A Forest Clearance Authority (FCA) is one of three types of logging licence that can be granted under the Forestry Act.

An FCA is only supposed to be used to authorise the clearing of trees from a discrete area of forest, which is being converted to agriculture or other land use development. 

However, FCA licences are routinely being issued over far larger areas of forest than could ever be converted to agriculture and are being issued without the informed consent of local forest owners.

Illegal logging in Papua New Guinea represents a major money laundering threat as it generates very large illegal profits and it has a very high detrimental impact on the economy as well as the natural environment. 

This is according to a money laundering and financing of terrorism risk assessment published by the Bank of Papua New Guinea.

The PNG government has committed to ending round log export volumes by 2027, but it is not on track to meet it’s log export reduction goals as outlined in the Medium Term Development Plan IV. 

In 2022, the Government announced its intention to phase out round log exports over the next five years and increase local downstream processing to promote greater employment, increase GDP and boost government revenues. 

However, official log export data for 2023 shows exports of 2.2 million cubic meters, well over the full year limit set in the MTDP of 1.695 million cubic meters.