Forestry and Development E-News: Special Edition

Forestry and Development (F&D) is an online resource on sustainable forestry. It supports commercial forestry as a viable source of economic growth which is compatible with sustainability.

Greenpeace – are its ethics appropriate in the developing world?

NGO criticism of the awarding of a knighthood to the Chairman of Rimbunan Hijau (RH), Tan Sri Datuk Tiong Hiew King, for services to Papua New Guinea have led to a recycling of various claims, either without foundation or disregarding the facts of the matter, made by Greenpeace about RH and forestry in PNG over the past five years.

Little attention has been paid to the re-hashed claims, but they have stimulated questions about Greenpeace's ethical standards.

We are accustomed to claims that lack substantiation (such as the claim that 70 per cent of PNG logging is illegal) or which have been withdrawn (such as the claim made several years ago by an individual that, as a policeman, he was paid by RH to rough up villagers, which was aired by SBS) or which have been proven wrong (such as a claim that RH mistreated its workers, which was countermanded by an official Labor Department report that commended the company for its high labour standards).

These were leading claims made by Greenpeace in various reports, all of which were exhaustively examined in "Whatever it takes: Greenpeace’s anti-forestry campaign in Papua New Guinea", which is available on the host website of this newsletter.

We are also accustomed to the outright denial of facts. When Greenpeace practised piracy in the Gulf of Papua late in 2008, claiming that the ship that it boarded belonged to RH and that the timber on board was illegal - despite public demonstration that neither contention was correct - it continued to issue media releases making the claims.

The anti-Asian riots in PNG have now drawn attention to the consistent references to the ethnicity of Malaysian forestry businesses operating in PNG in Greenpeace reports and criticism of the inappropriateness of them in the media in Malaysia and PNG.

Greenpeace appears to have a case to answer.  One of its attacks on forestry in PNG was entitled "Partners in Crime: the UK timber trade, Chinese sweatshops and Malaysian robber barons in Papua New Guinea's rainforests".

First there is the slur in describing anyone in the timber business as a "criminal".  Greenpeace has done this for years.

Sensationalising some timber production operations in China as "Chinese sweatshops" encourages the opinion that the report aimed to tap into anti-Chinese sentiment in Europe about cheap products from China.

The head of the PNG timber industry, Mr Bob Tate, has said that the contribution of Malaysian investors to the development of PNG should be congratulated, not criticised, and has called for more Malaysian investment.

This ultimately raises the question of the ethics of Greenpeace's strategies.

Set aside the fact that Greenpeace, an environmental organisation, has never produced a report which provides technical substantiation of its claims that forestry is destroying the paradise forests in PNG and that time is running out for them.

Consider instead the implications for the people of PNG if Greenpeace's preferred approach to forestry for PNG - eco-forestry or community forestry - were adopted.

There would be a loss of around 15,000 long-term jobs, forgone taxes of around US$100 million each year and the loss of annual exports worth more than US$200 million.

The eco-forestry model that Greenpeace advocates is uneconomic, as Greenpeace's elaborate experiment in Lake Murray two years ago showed and as was found in reports by WWF and, more recently, Japan’s Institute for Global Environmental Strategies.

Eco-forestry in PNG is unviable without subsidies.  Not only would the economic returns of commercial forestry (not just the jobs and income, but the infrastructure provided in remote rural areas) be lost, but there would be a drain on government revenue to support semi-subsistence livelihoods.

That Greenpeace considers this to be an appropriate development model in areas of PNG where high percentages of children do not attend secondary school and health services are inadequate is the greatest moral indictment of all.

Rimbunan Hijau has invested around US$300 million in PNG, employs more than 5,000 people and built PNG's leading manufacturing business.  In addition, it is developing a major hotel, commerce and convention centre which will support PNG's tourism industry.  It provides transport services to remote areas in PNG.

Why the PNG Government chose to honour the contribution of Rimbunan Hijau to PNG is obvious.

Unfortunately, so too is Greenpeace's indifference to PNG's poor.

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