Posted on 3-4-2003

Papua New Guinea Groups Split With WWF Over Forests
By Bob Burton, Environmental News Service

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, April 1, 2003 (ENS) - Protests from five Papua New Guinea environmental and legal groups have prompted the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to reconsider support for the controversial land mobilization policies of the World Bank and a proposed high level forest summit on forest conservation.

A leaked WWF South Pacific proposal revealed the organization wanted World Bank funding for a proposed forest summit aimed at building support for eco-forestry and better forest management in PNG, the Solomon Islands and the Indonesian province of Papua, but intended to keep the source of the funding secret. The eight page memo proposed seeking funding from the World Bank's Forests of Life program, which was jointly established with WWF five years ago. However, WWF proposed that the role of the World Bank referred to by the acronym WB should be invisible.

The WB alliance logo or name be kept out completed [sic] from the communication and other media that is released by WWF offices both in Papua, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, the memo stated. The sensitivity over any association with the World Bank followed major protests in 2002 against land mobilization policies the PNG government was being pressed to adopt. In response to the protests, the PNG security forces went on a violent rampage resulting in the deaths of five protesters.

Papua New Guinea contains the world's third most extensive tracts of forests with nearly all of it held as customary land by the country's five million people. Consequently, land mobilization policies are viewed as a major threat to the maintenance of culture and food security. Despite broad opposition to land mobilization proposals across Papua New Guinea, WWF's memo stated that the issue and the purpose of the [land mobilization] project was mis-informed to the general public and so the whole project was taken out of context.

Dermot O'Gorman, the Suva based regional representative for WWF South Pacific, confirmed that the World Bank had been approached, but had rejected, a request to fund the summit. O'Gorman defended the memo's suggestion sources of funding not be disclosed. "What the message [memo] was saying is that the summit is not a World Bank summit, it is a WWF and partners summit & putting the World Bank logo on it was not what it was about," he said.

In February, five PNG community groups - including the Center for Environmental Law and Community Rights (CELCOR) and Christians for Environmental Stewardship - wrote to O'Gorman demanding the summit proposal be abandoned and objecting to WWFs support of land mobilization. CELCOR Executive Director Damien Ase, believes secrecy about any funding cannot be justified. "They should disclose it anyway. It is all about transparency. We need to know what is going on," he said.

Aside from the controversy over WWF seeking World Bank funding, the five groups dispute the idea that the summit will be of any value unless it addresses the problem of corruption in the forest sector. The logging industry is without doubt both a primary cause of the corruption gripping our country and a major driver of environmental degradation and rural poverty,the groups argued. Its omission, they believe, reflects a political analysis that the high level political and government officials WWF hopes to attract to the proposed summit would be deterred if corruption was a topic for discussion. WWF intends to regard politicians and the [PNG] government itself for their support of the summit, giving these individuals and their activities legitimacy,the five groups wrote.

PNG's forest industry is no stranger to controversy. In 1988, Justice Tos Barnett headed a Royal Commission into the forest industry and was scathing in his findings. Logging companies, he warned, "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." Since then, numerous forestry concessions amounting to millions of hectares have been illegally awarded to logging companies without any effective legal action by the government. Once granted, landowners and community groups find it near impossible to have the decisions overturned.

By downplaying the importance of addressing corruption, the five groups charged, WWF will be playing into the hands of the logging industry. O'Gorman of WWF acknowledges the other groups' concerns over corruption in the forest sector, but at this stage WWF is making no commitments beyond undertaking further consultation. "We are very conscious that this shouldnt be a paper pushing event and that is why we are going through a very extensive consultation period," he said. CELCOR and the other groups also objected to WWF's labeling those that opposed land mobilization as "mis-informed." `This statement is a slap in the face to all those organizations and people who have worked hard to protect the land rights of the people of Papua New Guinea,' they wrote. O'Gorman said that WWF had written to the groups and offered an apology stating that the proposal did not reflect WWFs position on land mobilization. "The language that was used was a bit unfortunate," he said. "We support the view of PNG communities [on land mobilization]. We have apologized for what I think was sloppy wording on our behalf."

In an effort to cool the controversy O'Gorman revealed he would be flying to the PNG capital of Port Moresby to meet the critics of the summit proposal this week. His visit and WWF's apology, however, was news to Ase of CELCOR. "I am one of the signatories and there has been no response," he said. "If they state that they don't support the World Bank on land mobilization then that is good, but I haven't received a letter yet."