01/03/2006 - International
— In the remote Paradise Forests of Papua
New Guinea, illegal and destructive logging
continues to threaten both the local communities
and the fragile ecosystem. So we have launched
a major initiative to help indigenous communities
establish their rights to the land they
have called home for generations.
At the invitation of the local communities,
we have established the Global Forest Rescue
Station (GFRS) on the western edge of Lake
Murray, deep in the Paradise Forests. From
the GFRS, our activists from around the
world will help members of the Kuni, Begwa
and Pari tribes mark out the boundaries
of their lands to protect it from loggers.
Although in Papua New Guinean law, 97 percent
of the land is recognised as being owned
by the customary landowners who live there,
many tribal boundaries have never been officially
recorded. Until this is done the land is
effectively up for grabs.
With large-scale industrial logging, the
local communities see very little of the
huge profits generated by the logging and
the forest cannot sustain the level of destruction.
For each tree felled for timber at least
seventeen others are destroyed, not to mention
the impact on the diverse wildlife that
the forest support.
"Our forest is like a supermarket and
our survival depends on the forest. The
forest gives us our homes, our food and
our medicine."
- Sep Galeva, Until the Clan leader
But there is a solution. Boundary marking,
also known as demarcation, is the first
step in allowing the local communities to
use the forest in ecologically sustainable
ways that doesn't destroy the forest. The
GFRS will be used as a base camp to help
the local communities mark out around 300,000
hectares of their lands in the Lake Murray
region.
The Station isn't just about mapping out
land boundaries. Part of the work done there
will be to promote small-scale community
enterprises that help maintain the forest
and bring greater benefits to the communities
that live there such as eco-forestry.
Instead of wholesale destruction of the
forest with large machines to extract the
timber, portable equipment is used to minimise
the impact. Trees are milled where they
fall and are carried along bush trails and
floated out along rivers, and then strict
guidelines and monitoring allow the forest
to regenerate itself.
The profits from this method of forestry
for local communities are also much more
than those that trickle down from the logging
companies, between four to 10 times greater,
all of which is shared among the local communities.
So with community-based solutions the Global
Rescue Forest Station will help protect
the unique biodiversity of Papua New Guinea.
With only one percent of the forests under
any kind of protection, there is still a
long way to go.
