Managers

The government¿s principal forestry agency is the Papua New Guinea Forest Authority, a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament in 1991. It is comprised of a Forestry Board, advisory committees, and a National Forest Service. The Forest Authority is responsible for preparing and reviewing the National Forest Plan, control and regulation of forest exports, advice on forest policy and legislation, resource acquisition, resource allocation, as well as administration, monitoring and enforcement of the Forestry Act and forest management standards. The National Forest Service is the operational arm of the Forestry Authority and has four operational divisions focusing respectively on: Forest Planning, Resource Development, Forest Management and Forest Research. Development of forest policy is the responsibility of a separate Ministry for Forests. Other government agencies with involvement in the national forest estate include: the Department of Environment and Conservation, responsible for environmental planning, assessment and protection, as well as nature conservation; the Bureau of Water Resources; and the Department of Lands and Physical Planning. Papua New Guinea¿s 19 provincial governments are all involved in resource and land development and management activities. Provincial Forest Management Committees form an important link between forest resource owners and the Forest Authority.

Around 97 percent of land in Papua New Guinea is under customary ownership. There is no general registration of customary land and there are often multiple claimants to a given parcel of land. Landowners generally make decisions about land usage by consensus. Given that much forest land is inaccessible, land usage is often passive, with little in the way of management inputs.

Public participation in forest management

Papua New Guinea¿s forests provide the bulk of the material required for subsistence livelihoods, energy and construction, for the vast majority of the population who live in them, and virtually all forested land is owned by local clans or tribal groups under customary title. The Forestry Act of 1991 legally protects the interests of customary landholders. Under the Act, the government can purchase timber rights from the landowners for a certain period and ¿¿.resource owners must freely and willingly transfer their traditional rights to the State¿¿ The State then grants a licence to commercial companies to extract the timber. In areas identified for development, a 13-step process is required to be followed before any felling can take place. Stage one requires negotiation of a ¿Forest Management Agreement¿ with the local owners. Royalties are paid to the government and a proportion of these are passed on to the provincial government and landowners.

Landowners retain rights of access for gardening, hunting and collection of wood for fuel and construction purposes. Reforestation is not provided for in the forestry legislation but depends on arrangements between the landowners and permit-holders. Notwithstanding the Forest Act, traditional landholders are under intense pressure from loggers to grant access. A Landowner Company (LOC) concept was developed within the 1979 national forest policy to try to increase national participation in the forestry sector but for a variety of reasons including the land tenure system the LOCs have become aligned to the foreign logging companies. Typically, landowners receive only a fraction of the financial returns.

last updated: Tuesday, November 24, 2009