The Continuing Struggle By Papua New Guinea Landowners To Save Their Forests

Thursday, 18 July 2024, 3:17 pm
Article: RNZ

Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific Senior Journalist

After what is left of forests in the Amazon and the Congo, the next of the planet's most important remaining forests is on the island of New Guinea.

In both Papua New Guinea and Indonesian controlled West Papua, the harvesting and exporting of logs, often done illegally, remains a threat for the environment and the indigenous peoples.

In PNG there have been attempts by governments to rein in the offenders going back more than 30 years, but the usually large, well-funded foreign conglomerates undertaking the logging, still find ways to circumvent the rules.

A commission of inquiry was set up in the late 1980s.

PNG Institute of National Affairs executive director Paul Barker said all but two businesses then were breaching the law.

"The Commission of Inquiry recommended some very strong actions to address the issue and it resulted in a whole gamut of reforms, including a new forest policy, [resulting] in the Forestry Act in 1991."

He said this required a much more extensive process of landowner participation in an effort to ensure that decisions were not made by "a few possibly illiterate community leaders just signing a document and giving everyone's land resource and forest resource away".

It required new forest management agreements (FMAs), to replace the local forest agreements, and these new deals had to be run on a sustainable, 30-year cycle, at the least.

But Barker said even now those local forest agreements are still being rolled over.

He said only a limited number of the FMAs were signed up, mostly during the 1990s when large operators from Sarawak arrived.

Barker said these big players had worked out "how to take over the clan land in Borneo and use it for themselves.

They use models from there and managed to get large tracts of land here, and they didn't like all these procedures that are there in law. So, they worked out all the ways to sort of bypass them."

"They used timber authorities, which are actually only for small areas, like 50 hectare blocks, if you're going to build a road, or if you're going to set up a small cocoa block or something like that. They use them for multiple and large areas, including for log exporting."

Another forestry review came with the government of Sir Mekere Morauta at the beginning of this century which found many of the proposed and ongoing projects to be in breach.

Barker said officials then resurrected an old scheme from the 1970s, classifying some land that had trees on it as agricultural land. The use of these Special Agricultural and Business Leases, or SABLs, quickly became notorious and another commission of inquiry was set up.

"The laws from the 1970s, [were] for small 20-hectare coffee blocks in the Highlands and cocoa blocks around the country. They were not for these vast areas. And the commission of inquiry found that basically all the SABLs were acquired inappropriately.

"They didn't follow proper process of free, prior, informed consent by the landowners. So, they basically were land grabs. So, the commission inquiry found that they were all basically illegal."

But forestry officials then circumvented this by deeming that if the SABL included what was called a 'forest conversion agreement' this allowed the Forest Authority to be able to wash its hands of the matter and say, 'Oh these are for conversion to agriculture or other purposes.

"So we'll just approve if [Dept of] Agriculture says that they're genuine agricultural projects, we'll just say, okay, that's fine. We'll just give them an FCA [Forest Clearing Authority] and they can go ahead. So, what's happened is, after the commission of inquiry found all the SABLs were basically illegal, illegally acquired, land grabbing,"" said Barker.

He said the Forest Authority continued issuing FCAs if they received a letter from the Department of Agriculture, saying these were agricultural projects, so allowing the Forest Authority to wash its hands of these contracts. But they didn't involve free, prior and informed consent. They didn't involve any of the processes that the Forest Authority well knew it must comply with.

"It was a scam to be able to go on logging in a large way without having to comply with the Forestry Act.

Barker said some were turned into oil palm projects, but these did not comply with the sustainability requirements that earlier, more established oil palm operations had,

He said it is well known that when they are dealing with landowners they are paying them a pittance, "and landowners in most cases are very peeved because they've basically been displaced from their own land, displaced from their forests and suffering from a lot of pollution".

The logging companies do ensure they are keeping some of the people on board, making sure they can act on their behalf, "but nevertheless, basically, as per the SABL Inquiry Report, these are illegal land grabs, and they remain as such," Barker said.

According to Barker, over the years many staff in the Forest Authority and Customs, Foreign Affairs, Labour Department, and others, have wanted to take action. But "invariably, they've seen their bosses, often their ministers, directing, even if they don't actually have legal powers to direct, but persuading them that they shouldn't take action."

He said, "companies have had incessant free rein to continue even though the staff have attempted to apply a notice to show cause or other grounds for revocation of their licence, or permit."

PNG does earn some money from these large multinational logging companies through log export tax.

For the past 20 years until the beginning of this year, PNG also operated the independent log export monitor, checking the shipments and making sure that the logs and quantity declared are the ones harvested.

"They don't suddenly increase in quantities, change in both quantities and in grades and species' specifications as they go down the value chain, because that's basically what was always happening, you'd suddenly find that there are being exported and recorded as mixed species and so many cubic metres when in fact, there were so many more cubic metres, and they were high grade species commanding very high prices."

'Land grabbing exercises'

Barker said nevertheless the state does get significant log export taxes, but far less than it should, while the landowners get a pittance of what they should be getting.

He said the are marginalised in their own resource areas, "and it continues because there are players who are benefiting substantially, both within the government circles and of course within the companies and those companies then are able to diversify, and they become major landowners, multi functional companies. You know, a bit like the robber barons, as it were."

One group of landowners that has been struggling unsuccessfully for years for redress with the company Rimbunan Hijau, is in the Sigite Mukus district in West Pomio in East New Britain.

"It's true that the challenges for the small people, the rightful forest and landowners, when it comes to challenging the big players is very demanding. They [the loggers] manage to sort of present themselves with an air of legitimacy as if they have a legitimate title to those resources. And yet, as we say, the SABL inquiry clearly demonstrated back in 2011/12/13, when that inquiry was conducted, that all those SABLs failed to meet the standards of free prior and informed consent,"Barker said.

"So they're basically all illegitimate land grabbing exercises, but as we say, they've all been highly lucrative and they've happened in in East New Britain, West New Britain, West Sepik - across the country."

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