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In the wake of the logging
Lili’s dissenting clan will see none of the promised benefits from the plantations, if and when they do arrive. But the environmental problems from such rapid deforestation have already begun to materialize on their land.
Water flowing off the deforested project areas upstream has sullied the Puian River (sometimes spelled Pwian” on maps) that flows through Machom land, and it has made fishing in the river more difficult of late. Satellite images show that a logging road has been built very close to the river’s edge.
Here we are suffering as a result of those sediments and everything that is coming downstream to us,” Lili said, even though his clan never agreed to the project.
The problem is the road line is drawn up the mountains of the ridges near the headwaters and up in the hills and the mountain ranges out there,” he added. All the erosion and the sedimentation is coming to the waters where we live downstream.”
Amid the questionable circumstances of the project’s liftoff since mid-2018 sits perhaps the most pressing for the communities — how will the loss of the forest impact them? As often happens in Papua New Guinea and more broadly throughout the world, the clearance of nearby forests leaves the people who once depended on it without access to its wood for their homes and cooking fires, to the rich habitat that once supported the animals they hunted, and a buffer securing and clarifying the water they require.
 A ship ready to load the logs for export at the Topol Log Pond. Image by Anonymous.
A rubber plantation would replace those needs with development, so the theory goes. The company would bring jobs that pay cash and finance the construction of schools and health clinics; as a result, its presence would elevate the quality of life for these communities. Their members would no longer have their forests, but a rubber plantation would be a hive of economic activity for decades to come.
Nowhere in the country is this sentiment for development more apparent than in Port Moresby. The struggle to bring the more than 85% of the country’s eight or so million citizens who live in the rural, disconnected hinterlands into the 21st century permeates the city’s atmosphere.
Papua New Guinea’s capital is a bedraggled sprawl of flashy, overpriced hotels, their shimmering glass façades reflecting the blinding equatorial sun. Nearby are the ramshackle slums, tenements and squatter settlements tucked against the city’s many hillsides. The city is at once a beacon for international investors intent on the profits to be made from the country’s myriad natural resources, and for Papua New Guineans eager to grab for their share of that largesse.
“Over the last six or seven years, we have almost doubled our GDP,” Peter O Neill, Papua New Guinea’s then-prime minister, said in 2018, according to a publication aimed at investors called Business Advantage (a glossy journal that is ubiquitous on the coffee tables and nightstands of Port Moresby’s mid- to upmarket hotels.) O’Neill, speaking at a 2018 investment conference in Brisbane, Australia, went on to say, “I have absolutely no doubt that over the next 10 years we will double it again. I don t think many countries around the world will achieve that.”
 Njeckal village on Manus Island. Image by Elodie Van Lierde.
To be sure, according to the World Bank, Papua New Guinea’s gross domestic product has grown from $3 billion in 2002 to more than $23 billion in 2018, largely on the back of its natural resource sectors and the development of the land that entails.
But critics say that the benefits of such resource extraction rarely trickle beyond the reach of Port Moresby elites. Papua New Guinea remains in the low human development category of the U.N.’s Human Development Index, just below Syria and ranked near Rwanda, Nigeria and Tanzania. Though the per capita share of the gross national income is nearly $3,700 per year, more than the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea lags behind its South Pacific neighbor in key indicators such as life expectancy and mean years of schooling.
Perhaps most tellingly, Papua New Guinea scored a 28 out of a possible 100 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. That’s a slight improvement compared to its score in 2015, but it’s still tied with Russia and ranked 138th out of 180 countries. (The lower on the list, the more corrupt the country’s public sector is perceived to be.)
Another Malaysia-based timber company, Rimbunan Hijau, has invested millions of dollars in the capital, financing Port Moresby’s shining shopping mall, Vision City, as well as the Stanley Hotel, a glitzy glass-and-steel behemoth in the city’s Waigani district, home to government offices and company headquarters.
 Logging road construction on Manus. Image by Elodie Van Lierde.
Meanwhile, examples of communities left with little more than landscapes stripped of forest and polluted water wonder where the promise for their development, in the form of royalties from the resources or employment on plantations or in mines, went off track. For those concerned about the project in Manus, that’s the fear.
Lili said that there’s little evidence of more than a handful of plants at the company’s rubber tree nursery. The paltry number of seedlings falls far short of the several million that will ultimately be necessary to fill the 125-km2 plantation, even though the project is well into its second year. The company’s own development plans indicate that the nursery should be able to churn out 139,000 rubber seedlings every quarter.
There’s nothing in sight to say that they will start to plant rubber, he said. In Lili’s view, They just want to continue to fell trees and export the timber.
By this time, you would expect that they’d be planting something, but they’re not planting anything, he added. It’s a mess.
For Lili, he sees speaking out about what’s happening as his duty for the next generation.
I ve got a responsibility now to look out for the land and take care of it.
Morgan Erickson-Davis contributed reporting.
Banner image of the forest on Manus Island by Elodie Van Lierde.
John Cannon is a staff writer at Mongabay. Find him on Twitter: @johnccannon
Citations:
Aplin, K., Arihafa, A., Armstrong, K. N., Cuthbert, R., Müller, C. J., Novera, J., Whitmore, N. (2015). A rapid biodiversity survey of Papua New Guinea s Manus and Mussau Islands.
BirdLife International. (2016). Pitta superba. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22698640A93694505. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22698640A93694505.en. Downloaded on 19 December 2019.
Lamaris, J., Whitmore, N. (2018). Forest connectivity is important for sustaining Admiralty cuscus (Spilocuscus kraemeri) in traditional terrestrial no-take areas on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Pacific Conservation Biology, 24(1), 55–62. doi:10.1071/PC17030
Leary, T. Wright, D. (2016). Melomys matambuai. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T136522A22421603. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-1.RLTS.T136522A22421603.en. Downloaded on 18 December 2019.
Turubanova, S., Potapov, P.V., Tyukavina, A. Hansen, M.C. (2018). Ongoing primary forest loss in Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia. Environmental Research Letters, 13(7), p.074028. Accessed through Global Forest Watch on Dec. 17, 2019. www.globalforestwatch.org.
Whitmore, N., Lamaris, J., Takendu, W., Charles, D., Chuwek, T., Mohe, B., … Pe-Eu, S. (2016). The context and potential sustainability of traditional terrestrial periodic tambu areas: Insights from Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Pacific Conservation Biology, 22(2), 151–158. doi:10.1071/PC15036
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