It was recognized after the Barnett Inquiry that lack of regulation and monitoring allowed all kinds of dubious activities to flourish. Simply blaming the loggers for the problems in the industry does not explain what was going on at that time nor help find ways of solving the problems. There were systemic failures within government, and manipulation of the vast majority of ordinary Papua New Guineans by a small number of their fellow citizens, many of them in positions of elected authority; there were systemic failures, also, in customary practices, which proved unable to control self-seeking individuals seduced by promises of short-term gains.
It was hoped in the early 1990s that reform of forest policy and the establishment of new instruments and processes would move the industry in the direction the mining industry had taken (R. Taylor, personal communication). The mining industry seemed to have responded sufficiently well to legislative and organizational reform that it no longer attracted carpetbaggers and fly-by-night (or traiim tasol) entrepreneurs.
In the event, these hopes have only partially been met. The forest sector, though now certainly better regulated, remains a happy hunting ground for operators, both Papua New Guinean and foreign, from high officials to grassroots people, who still seek quick personal gain with no regard for the long-term economic, social and environmental costs for their communities, their province or their country.
There are several issues that need to be addressed in policy making:
Rights over forest resources tend to be group rights; the forestry sector needs to be reminded that the state’s monopoly over access to those rights remains tenuous, despite the fact that colonial and post-independence governments have given themselves the legal right to control such access (Holzknecht 1997). The state, in conjunction with customary resource owners, must develop better ways to involve customary owners in managing and benefiting from these resources.
In 2002 the PNGFA was circulating a number of draft policy documents. These included: a policy on plantations (or ‘reforestation’ or ‘resource replacement’ — the terminology changes from time to time); a policy on downstream processing; review of the National Forest Development Guidelines (originally approved by NEC in 1993, but without substantive effect in the intervening period); and a policy on small-scale saw-milling, to be developed in conjunction with a European Union-funded eco-forestry project.
Other policy documents were in preparation, including papers on extension services, and non-timber forest products. Some of these draft policies seem draconian and implicitly assume that the state has complete control over forestry.
An area of critical importance in the medium and long-term is the long-ignored issue of post-harvest forests. Natural regeneration almost always produces a non-commercial (‘rubbish’) forest that cannot be logged when/if a harvesting cycle eventually returns to the area. The PNGFA should be advising customary forest owner groups on the best ways they can support productive regeneration of the more valuable but slower-growing timber species.
Registration of landowner companies, along the lines envisaged by the new Forestry Act, is long overdue; large amounts of money have been misused.
There is an urgent need to develop a cadre of land group facilitators, and to train and supervise them in working with customary resource owner communities. They should not be beholden to either line departments or logging companies, and should be able to do their work without fear or favour. The World Bank’s Forest and Conservation Project may assist in this development.
The PNGFA needs to think carefully about how it can do its job better, especially in the field where communities are becoming better informed and motivated to undertake their own activities (for example, see Arentz and Holzknecht 1991 on the use of mobile sawmills). To date the PNGFA has had little interest in local-level activity, though there seems to be some notice being paid at the provincial level. It has been the non-government organizations which have made the running in developing mobile sawmill operations. This is in contrast to the situation in Vanuatu, where the national Department of Forests is actively involved with mobile sawmills and village-level forestry.
The forest sector needs to better cooperate and coordinate its programs and activities with other line departments and agencies. A whole-of-government approach to planning and implementation, linked to local communities’ own efforts, seems to be needed. The decentralization process in the forestry sector specifically needs to be reviewed.
Despite the difficulties identified above, it is important to acknowledge that by and large PNGFA staff have carried on in the face of increasing workloads and decreasing numbers, while battles have raged around them, battles involving the Papua New Guinea government, politicians and some senior public servants, sector organizations such as the FIA, international and national NGOs, and international bodies such as the World Bank. It should also be acknowledged that the ongoing involvement of the World Bank, in particular, and AusAID has been critical in moving reform agendas forward in the forestry and conservation sectors.
Looking to the future, Papua New Guinea’s timber resources simply cannot sustain the present approach to forestry. Strategies in relation to forests and forestry need to be critically reassessed, as a matter of urgency, to develop appropriate ways in which the PNGFA can facilitate medium- and smaller- scale projects in which the customary resource owners play much more prominent roles. More emphasis needs to be placed on achievable regeneration of forests, whether as plantation or as forest, and less emphasis on extracting resources without considering sustainability in the sector. Such a critical reassessment of strategies and approach, however, appears not to be a high priority at present.