Timber companies recently halted logging in protest over the Papua New Guinea government's new forestry guidelines. But a controversial amendment has been defeated, and the Asian-dominated industry now faces a higher log export tax and a ban on tropical log exports by the year 2000. DAVID ROBIE reports from Port Moresby.
The Papua New Guinea government has curbed its lucrative rainforest logging industry, introducing new guidelines to control timber exports. Timber companies opposed to the new policy recently halted work on the main log export island of New Britain in a bid to scuttle the changes.
The government of Prime Minister Paias Wingti agreed to a delay of one month while the policy was reviewed. It also doubled the log export tax to 26%. It has now introduced the new policy, which will ban tropical log exports by the year 2000 and carve the country — apart from the Highlands region — into 25 timber supply areas (TPAs). The supply areas, each expected to supply 200,000 cubic metres of timber on a sustained yield, are regarded as a major concession to the timber industry lobby.
Many landowner companies had wanted the government to abandon the forestry guidelines due to go into force in March 1994 to preserve the largest tropical rainforest area in the Asia-Pacific region. Forest minister Tim Neville deferred implementing the guidelines until April. However, landowners backed by foreign timber companies stepped up their pressure.
An intense publicity campaign was also launched through the news media. In spite of the forceful lobbying, the controversial Tulapi Forestry Amendment Bill, supported by the timber industry and some landowners, was heavily defeated in parliament.
On the morning the bill was thrown out, newspaper reports said PNG was logging at an unsustainable rate. PNG Forest Authority statistics reported logs worth more than K459 million had been exported last year, with only about K6 million being paid out as premiums to landowners.
Among its provisions, the bill had sought to wrest control of the national forest resource — estimated to be worth about K70 billion — back into the hands of resource owners and developers; Malaysian, Japanese and Chinese interests dominate the timber industry.
Government and environment groups claim they are trying to protect the country's forests from exploitation while timber industry groups say they are defending the rights of investors and landowners.
Neville, the architect of Papua New Guinea's forestry guidelines, has battled for months to enforce his government's policy designed to protect forest sustainability. On at least three occasions he has faced death threats over his tough line over forestry controls.
In the weeks leading up to the parliamentary vote on the Tulapi Bill, the timber industry, the government and non-government organisations waged a bitter publicity campaign through the national press. The campaign featured full-page advertisements and a media war of words.
Some NGO activists accused the logging industry of exploiting the national press to fight the forestry guidelines.
One daily newspaper, the National, is owned by an associate company of Rimbunan Hijau, the Malaysian logging company reputed to control up to 86% of the industry. [Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir has close connections with Rimbunan.]
Richard Brunton, secretary of the National Alliance of NGOs (NANGO), claimed the industry was "twisting the picture" in an attempt to discredit Neville and the government-backed PNG Forest Authority.
"The industry is using so-called landowner companies — which we know from the Barnett Inquiry are not viable representatives of true landowner groups — to promote its interests", Brunton said.
In the late 1980s, Judge Tos Barnett chaired a commission of inquiry into the "rampant" forest industry, citing widespread corruption. He was later wounded in a stabbing attack.
[ Asia-Pacific Network.]