Footnotes for Two Shots in the Dark

The other agencies involved in the review process were: the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB), the New Zealand Ministry of External Relations and Trade, and the German Federal Republic's technical cooperation agency (GTZ).
The World Bank's own recommendations were not so generous to conservation projects, which only accounted for about 25% of the funding proposed in Annex 10 of the TFAP Review. The revised figures presented to the Round Table were partly the result of a routine recosting of individual projects, and partly due to the environmental sympathies of some PNG government officials.
The five provinces covered by this moratorium were Central, Milne Bay, New Ireland, West New Britain and North Solomons, all of which had witnessed extensive harvesting of available timber resources. The same Cabinet submission recommended an accelerated rate of extraction in three other less 'developed' provinces - Western, West Sepik and East Sepik.
Including five 'defunct projects to be revived'.
It is not possible to assess the extent of the overlap because the 27 areas were not precisely defined (see Appendix 2) and the proposed logging operations were unlikely to proceed according to plan, if they had a plan.
These were four of the fourteen TRPs which had been scheduled for development in 1989. The Minister did not explicitly say whether the moratorium was meant to cover Local Forest Areas, as well as Timber Rights Purchases, but, in the light of abuses revealed by the Barnett Inquiry, he had apparently conceded the need to repeal the Forestry (Private Dealings) Act, under which the Minister has power to approve LFAs, so one might infer from this that he did not intend to approve any more.
Some of the Round Table participants believed that the Minister had been deceived into making this concession because he had forgotten that the Lak project fell squarely within the area proposed for World Heritage status, or had simply forgotten to include this project in his list of exemptions. This is incorrect.
The Lelet Plateau had been included in the World Bank's list of proposed conservation areas (Area 24 in Appendix 2). Danfu was one of several logging operations for which no environmental plan had ever been submitted, and covered the area adjacent to the Lak TRP. A visit to the Umbukul TRP was justified by evidence that some local landowners were fiercely opposed to the issue of a Timber Permit.
Only these eight are shown as having participated in the Woodlark expedition in Appendix 1.
Even the helicopter was unable to penetrate the blanket of rain surrounding the island of Lambom, off the southern tip of the mainland, which contains roughly one third of the Lak electorate.
Two helicopter trips were needed to ferry the debating team and the film crew from one point to another, including the trips which took them from one end of New Ireland to the other.
This meant that four of the six projects now being proposed for exemption were in provinces already covered by the partial moratorium which Cabinet had imposed in July 1989.
According to the newspaper report (Post-Courier 6/5/90), the logs had been shipped from Woodlark Island by Provincial Land Air Sea Transport (PLAST), a company owned by Mr John Kasaipwalova, one of the 'stars' of the Barnett Inquiry. The same report suggests that the logs had been harvested by Milne Bay Logging Company (MBL) through its contract with the landowner company, Woodlark Island Development Corporation (WIDCO), but WIDCO's Environmental Plan insists that ebony is harvested privately by the islanders (WIDCO 1990:viii).
The ebony pole makers of Japan may have blessed their good fortune, because the Minister subsequently announced the extension of his ban to include 'flitches', as well as round logs (Post-Courier 4/5/90). On the other hand, there is little evidence to suggest that any corresponding improvement in the effectiveness of its enforcement.
The other seven were: East Kikori (Gulf Province); Buhem-Mongi and Cromwell (Morobe); Josephstaal, Biges and South Naru (Madang); and Alimbit Andru (West New Britain). The last of these is not a TRP but an LFA, which seems to indicate that the Minister had intended his moratorium to include Local Forest Areas.
The two main targets were PNG Timbers, with several projects in New Ireland, and Santa Investments, operating mainly in the West Gadaisu TRP (Central Province). PNG Timbers was known to be the contractor seeking access to the Lak TRP.
In its Medium Term Development Strategy, dated September 1989, DOF classified Musa and Collingwood Bay as two distinct TRPs.
To judge by their previous writings and utterances, one might suppose that Messrs Narokobi and Anis would have more sympathy for the conservationist cause than most of their political counterparts. It seems that ideology was once again the victim of political necessity.
The main complaint was that JDC was only a trust company, whose sole trustees were the Premier and Josephstaal MPA Thomas Karukai, and therefore lacked a Board of Directors which was fully accountable to the landowning clans of the TRP.
One such extension (Wawoi Guavi Block 3) was allocated on the 1st of June. Another two - Biges and South Naru in Madang Province - were included in one or other of the lists of 'exemptions' proposed by the Minister, thus neatly confusing DEC officials, who later complained that his intention of granting these two permits was a further breach of the moratorium.
It should be noted, however, that 96,000 hectare Josephstaal TRP is now being subdivided into separate blocks, and the same thing could easily be done with the Musa-Cromwell TRP, which is even larger. In that case, the Minister might feel that he would be justified in making substitutions for one or more of the subdivisions.
The Gara-Modewa project (approved on the 1st of June) was one of the four listed for exemption in the Minister's address to the Round Table. The Rai Coast project (approved on the 20th of July) was not included in the list, and the Minister was later accused of granting this approval in circumstances which were no more favourable to the landowners than those which caused him to withhold approval of the Josephstaal project (Times of PNG 4/10/90).
The Environment Minister's credibility had already been seriously damaged by events unconnected with the work of the Task Force. Firstly, he had been charged with dangerous driving causing the death of a 5-year old child in Port Moresby. Secondly, and more pertinently, it was revealed that he had personally approved the construction of a toxic waste dump in Oro Province without even requesting the submission of an EP. As the sordid details of this latter project have come to light, the Minister seems to have decided that he might as well hand out a few more exemptions to give the appearance of consistency, and some dubious logging operations have already been blessed in this way.
Membership of the Committee was initially drawn from DFP (4), DOF (3), DEC (2), PMD (2), NANGO (1) and UPNG (1). It was later extended to include representatives of DAL and DLPP (1 each) and the Leader of the UNDP Technical Assistance Team. Chairmanship of the Committee rests with the Economic Affairs Division of DFP. Meetings are supposed to take place every fortnight, but only seven were held between August and December 1990.
It should be noted here that the PNG Government has a longstanding and legitimate policy of exercising close control over all foreign aid flowing into the country in order to ensure that this aid is consistent with national interests and priorities. OIDA is the watchdog of this policy.
The New Zealand Government had also undertaken to fund a New Zealand NGO to provide international technical assistance to the Task Force by advising on the establishment of a Trust Fund to finance 'benefit packages' to landowners in proposed conservation areas.
In theory, DEC can recruit an outsider to the Executive Officer's position. In practice, the Department of Personnel Management will make this difficult, at least for a time.
This is not to detract from the value of the report on Woodlark written by my colleague Michael Young. Dr Young stuck dutifully to his terms of reference, which asked him 'to conduct a preliminary anthropological and socio-economic survey' of Woodlark Island and 'to provide anthropological and sociological information' to the rest of the Woodlark Team. His report is an excellent example of what these terms of reference can be expected to produce.
A boom gate has recently been installed at the entrance to the DOF building in Hohola, presumaby with a view to exercising some form of crowd control. Having passed through it on a number of occasions, I rather doubt its effectiveness.
The TSG is delivering 'immediate technical support' to DOF and DEC (see Appendix 5). The Group has four members, three of whom (the leader, a forester and an environmentalist) have been provided by the New Zealand Forestry Service under a complex arrangement with the World Bank and UNDP, while the fourth represents the NGOs and is paid out of a grant by the British Overseas Development Agency (ODA) to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
As with other ministerial reshuffles in PNG, these changes have more to do with the shifting alignments of political factions than the past administration of particular portfolios. However, new ministers are always keen to justify their appointments by seeming to address any popular grievances aroused by the actions of their predecessors.
The current DEC budget includes provision for UPNG to provide it with various forms of 'consultancy support' worth a total of K145,000 per annum. There is as yet little sign that DEC has the capacity to either ask or pay for this support.
This particular species of cuscus had previously attracted the attention of a scientific expedition from Oxford University, and this may have helped to enhance its conservation value is some people's minds. But, by August of last year, the cuscus had become the focus of a standing joke about the Task Force in Provincial Government circles, where rumour had it that the islanders would now set about the eradicating this hapless creature in case it turned out to be obstacle to further development of the island.
It is interesting to observe here that the Task Force recently received a suggestion from the Minister or Secretary of Forests (it is not clear which) that its time might be better occupied investigating the complaints of the Gogol-Naru landowners, whose sympathy for the concept of conservation has undoubtedly been aroused by the devastating impact of logging on their environment. This suggestion was rejected because it would have diverted the Task Force from its original mandate, but the point remains that landowners may not begin to appreciate the value of their forest resource until they have begun to lose it.
The essence of this problem is that the boundaries of the resource (whether it be a logging coupe, a mining lease, or a fishbait zone) normally fail to coincide with the social and political boundaries prevailing within the landowning community.
That is why I have suggested that the socio-economic appraisal at least should be carried out by a single expert. At current consultancy rates, K5,000 would purchase 20 days of work by a UPNG academic such as myself. Ten days of fieldwork and ten days of reporting should be sufficient to complete this type of appraisal in target areas like Woodlark or Lak.
Compare this with the K30,000 which was spent on the Task Force trip to New Ireland last year.