Many of the companies highlighted for illegal activities fled the country only to return under new names.
Increasingly angry landowners have blockaded roads to logging operations. News of the blockades reaches the press, and the government is pressured into disciplining the companies. All too often, the penalties are not enforced and operations are resumed once landowner resolve weakens. Non-government organisations such as the Wau Ecology Institute, Asples Madang and the Melanesian Environmental Foundation are trying to stay one jump ahead of the corporations by conducting landowner awareness programs. In these, landowners from proposed clear-cuts are taken to areas like the Gogol-Naru valley to see for themselves the destruction that occurs from large-scale clear-fell logging.
"There was an immediate realisation among the landowners that they faced companies bent on ripping profits from the forest as quickly as possible with no interest at all in what would come after", a spokesperson for the institute said. "The meetings include discussions, theatre, speeches and videos. The landowners provided the bulk of the input, with testimonials by those now experiencing logging flowing to those considering such an option."
The NGOs suggest sustainable alternative income schemes for the landowners. The most promising of these schemes include the portable wokabaut somil, which can be carried to the site of the felled timber and assembled. The timber is sawn and carried out on foot. This method has a very low environmental impact, since no logging roads are needed and the forests are selectively logged by the people who live in them.
The milled timber is sold to ethical timber companies such as the UK Ecological Trading Company, which pays a premium price for ecologically produced hardwood. The villagers receive more than 100 times as much per tree felled as they would otherwise.
Another alternative income project is "ecotourism". New Guinea harbours exotic cultures and magnificent natural attractions like untouched beaches, coral reefs and tropical rainforests. Tourism needs to be directed more to the back country, with more locally owned tourist facilities, so that income is directed to local economies, not international developers.
Because these schemes are being developed by cash-strapped NGOs, financial problems are holding them back. Unfortunately, Australian aid does not go to these projects but to those that directly damage the fragile environment.
PNG receives the greatest percentage of Australian overseas aid. This money is allocated to development projects by AIDAB (Australian International Development and Assistance Bureau). Much of it will fund rainforest destruction because AIDAB is supporting clear-fell rainforest logging followed by cash crop agriculture.
An example of this is the Kandrian and Glouster Integrated Development Project in West New Britain. Here AIDAB was asked to undertake a development feasibility study for the area. AIDAB did not consult with any NGOs, and proposed logging followed by cash crops of oil palm, coffee and cocoa.
A spokesperson for the Melanesian Environment Foundation commented that "the project lacks the courage to confront the problems of in PNG, which are firmly rooted in the corruption and inadequacies of both government and industry. The burden of its implementation falls to the very sectors whose conduct has been the most reprehensible ... no such project has brought about meaningful, sustainable development — not one logging project, not one export cash crop venture. Basically the project lacks concern and courage to challenge the corrupt status quo."
Supporters of PNG's environmental organisations and their schemes for sustainable development are urging Australians to demand that AIDAB fund locally owned and operated projects such as the wokabaut somil and ecotourism. AIDAB should also be urged to aid the NGOs and not just government departments.