Colin Filer

Deforestation and forest degradation in Papua New Guinea

Abstract• The Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has played a prominent part in recent negotiations for “rainforest nations” to be compensated for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation or forest degradation (DFD).• A new report “The State of the Forests of Papua New Guinea” claims that rates of DFD in PNG are much higher than have previously reported. It suggests more than half of PNG’s remaining forests will have disappeared or be damaged beyond recovery by 2021.• We argue that this claim is incorrect. The report overestimates the area of intact primary forest in 1972 and the impact of traditional land use practices on forest cover. Much of what the RSLUP report considers as deforestation is part of a cycle of traditional clearance for farming, fallow and regrowth that has been occurring for hundreds of years.• The assumption that areas impacted by harvesting or shifting cultivation will inevitably degrade and become non-forest is also not supported by observation of cutover forest in PNG. A considerable proportion of cutover forest areas will recover carbon stocks after harvesting.• It is argued that traditional land use practices and forest recovery processes need to be considered in assessing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation in countries with complex land use histories such as PNG.Résumé• Le Gouvernement de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée (PNG) a joué un rôle important dans les récentes négociations pour que « les pays à forêt tropicale humide » soient indemnisés pour la réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre provenant de la déforestation ou la dégradation des forêts (DFD).• Un nouveau rapport « L’État des forêts de Papouasie-Nouvelle Guinée » affirme que les taux de DFD en PNG sont nettement plus élevés que précédemment signalés. Il suggère que plus de la moitié des forêts de PNG auront disparu ou seront endommagées au-delà de la récupération d’ici 2021.• Nous sommes d’avis que cette affirmation est erronée. Le rapport surestime la surface de la forêt primaire intacte, en 1972, et l’impact des pratiques traditionnelles d’utilisation des terres sur le couvert forestier. Une partie importante de ce que le rapport RSLUP considère comme de la déforestation fait partie d’un cycle traditionnel de dégagement pour l’agriculture, la jachère et la repousse ce qui s’est produit pendant des centaines d’années.• L’hypothèse que les zones touchées par l’exploitation forestière ou la culture itinérante vont inévitablement se dégrader et ne pas devenir de la forêt n’est pas non plus soutenue par l’observation des déboisement en PNG. Une proportion considérable des zones forestières déboisées récupérera des stocks de carbone après la récolte.• Il est fait valoir que l’utilisation traditionnelle des terres et les processus de régénération forestières doivent être pris en considération dans l’évaluation des émissions de gaz à effet de serre résultant du déboisement et des dégradations dans les pays ayant une histoire complexe de l’utilisation des terres comme la Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée.

Why green grabs don't work in Papua New Guinea

In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage – sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called ‘agro forestry’ projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the ‘agro foresters’ have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.

Custom, Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea

This paper seeks to illustrate some of the distinctive national features of the relationship between custom, law, and ideology in Papua New Guinea. While the concept of ‘native custom’ was initially the creation of Australian colonial law, the relationship between custom and law acquired a new complexion around the time of national independence in 1975, and the political use of the Tok Pisin words kastom and lo, both then and since, reveals that their relationship is not like that of the two things commonly known as ‘custom’ and ‘law’ in the English language or the political discourse of a country like England or Australia. Instead, their relationship has to be understood through an exploration of the metaphorical use of the Tok Pisin word rot (‘road’), which seems to stand for something midway between a ‘cult’ and an ‘ideology’, and through an understanding of the way in which the social relations of large-scale resource development have transformed the post-colonial political landscape.

Dilemmas of Development: The Social and Economic Impact of the Porgera Gold Mine, 1989-1994

The National Centre for Development Studies gratefully acknowledges the contribution made by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) towards the publication of this series.

Development Forum in Papua New Guinea: Upsides and Downsides

This article will review the circumstances in which the Development Forum in Papua New Guinea was first established, and then show how the institution has been modified in response to political pressures emanating from inside and outside the extractive industry sector of the national economy. Specific attention will be paid to negotiations over the development of the Lihir gold mine between 1993 and 1995, to the ramifications of the Organic Law on Provincial Governments and Local-level Governments that was gazetted in 1995, to the provisions of the Oil and Gas Act that was gazetted in 1998 and to the unfinished business of creating a new regulatory framework for the mining industry.

The Double Movement of Immovable Property Rights in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of many countries around the world where the relationship between customary land tenure and economic development has been hotly debated for a long time. A commonplace of the debate in PNG is that 97% of the nations land is held under customary tenure, while only 3% has been alienated, and these proportions have not changed since the country became independent in 1975. This paper shows that the boundary between customary and alienated forms of land or immovable property was already showing signs of instability in the late colonial period, and this instability has been greatly magnified in the post-colonial period. The areas of land subject to some form of partial alienation have increased along with the ways and means by which immovable property has been ‘mobilised’, while a variety of customary claims to previously alienated areas have grown stronger over the same period. Although Karl Polanyis idea of a ‘double movement’ can throw some light on this phenomenon, the PNG case also reveals a new side to the application of this concept.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on historical ecology and environmental policy in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been the site of a great deal of scientific work, and a fair amount of interdisciplinary debate, within the broad field of historical ecology, which encompasses the study of indigenous society-environment relationships over different time periods. However, this in itself provides no guarantee that scientists engaged in such debate will have a greater influence on the formulation of environmental conservation policies in a state where indigenous decision makers now hold the levers of political power. Five environmental policy paradigms which have emerged in the course of public debate about environmental conservation in PNG over the past half century; the wildlife management, environmental planning, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem assessment, and carbon sequestration paradigms. Each paradigm has framed a distinctive form of interdisciplinary debate about indigenous society-environment relationships within a contemporary political framework. However, a further connection can be drawn between the role of interdisciplinary debate in an evolving national policy framework and the history of scientific debate about the nature of indigenous society-environment relationships in the pre-colonial era. This connection places a distinctive emphasis on the relationship between indigenous agricultural practices and management of the national forest estate for reasons which are themselves a contingent effect of the nature of European colonial intervention over the course of the last century and a half. This particular bias in the relationship between historical ecology and environmental policy has lasted down to the present day. PNGs environmental policy problems are unlikely to have any rational or sensible solution in the absence of a better scientific understanding of the complexity of indigenous society-environment relationships. Scientists need to understand the complexity of the environmental policy process as a historical process in its own right in order to work out which policy problems offer both the scope and the incentive to sustain specific forms of interdisciplinary debate that are likely to produce better policy outcomes.

Asian Investment in the Rural Industries of Papua New Guinea: What's New and What's Not?

one part of the Australian colonial legacy in Papua new Guinea (PnG hereafter) is the Australian government’s attempt to forge partnerships with foreign companies in different economic sectors in order to lay the economic foundations for rural development in the newly independent nation. American and Australian capital was invited to develop the mining industry, European capital to develop the oil palm industry, and Japanese capital to develop the forest industry. nowadays, the Australian government seems to have forgotten its late colonial enthusiasm for this form of state capitalism, and its aid to PnG is largely framed by the neoliberal policy prescriptions which the World Bank was able to impose on the PnG government through a sequence of structural adjustment programs beginning in 1990. However, members of PnG’s national political elite have persistently sought refuge from this economic orthodoxy through their engagement with Asian governments and companies. in this paper i examine the way in which changing political and economic conditions have affected the actual pattern of Asian investment in PnG’s forestry and agriculture sectors, and the way in which different stakeholders have responded to this changing pattern of investment. despite the prevalence of a policy narrative which holds Asian investors responsible for the corruption of PnG’s political institutions when mineral resource booms liberate national politicians from the constraints of Western economic orthodoxy, i show that Asian investment in these two sectors has taken several different forms, and there is no simple sense in which PnG’s national economy and political system are subject to a concerted takeover by Asian business interests.

The Nakanai Mountain Ranges of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea

This E-Book on the Nakanai Mountains of East New Britain is in four parts. The first section provides an overview of the karst and cave attributes which led to the listing of Nakanai on the Tentative World Heritage List in a Serial Site known as The Sublime Karsts of Papua New Guinea. The next section provides a brief history of the region involving European encounters. This is followed with a brief overview of the archaeology of East New Britain. The fourth section highlights some of the unique flora and fauna of the Nakanai. The final section includes the UNESCO Justification for Significance on the Tentative World Heritage List.

The Political Ramifications of Papua New Guinea’s Commission of Inquiry

The circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into special agricultural and business leases (SABLs) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have already been described in Chapter 6. This chapter deals with the political ramifications of the findings and recommendations that were officially published at the end of 2013, and explores some of the factors responsible for the length of time that it took for the Commission to finish its work, and the length of time that it has since taken for the PNG government to produce a coherent response.