PNG is running out of forests to protect according to a report to be released tomorrow by a research team from Australia and Papua New Guinea. According to researchers from the University of Papua New Guinea and the Australian National University, forest in ‘protected areas’ is being destroyed as quickly as in un-protected areas and, without urgent action, most areas accessible to loggers will have been harvested within 13 years.

The report’s authors say it’s not too late for PNG, which could still play an important role in counteracting the climate impacts of increasing global greenhouse gas emissions.

AusSMC has arranged for the lead author, Phil Shearman to brief journalists online from PNG. PNG’s Minister for Forests, Mr Belden Namah, will also be available online to react to the report.

BRIEFING DETAILS:
DATE: Monday 2 June 2008
START TIME: 11.00am AEST
DURATION: Approx 30 min

SPEAKERS:

Mr Phil Shearman, UPNG Remote Sensing Centre and School of Natural and Physical Sciences, University of Papua New Guinea

Mr Belden Namah, Minister for Forests, Papua New Guinea

PRESENTATION:

Full Briefing (WebEx):
View here 

The full report and accompanying images is available at www.scienceinpublic.com

RAPID ROUNDUP:

Phil Shearman, School of Natural and Physical Sciences, University of Papua New Guinea and lead author of the report.

“For the first time we know what’s happening. PNG forests could make a significant contribution to global efforts to combat climate change and it is in PNG’s own interests to do so, as the nation is particularly susceptible to its negative impacts. However, the current state of forest management means that PNG is a distance from being able to meaningfully participate in the carbon economy.”

Dr Julian Ash is from the Faculty of Science at the Australian National University and is a co-author on the PNG report.

“High quality information on the environment in tropical countries is hard to obtain but essential for good management of resources and to understand such issues as net carbon release from depleted rainforests. This study used satellite images to generate both high-resolution maps of the forests of Papua New Guinea and, more importantly, quantified changes that are taking place. Contrary to the popular opinion that little is happening, rates of change are high and accelerating. To feed a population growing by 3% yearly, associated net deforestation is now 0.7% and fertile areas are in short supply. Commercial logging operations are extracting over 2.6% of the accessible resource yearly and causing the release of about 22 million tons of carbon. These percentages may seem small, but not if you project their cumulative impact over future decades. It takes centuries, not decades, for rainforests to recover from such changes. Over 6% of the world’s biodiversity resides in these forests but little is known about its resilience. Legally protected areas are being degraded as fast as other areas. This report from Papua New Guinea’s leading University is a wakeup call to address the future of their forests. These issues have global impacts and should also galvanise the Australian and international communities.”

Professor Rod Keenan is the Head of School of Forest and Ecosystem Science at the University of Melbourne

“The forests of Papua New Guinea are important national assets. Ninety seven percent of forests are under traditional ownership by local communities. PNG has one of the world’s most rapidly growing populations and providing for the economic and human development of this growing population, while maintaining forest cover and the many different values of forests is a major political challenge. There are some examples of good forest practices but current operations are not generally environmentally, economically or socially sustainable in the long-term and changes are required to place PNG forest management on a more sustainable trajectory. If managed sustainably, forests can produce raw materials for development of local industries while continuing to provide the many other values that PNG and the global community demand from forests.

This is an important study and the results have been eagerly-awaited by forest managers and researchers for some time. The figures for forest loss and degradation are consistent with previous studies undertaken by CSIRO in the mid-1990s. The report identifies commercial logging, subsistence cultivation and burning as major drivers of forest change. However, in my view, conversion of forest to oil palm and other intensive agricultural crops is a potentially greater threat to forests in PNG in the longer term. Implementation of some the forest management practices suggested could increase the involvement of local people in forest enterprises, reduce forest degradation and impacts on wildlife habitat and carbon stocks while maintaining forest commodity production and subsistence requirements.”

Dr Allen Allison is Vice President for Science at BishopMuseum in Honolulu, specialising in the classification, ecology and distribution of amphibians and reptiles. Bishop Museum has conducted more than 50 major research expeditions to various parts of New Guinea and Dr Allison has been working in PNG for about 35 years..

“New Guinea, which comprises about 80% of the land area of the Pacific Basin (tropical Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia), was the major gateway through which plants and animals dispersed into the central Pacific. It was also the primary gateway through which the proto-Polynesian colonists reached the islands of Oceania.

As a result of recent biological survey work by Bishop Museum, the Australian Museum, and other organisations, we now know that New Guinea has one of the richest assemblages of biodiversity on the planet, some 6-8% of the world’s total. This includes the world’s largest butterflies and moths, the Queen Alexandra birdwing, and the atlas moth, respectively; most of the world’s tree kangaroos and birds of paradise; its smallest parrots and largest pigeons, and the world’s longest and one of its largest lizards, Salvadori’s goanna. New Guinea’s biodiversity, in numbers of species, probably exceeds that of the much larger Australian continent and rivals that of the Amazon Basin.

There is a persistent belief amongst biologists, based on dated, anecdotal evidence, that the biodiversity of New Guinea is in far better shape and faces fewer threats than does biodiversity in other parts of the wet tropics (e.g., SE Asia, Amazonia).This has tended to divert the world’s attention to other tropical areas.This is unwarranted.The careful, painstaking land cover analysis performed by Shearman and his team convincingly demonstrates that the globally significant forests of Papua New Guinea are being degraded at an alarming and unsustainable rate (exceeding that in many parts of the Amazon), and that current conservation practices are inadequate.This is a clarion call for action to improve the management and protection of PNG’s precious forest resources.

Virtually all of PNG’s forests are under customary, communal land tenure.Action will require a comprehensive, coordinated effort by government agencies, local landowners, non-governmental organisations, and the scientific community. The report by Shearman and his team is an extraordinary scientific accomplishment. It provides a strong foundation for both the action and further research that will be needed to develop and implement a new forest management regime. Of particular importance to this effort is the development of a comprehensive biological survey of the country to better document the plants and animals (half of which remain unknown to science) and to help develop, guide, and inform partnerships with local land-owning groups for the designation and management of protected areas.”

Dr Colin Filer convenes the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University.

“To understand what is happening to the forests of PNG, we should be careful to distinguish between the processes of deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation is normally a permanent process of forest clearance and land use change, but the rate of deforestation in PNG has been relatively low by international standards. ‘Degradation’ is much harder to define and measure. We could say that PNG’s indigenous inhabitants have been ‘degrading’ their forests through the practice of slash-and-burn cultivation for thousands of years. In some areas, this practice seems to have caused the permanent conversion of forests to grasslands, but from a broader perspective, this form of periodic human disturbance has probably made a positive net contribution to PNG’s biodiversity values. When people cut down a selected proportion of the trees in a forest — whether they are local farmers or big logging companies — they expect the forest to regenerate, and that is what normally happens.

By aggregating measures of deforestation and degradation, this latest report seems to assume that degradation is now just a step on the road to deforestation, and the process of forest regrowth or regeneration has come to a halt. Only in that way could the authors arrive at the conclusion that ‘half of PNG’s forests will be gone within 13 years’. This is a gross exaggeration which might serve some rhetorical or political purpose, but anyone who flies around PNG on a regular basis and can be bothered to look out of an aircraft window must seriously wonder how this change could actually come about.”

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. If you need help tracking down an expert, don’t hesitate to contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415 or email us.

Dr Michael Raupach is a research scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and is co-chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international program that studies the global carbon cycle.

“The message of the paper is that tropical ecosystems are responsible for more of the terrestrial carbon sink, and northern-latitude systems for less, than previously thought. The new evidence comes from improvements in atmospheric-inverse calculations of the distribution of carbon sinks, based on observations of CO2 concentrations at multiple heights and locations. If substantiated by more work, the results might suggest increased vulnerability of the terrestrial carbon sink to tropical forest clearing.”

Dr Lindsay Hutley is an environmental scientist in the School of Science and Primary Industries at Charles Darwin University, working on carbon dynamics of tropical savannas of north Australia.

“The paper is an interesting one in that it challenges current thinking on the global distribution of carbon sinks. Previously tropical systems were thought to be nearly carbon neutral in terms of amount of carbon entering the ecosystem via photosynthesis and leaving via respiration, fire, clearing and timber harvesting, conversion to agriculture. The largest terrestrial sinks were found in the northern hemisphere forests. This recent modelling suggests that this may not be the case, with a significant sink observed in tropical ecosystems such as rainforests and savannas.

This underlines the importance of the ecosystem services these ecosystems provide and the pressing need for conservation – not only do they conserve biodiversity but now they may be a larger carbon sink than previously thought, contributing to the uptake of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.

There is uncertainty with these studies and predictions, as, for tropical regions, the available atmospheric CO2 data required to drive the models is limited. More monitoring of CO2 concentrations and carbon flux studies in tropical ecosystems is required to verify such findings.”