By Land Advocate

By Customary Land Advocate

The Wafi-Golpu Pipeline corridor will run from the mine site in the mountains of Wampar Local Level Government (LLG) area right through to Lae City and then onto the coastline of Wagang village in Ahi LLG area and finally into the sea of the Huon Gulf. Along the way this pipeline will run through mostly customary lands of the peoples of Wampar and Ahi LLG areas, and only a small portion will run on state land.

By Customary Land Advocate

Due to the lack of affordable housing in urban areas, especially in the larger cities of Lae and Port Moresby, working class people are moving away to the periphery of these two cities to have access to cheap land where they can live and work without having to pay for rented accommodation. People in overcrowded and crime-infested squatter settlements in these two cities are also moving away to the periphery of the two cities to resettle and have a new lease of life.

Carbon trading, which is being heavily promoted in Papua New Guinea, will not help reduce global warming and instead risks implicating indigenous communities in the obsessive overconsumption in wealthier countries that is destroying the planet. 

Carbon trading is just one more example of greenwashing being used by big corporations and foreign governments to cover up their failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions and their ongoing destruction of the natural environment.

The Tavolo Community Conservation Association from East New Britain have won a major victory against a Malaysian logging company that has been threatening to log their customary forests.

The National Court has granted the Association a temporary injunction suspending a Forest Clearance Authority granted to Mekar (PNG) Limited by the PNG Forest Authority and stopping any large-scale conversion of forest to agriculture or other land use.

Nearly 70% of Papua New Guinea’s round log exports between 2019 and 2021 were concentrated in the hands of just ten groups of companies, all with strong links to Malaysia, according to new research by Act Now! and Jubilee Australia Research Centre.

In 1989, after chairing a two-year Commission of Inquiry, Justice Barnett described forest management in PNG as being in a state of chaos. He declared that foreign-owned logging companies were being allowed to operate as they pleased as a result of bribery and the corruption of State officials and politicians.

ACT NOW! and Jubilee Australia

There are a lot of important issues for the new Forest Minister, Salio Waipo, to address, especially rampant illegal and unsustainable logging.

Papua New Guinea’s Constitution is unique as it gives the people rights to be custodians over their land, 95% of which is still under customary control.  For thousands of years, over 800 cultures have allowed our land to sustain every generation till the idea of registering customary land was introduced from outside our shores and clouded the real value and importance of that land.