Papua New Guinea - Fern

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forestry movement in a country which is continually thwarted by lack of government and donor support. Failure to reign in the logging industry threatens most biodiversity in the country. Other threats include clearing for development, slash-and-burn agriculture, oil palm development, which all exist at a much smaller scale than logging. Clearly the massive timber boom encompassing the country is a threat of a magnitude of its own. There is no rigorous and on-going monitoring program on these activities. This is mostly due to the low level of capabilities in the Department of Environment and Conservation – despite tens of millions of dollars of failed donor capacity building programs. Participation The proposal approved by the GEF, entitled “Papua New Guinea Enabling Activity Proposal in Biodiversity”, stated “The Biodiversity Strategy will be formulated through extensive consultation with stakeholders…” Most of those in civil society surveyed are completely unaware of the critical biodiversity planning activity that is soon to commence, much less are they participating. The proposal funded by the GEF stated there would be a series of national workshops to launch the consultative and participatory process, to set broad parameters and priorities, and to consider options for pursuit of biodiversity conservation. With the enabling activities about to commence, there is no indication that the groundwork of liaison and collaboration with civil society has been established. Large well-funded international NGOs have access to decision making processes; while the local groups doing the most innovative and important biodiversity and forest conservation initiatives are not contacted, not involved and are unaware of the CBD and its ongoing processes. There has been little coordination on the enabling activities with grassroots groups, much less local landowners. The rainforest and biodiversity conservation policy debate is largely dominated by reform efforts that seek to improve the performance of commercial forestry, and addresses biodiversity as an afterthought, and only as long as it does not threaten to limit the scope of industrial forestry. The development of a new World Bank Forestry and Conservation Project – which includes money to establish a trust fund to finance activities that conserves biodiversity – has been developed in virtual secrecy (particularly in the later stages when the project was radically changed). This trust fund would provide much needed financial support for landowners who wish to pursue biodiversity conservation based development alternatives. But the project fails to ensure that forest management alternatives, once established, will be free from continued pressures to pursue commercial logging. Currently, many ecologically sensitive alternative forest management projects fail because their status is not given legal recognition as a valid land use. There has been a gross failure to get broad-based participation in the process. This is because the government wants to use international funds for biodiversity conservation for their own purposes, such as government salaries, and the World Bank is pursuing its agenda of maintaining continued exports of raw logs. Those that question the assumption that better monitoring of industrial log exports is the best way to protect PNG’s biodiversity, and wish to foster a new paradigm of community based ecologically derived development and protection, are systematically excluded from deliberations and portrayed as villains. Biodiversity planning is being conducted by the government, World Bank and those that agree with their desire to 8
maintain, accelerate and subsidize commercial scale logging of primary rainforests. Protected Areas, and Biodiversity Conservation The customary land tenure system whereby PNG’s tribal clans control their land communally presents tremendous opportunities to develop culturally appropriate conservation models. Landowners maintain final control over the use of the land. Clearly the Western national park model does not work under such a circumstance. If decisions by clans to pursue conservation were granted the same legitimacy as other land use decisions – such as logging or oil palm production – there would be the opportunity to construct extensive protected areas on the basis of many individual clan based conservation agreements. There has been a remarkable lack of imagination shown regarding how to use customary land tenure for the benefit of biodiversity conservation. The World Bank views the land system as an obstacle to economic development, and thus fails to support dynamic and innovative local initiatives to implement culturally appropriate protected areas. There are means to establish protected areas under PNG law. However, one type focuses primarily on wildlife and does not make provision for land-use planning and management guidelines; while the other provides more meaningful protections but is so difficult to implement that it has never been pursued. This global biodiversity treasure trove is in risk of having grossly inadequate strictly protected areas. There have been two major efforts to identify areas of relatively high biodiversity importance – the Conservation Needs Assessment and the BIORAP mapping exercise. Both were done mostly by international consultants and have not resulted in building lasting mapping and planning expertise in PNG. Once an area is identified as a priority in terms of biodiversity, there is no system in place to remove these areas from the pool of forests likely to be industrially harvested. The requirement that logging areas include conservation set asides is widely flaunted and usually targets lands that lack forest resources which are commercially viable. Even if done properly, these areas would not be large enough to maintain the full range of biodiversity and ecosystem values found in the now intact and contiguous rainforests. Indigenous Peoples’ Rights/ Customary Use and Local Support As noted previously, PNG’s forest owners have not been engaged in biodiversity planning to any meaningful extent. Rarely do international conservation planners set forth out of the capital, only occasionally making it to a provincial center, and rarely to a village or actual rainforest. Strengthening indigenous and local community’s participation in the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan would require taking these proceedings out to remote villages where Papua New Guineans live. Those managing the World Bank’s program on the biodiversity enabling activities have little in-country experience and have little understanding of the needs, aspirations and feelings regarding biodiversity of PNG’s indigenous peoples. This dangerous lack of knowledge of the country by those facilitating implementation of the CBD virtually guarantees that another document is written that is removed from reality, rarely read, and does little to conserve biodiversity. The tremendous non-market benefits of forests to PNG citizens are not appreciated. The poverty associated with dispossessed ecological refugees – as occurs elsewhere - is confused with frugal, subsistence living of PNG’s citizens which, while materially lacking, meets most needs for food, 9
Page 1 and 2: Status of Implementation of Forest-
Page 3 and 4: This report is part of a series of
Page 5 and 6: elieved only a small proportion of
Page 7: Questionnaire Results Reporting The
Page 11 and 12: Logging Boom Threatens Biodiversity
Page 13 and 14: During the course of the moratorium
Page 15 and 16: ecommends that government revise th

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