ABSTRACT
More than 70 per cent of Papua New Guinea's (PNG) land area of 46.17 million hectares is covered by forest and, of this, 91 per cent is primary forest (State of the Forest of PNG, 2008). Customary land ownership is recognized in the PNG Constitution and 97 per cent of the land is owned by the local people, organized in clans and tribes. More than 80 per cent of the total population of about 5.2 million people live in often remote villages, and rely on subsistence farming, fishing, and hunting and gathering. They obtain small cash incomes from crops such as coffee, copra, cacao and betelnut, and by selling food crops on local markets. Some get a temporary additional income from large-scale logging, which is organized and carried out mostly by foreign commercial companies. Clan lands are gathered into larger concession areas by the PNG Forest Authority, and the logging companies are able to sign deals which are supposed to represent the interests of all clans involved. However, the extraction is not done in a sustainable manner, and leaves the forest very badly degraded. The communities typically see very little of the final international market value of the timber, but for a few years do receive small royalty payments in cash to community members. The companies may build some community facilities such as health centres or classrooms, usually of rather low standard, and they construct roads and log bridges, but when they leave there is no maintenance of the facilities, and they quickly fall into ruin.
