Eco-Timber from the Forests of New Britain, Papua New Guinea

by Pacific Heritage Foundation

Partners:

Pacific Heritage Foundation (PHF) East New Britain Sosel Eksen Committee Individual and Community Rights Advocacy Forum (ICRAF) Forest Research Institute

Success Stories

PHF led a number of awareness and education campaigns in the Bainings area in 1995 to allow villagers to be able to make informed decisions about a potential gold mine on their land. The strength of the mining lobby was underestimated and they were very active in placing their activists within communities and fomenting attacks against the PHF programs. These reached a peak when they attempted to prove that the prices being paid for sawn timber from the projects was below market. The miners hired a truck and took a load of this timber to various traders in Rabaul. We discovered later that the traders either refused to purchase the ungraded timber, or offered prices well below those that PHF were paying.

Whilst we eventually lost the battle against the establishment of the mine, our integrity and objectives were firmly re-established in the minds of the villagers. We also believe that the mine battle will resume once production commences and the more obvious environmental problems surface.

Challenges

The Wide Bay area where we are working with the BCN grant, is listed in the new National Forest Plan for commercial logging in 1998. We have a race on our hands for the establishment of more projects and the upgrading of existing ones if we are to be able to convince the villagers that these are better alternatives to export logging. This situation is made more fragile as we approach the next National Elections in July 1997. Every sitting member has to raise approximately $1 million for campaign funds to have any hope of winning a seat, and the loggers are the most likely source of this level of funds. Many sitting members, together with rafts of hopefuls, will be trying to promote export logging operations.

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