STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014
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Papua New Guinea: Villagers told the loggers to leave
On a patch of grass in a village in the Gildipasi area in Madang
Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), stands a row of eight palm-like
shrubs with green, red and purple foliage. They are known as tanget
in the local language. Following the ritual invocation of ancestral
and nature spirits, these shrubs were planted by representatives
of clans from four Gildipasi villages to seal the renewal of their
agreement to protect their remaining intact forest.
‘Now the bulldozers and chainsaws are gone. And the wildlife has
returned. Wallabies, cassowaries and lizards are back in the forest,
and eels, prawns and crabs are in the rivers again’, says John Natu,
a member of the community.
Ejecting the loggers
This story would have been very different, had it not been for
the community’s decision to stand up to the outside actors who
approached them, wanting to get to their forest. Like many landholders
in PNG, where almost all the land is held under customary title by
indigenous communities, villagers in Gildipasi have seen intensive
logging cause ecological and social damage. Following negotiations –
which members of the community say were based on false promises
– a Malaysian-owned logging company obtained consent from local
elders to start logging in the area in the late 1970s.
‘They promised to build schools, water supplies and a road’, explains
Peter Bunam. He is chairman of the Gildipasi Planning Committee,
established in 1984 as part of widespread reactions to the impact of
logging operations on the local community.
‘But none of that ever happened. Soon we saw that they were destroying
sacred sites and scarring the landscape. Their machines scared the wildlife
away, and brought foreign types of weeds that spread into our gardens.’
Tokain village, Gildipasi
