Satellite images reveal Papua forest destruction
Pastor Dale Morgan
Satellite images reveal Papua forest destruction*
02 Jun 2008 02:11:23 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY, June 2 (Reuters) - Thirty years of satellite imagery of Papua
New Guinea's rainforests has revealed destruction on such a rapid scale
that by 2021 most accessible forest will be destroyed or degraded, a
study released on Monday said.
Papua New Guinea has the world's third largest tropical rainforest,
after the Amazon and the Congo, and its government is seeking
compensation for conserving its forests as carbon-traps to help reduce
global greenhouse gases.
Papua New Guinea has allowed widespread logging of its forests and the
new report, by the University of Papua New Guinea and the Australian
National University, questions its commitment to saving rainforests in
the mountainous South Pacific nation.
"Forests in Papua New Guinea are being logged repeatedly and wastefully
with little regard for the environmental consequences and with at least
the passive complicity of government authorities," said Phil Shearman,
director of the University of Papua New Guinea's Remote Sensing Centre.
"Government officials may claim that they wish rich countries to pay
them for conserving their forests, but if they are allowing
multinational timber companies to take everything that's accessible, all
that will be left will be lands that are physically inaccessible to
exploitation and would never have been logged anyway," said Shearman.
Destruction of forests produces about 20 percent of man-made carbon
dioxide emissions, so their conservation is vital to limiting rises in
global temperatures.
The report, which measured PNG's forests from 1972 to 2002, found that
accessible forests were being cleared at a rate of 362,000 hectares
(895,000 acres) a year in 2001, or about 1.41 percent of the country's
forests annually.
In 1972, PNG had 38 million hectares (94 million acres), of rainforest
covering 82 percent of the country. Between 1972 and 2002, around 15
percent of its rainforests had been cleared.
In 2002, PNG's forests covered 33 million hectares (81.5 million acres),
or 71 percent of the country's land mass, and supported 6 to 7 percent
of the world's animal and plant species.
By 2021 an estimated 83 percent of accessible forest and 53 percent of
PNG's total forests would be destroyed or severely damaged, said the report.
FORESTS NOT LIMITLESS
"Papua New Guinea is still one of the most heavily forested countries in
the world," Shearman said in a statement.
"For the first time, we have evidence of what's happening in the PNG
forests. The government could make a significant contribution to global
efforts to combat climate change. It is in its own interest to do so, as
this nation is particularly susceptible to negative effects due to loss
of the forest cover."
The report said deforestation was occurring at the same rate in
protected and unprotected areas and justified a significant reduction in
logging in PNG.
Any new forestry programmes should involve small and medium-scale,
locally-owned and managed operations where commercial activities are
more likely to be environmentally sustainable, it said.
Minister for Forests Belden Namah said economic development had taken
precedence over conservation in PNG, a developing nation that has
struggled to prosper from its vast mineral wealth. Most of its 6 million
population live subsistence lives in villages.
"Over the past decades we have imagined that our forests are limitless.
If this report is the bitter pill that we need to swallow to ensure that
we maintain our forests into the forseeable future, so be it," Namah
said in the report.
"If in 50 years, PNG is left only with scraps of forest inside national
parks then we have all failed." (Editing by Alex Richardson)