KEITH JACKSON
THE Global Witness organisation was blunt in its effort to (rightly) bring pressure on the Papua New Guinea government's SABL antics before this week’s rainforest conference in Australia.
Global Witness campaigns to expose the 'economic networks behind conflict, corruption and environmental destruction'.
“The PNG government has blithely ignored its citizen’s constitutional rights to their land,” said an official, Rick Jacobsen.
“[It] is allowing the decimation of forests of critical importance - both for local health and livelihoods and for keeping global atmospheric carbon at safe levels.
“The PNG delegation has a lot to hide at today’s rainforest summit,” he said.
But it seems that Global Witness and other NGOs failed to connect with those Papua New Guineans who had made the effort to travel to Sydney to try to turn bluster into action.
The summit was billed as a ‘meeting of minds’ for ministers from forest nations, donor countries, corporate leaders and NGOs. It was supposed to focus on practical action to reduce forest loss.
Present in Sydney, amongst other Papua New Guineans seeking support to protect the nation's forests, was Governor Gary Juffa.
He was hoping to draw attention to PNG’s problems of “widespread abuse, fraud, lack of coordination, failure and official incompetence to ensure compliance, accountability and transparency” in relation to forest exploitation.
But Global Witness and the other NGOs didn’t appear to be there for Governor Juffa and his mates.
“No presentations allowed from Pacific Islands affected by illegal logging,” the governor tweeted. “Discussions highly diplomatic and muted. Real issues avoided.
“The Asia Pacific Rainforest Summit should be renamed The Asia Rainforest Summit as no Pacific Islands were represented.”
PNG is home to the world’s third largest area of tropical rain forests and the Papua New Guineans were hoping to garner international support to pressure the O'Neill government to uphold its much delayed promise to cancel several controversial land leases which are denuding vast areas of natural forest.
“Despite some token actions earlier this year, the situation on the ground in PNG is getting worse, not better,” said Rick Jacobsen.
Well, Global Witness and other NGOs ought to be more assiduous in connecting with their PNG colleagues to get some action happening that may lead to a productive outcome.
To this end, they could do a lot worse than talk to Governor Juffa, preferably at his home Oro Province where he is facing serious problems of rainforest plunder.