Posted on 19-3-2002

Australia's Supports Logging In PNG
By 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.

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 approximately 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.