Why green grabs don't work in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage – sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called ‘agro forestry’ projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the ‘agro foresters’ have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.

Keywords:

• Papua New Guinea
• land tenure
• forestry
• agriculture
• conservation

Notes

¹See http://www.climate-standards.org/projects/index.html

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin Filer

The author thanks Brian Aldrich (AKT Associates Ltd), Goodwill Amos (PNG Forest Authority), Damien Ase (PNG Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights), Arthur Ganubella (PNG Department of Environment and Conservation), Moon Hong (former student at the Australian National University), Ian Orrell (PNG Palm Oil Council), Bob Tate (PNG Forest Industries Association), Ambupad Thakur (Changhae Tapioka [PNG] Ltd) and Michael Wood (James Cook University) for their contributions to the information contained in this paper, and two anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the argument.