In PNG, a fallen bridge is testament to the chasm in rural development

With no alternative, communities trade forests for roads

PNG hosts a large portion of the third-largest rainforest in the world and has 7 percent of the planet’s biodiversity. Due to its rich forest resources and government policies that grant special land leases to foreign logging companies, deforestation has increased sharply in PNG. This is despite the control that traditional clans have over 85 percent of the country’s land, an issue that has caused numerous local and international organizations to raise alarms over corruption, intimidation and land grabbing that occurs within PNG’s billion-dollar logging industry.

Despite this, disconnected communities seeking development often welcome extractive companies that promise infrastructure that the government cannot provide.

In Gildipasi, a conglomerate of communities 30 minutes north of Banab River and its fallen bridge, many inhabitants count themselves lucky to be near the region’s sole national highway. It means they can easily distribute their produce to markets and have access to public services such as schools and hospitals.

For nearby inland communities, however, the story differs. An overgrown dirt track cuts through Gildipasi toward heavily forested ranges to the southwest. Just a few kilometers inland, the track stops abruptly.

An old logging road that terminates a few kilometers southwest of Gildipasi. In the absence of government funds to upgrade and extend the road, some communities have entered discussions with a logging firm that promises to take on the project. Image by Camilo Mejia Giraldo for Mongabay.

According to Cornelius Banas, a councilor for the district and one of Gildipasi’s leaders, communities in the ranges beyond the reach of the dirt track have to walk two days through the forest, carrying produce down to the Gildipasi market to sell it or transport it to other parts of the province.

For this reason, Banas says, some of these communities that border Gildipasi have started speaking with the Malaysian logging company Woodbank Pacific Limited to extend the existing track more than 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland in exchange for access to their land. “There are early[-stage] meetings talking to logging companies, but some of us, we are disputing the idea,” Banas says.

Mongabay was unable to verify the details of this proposed project with Woodbank Pacific’s offices in Madang or Vanimo, the capital of neighboring West Sepik province, but a local source confirmed the firm has previously engaged in similar projects with communities in other regions — providing roads and royalties to landowners for consent to log certain areas.

It is also a scenario that has precedent in the country. In December 2018, another Malaysian logging company, Samas PNG Ltd., constructed a new road and a number of bridges linking remote communities in West Sepik, also known as Sandaun, to the north coast. This, media reports state, will give local communities access to both government services and markets.

“Our inland people, we want them to [have] proper roads so they can transport their cash crops, like cacao and copra,” Banas says, referring to the dried coconut flesh used for oil that is widely produced in the province.

“We are telling the people that the concept, the idea of logging, it’s no good. In Gildipasi we have seen what the logging company has done to us. They destroyed our environment,” Banas says, citing the large-scale logging during the 1980s and 1990s that decimated much of their local forests.

Forest lining the Bairaman River in PNG. New Guinea Island has some of the world’s largest and most biodiverse remaining tropical forests. Image by Paul Hilton/Greenpeace.

William F. Laurence, a research professor at Australia’s James Cook University, says logging and mining companies in countries like PNG will often promise roads, medical centers and even schools in exchange for access to land and resources. This infrastructure, he says, can quickly fall into disrepair once the extractive project is complete.

“Often the shell of a building might be put together, but there is no funding [by the company] for ongoing salaries, nurses, doctors, medical supplies. So there has been a huge amount of conflict over so-called broken promises,” he says.

“It’s also very environmentally destructive in many cases to build roads into these remote areas, because really what you are doing is facilitating a loss of habitat destruction. There is a big association of course between road construction and deforestation, poaching, illegal mining activities, and obviously habitat fragmentation.”

Although Gildipasi itself won’t be affected by any logging activities, as the company is focused on the untouched forests beyond its limits, Banas sees the situation as history repeating itself.

The company, he says, “will only grade the road, but they won’t put gravel on it” or maintain it.

“They’ll get on the ground, get all the timber, and move on. Their idea is to get the timber, not to build you a road,” he says. “The government should build our road, it would be much better.”

Maybe next year, he says, the province will actually have the money to do so.

This story first appeared on Mongabay

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