Action Alert: Papua New Guinea's Woodlark Island Rainforests to Be Cleared for Oil Palm Agrofuels
The PNG government continues to approve rainforest destruction and diminishment even as they vocally seek to be paid with carbon market funds for their "protection"
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet - December 27, 2007
Caption: The endemic Woodlark Cuscus may well go extinct if its habitat is cleared for an oil palm plantation (link)
The oil palm biofuel industry -- the scourge of Asia
and the world's
rainforests -- is continuing to expand into Papua New
Guinea (PNG). Malaysian
company Vitroplant has been granted necessary permits by
the PNG government to
begin clearing 70% of the rainforests on biodiversity rich
Woodlark Island, some
60,000 hectares, in order to establish a massive
plantation of oil palm trees.
Expansion of oil palm plantations at the expense of
primary rainforests runs
contrary to PNG's government public support for preserving
rainforests for
climate and other benefits. Prime Minister Somare's
government has been highly
vocal, including at the recent Bali climate talks,
regarding the desirability of
"avoided deforestation" payments. Yet large
scale industrial logging and now oil
palm expansion continues to severely diminish PNG's
rainforest and carbon
storage capital.
Woodlark Island is a small island, some 80,000 hectares,
in the Pacific with a
population of 6,000 residents. Vitroplant plans to convert
60,000 acres to palm
oil plantations for biofuels. A solid majority of
villagers reportedly oppose
the project, and were not even aware of it until after its
approval.
An oil palm plantation on Woodlark Island will endanger
the island’s flora and
fauna, cause environmental upheaval, and result in drastic
cultural change.
Woodlark Island is home to at least nineteen endemic
species, including a
speckled nocturnal marsupial called the Woodlark Cuscus,
and an endemic ebony
tree. The initial logging would cause many of these rare
species to go extinct,
and toxic waste and runoff will threaten freshwater and
marine ecosytems.
Woodlark Island continues to maintain a social
and ecological system
that has supported human and other life for millennia; with
healthy forests,
wildlife and humans. Those opposing the project locally
are concerned with
disintegration of the native culture from socially
unacceptable behavior and
starvation as gardening and hunting activities are
displaced.
Throughout Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia and
Indonesia, large swaths
of rainforest have been and continue to be destroyed to
produce biofuel crops.
Oil palm has many uses, but increasingly it is used in
biodiesel in Europe and
elsewhere, raising ethical issues of burning a food product for
fuel. Oil palm agrofuel is heralded as a climate
change mitigation measure,
yet the initial rainforest clearance leads to much more
carbon release than its
production and use avoids.
The islanders of Woodlark have worked hard to draw
international attention to
this issue, and have issued an appeal for the support of
international NGOs and
citizens to pressure the government to withdraw the
project. Please do so below.
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Alert News Updates
27/12 -- Global Warming: Re-examine logging, Seattle Post-Intelligencer