“The village felt okay. But they were thinking about getting money,” he said. “We didn't know what the company was doing. Later we realised Concord Pacific is not good, not cooperating with the people. They were doing it their own way.”

In Boboa, where Kuni tribe member Galeva Sep comes from, company representatives held a meeting with the local people, convincing them the project would encourage development. Gifts of tobacco helped, as did the promise of a health centre.

Instead of the standard royalty of 10 kina /m3, landowners received 3.6 kina/ m3. The company took the other 6.4 kina as payment for the road. When logs were used for culverts landowners weren’t paid for those, either.

The local men employed on the road project were paid between 65-85 kina a fortnight. Away from their communities and unable to hunt, the company foreman told the men to get supplies from the store – then deducted the cost of food from their pay. “Sometimes I had 10 or 20 kina left. Sometimes nothing, only the envelope,” said Aima Gomana, member of Catfish clan of the Kuni tribe, who worked for Concord Pacific as a chainsaw operator at the beginning.

Logs were cut undersize, others were cut and left to rot. “Some of the trees were used on the bridging without paying the resource owners,” said Malese. “People complained about what Concord Pacific had done. They ignored the complaints.”

“All the land around here [Lake Murray] was under threat. They were given permission to make a road but it went further to cut into trees that were 16 kilometres into the forest, which by law they are not allowed to do. They just went ahead and government authorities did nothing,” said Sep.

The road project was clearly a veiled excuse to log the forest. And the landowners’ source of food and building materials was being destroyed before their eyes.

In 1997, Sep was working as a policemen in Port Moresby. Stories began to filter back to him about what was happening on his land – stories of threats, abuse and violence. He was outraged by the indignities that his people were suffering. Some landowners were forced – at gunpoint – to sign contracts.

Sep began working with NGOs in Port Moresby to find a way to stop the road, and have his people properly recompensed. “People were convinced by false promises. They said they would bring real development but actually they did nothing. There was no real infrastructure that we could use.”

In 2001, Sep resigned from the force and returned home to Kubut, next to Boboa, to fight for his people full time. He asked Greenpeace to join the battle and, with other clan leaders, formed the Lake Murray Resource Owners Association (LMROA), representing 14 villages in their fight against Concord Pacific.

“We invited Greenpeace to come and help us expose the corruption. It is a very remote area and people from the outside did not know what was happening,” Sep explained.

“From there people started to understand the issue and why we were protesting,” he recalls. “We also received support from other countries and that’s how our fight became a worldwide issue. This put pressure on the World Bank and the IMF. And the big institutions put pressure on the PNG government to do something.”

Astoundingly, while the government acknowledged something was wrong, nothing constructive was done to actually stop the project. Throughout 2002, Sep lead three road-blocks that stopped trucks from carrying logs out. At the first one, there were 50 men, mostly Sep’s brothers and cousins, at the second there were 100 and at the third over 150 – many clans were involved.

“At the last one we ran out of food, so we played a trick on them. I hung up an old snake along the road block and I wrote in charcoal that if anyone removes the road block they will get bitten by snakes. We left it unmanned and no one went past,” said Sep.

LMROA filed an injunction against Concord Pacific in July 2003, with the help of Celcor, an NGO which provides legal support to landowners. At the same time Association members protested by boarding the last barge to transport the illegally logged timber from the region.

The injuction stopped the whole operation, and earnings from the log sales were put into a national court trust account – a total of three shipments of logs worth about 1.7 million kina. That money is still there now.

Although the company has finally gone, the Association is currently engaged in a court action for trespass so that it can claim compensation for the logs taken. The case is estimated to be worth at least 60 million kina to the people of Lake Murray.

Ecoforestry solutions

Once Concord Pacific was ousted, the Association identified eco-forestry as a sustainable way of bringing income and employment to the region.

With its community-based eco-forestry experience in the Solomon Islands, Greenpeace was again invited to help. We continue to work with local NGOs to bring this ‘solutions’ work to fruition.

Eco-forestry will allow communities to continue to live from their forests in the traditional way, and to earn income through the sale of ecotimber – income for school fees, health care, essential items and household utensils. Second grade timber can be used to build timber homes.

As a real antidote to poverty, ecoforestry is a potent solution to illegal logging. With support and training from local NGOs, landowners are exercising their right to control development themselves.
They are no longer forced to sell off their forests. They are choosing to take care of their forests sustainably so that their way of life will be protected for future generations.

- Karen