James Cook University Science Alert 4 Mar 11;
Immediate steps must be taken to protect the forests of Papua New Guinea according to leading tropical forest scientist Professor Bill Laurance.
He said these include a rapid reduction of raw-log exports and the reinstatement of the legal rights of indigenous groups—to reduce environmental damage and the exhaustion of timber supplies, while increasing societal benefits in PNG.
Professor Laurance will outline the need for action at the UPNG’s Waigani Campus on March 4, as part of the Vice Chancellor’s Public Lecture Series.
Professor Laurance is Distinguished Research Professor and an Australian Laureate at James Cook University in Cairns, North Queensland. He joined JCU recently after having spent 14 years with the Smithsonian Institution, an eminent US-government research organization.
He is also a research associate at Harvard University and his research focuses on the impacts of intensive land-uses, such as habitat fragmentation, logging, and wildfires, on tropical forests and species.
Professor Laurance, who has also organised a special workshop and debate on the PNG issues to be held at JCU next week, said that Papua New Guinea sustains some of the world’s most biologically and culturally rich forests.
“Like many tropical nations, PNG is changing rapidly as it attempts to develop economically, but corporate misdealing is undermining its capacity to do so sustainably,” he said. “Overexploitation of forests is rampant, with most accessible forests likely to be logged or disappear in one to two decades.
“Most timber is exported as raw logs, mainly to China, providing only limited income and employment for local communities. Moreover, traditional communal groups in PNG have recently been stripped of their right to sue offending corporations for environmental damage.”
Professor Laurance said that human welfare in the country has actually worsened in recent years, with mean incomes, adult literacy, and the Human Development Index all falling.
Although PNG has emerged as an international leader in promoting carbon-trading for forest conservation, these efforts have suffered from mismanagement and have so far failed to bear much fruit.
