Papua New Guinea’s forests are going fast. A new satellite analysis reveals that in 2001 accessible forests in the country were being cleared or degraded by 362,000 hectares a year (press release).
A new report on The State of the Forests of Papua New Guinea from researchers at the University of Papua New Guinea Remote Sensing Centre and the Australian National University warns that by 2021 83% of accessible forests and 53% of total forests will be gone or badly damaged (report in huge pdf form).
“The unfortunate reality is that forests in Papua New Guinea are being logged repeatedly and wastefully with little regard for the environmental consequences and with at least the passive complicity of government authorities,” says Phil Shearman, the report’s lead author.
As many media reports (see below) note, PNG Forest Minister Belden Namah has written the foreword to the report. He notes it is a “bitter pill we need to swallow”.
However The Australian says, “PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare, whose family is involved with the logging industry, declined to comment yesterday.”
AP notes:
… Papua New Guinea has spearheaded efforts by tropical countries to establish a system in which they would be compensated for protecting their forests. The proposal — called Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation — was welcomed by governments at a U.N. climate change conference last December and will be part of future discussions on a new global warming pact.
Not that this is good enough for Shearman, who says “Government officials may claim that they wish rich countries to pay them for conserving their forests, but if they are allowing multinational timber companies to take everything that’s accessible, all that will be left will be lands that are physically inaccessible to exploitation and would never have been logged anyway. It’s fair to wonder why the government should be compensated after encouraging this industry for so long in the past, or why they should get paid in the future to conserve forest that cannot be reached.”
In other PNG news, Australia’s climate change adviser Ross Garnaut believes the country could become the world’s first zero carbon economy. “The first step, and most important, is PNG has to take a decision that it is really serious about effective forest management, including measurement of changes in the carbon content of the forest,” he says (Sydney Morning Herald).
More news coverage
Image: Gulf Province 1988 and 2002, showing the impact of logging / University of Papua New Guinea