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PNG 'land grab' update

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In Brief

The Commission of Inquiry's final report on Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs) should soon be tabled in Papua New Guinea’s national parliament.

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No one yet knows what it will recommend, let alone whether Peter O’Neill’s new government will act on those recommendations.

The Commission tried to find out how more than 5 million hectares of customary land have been alienated in recent years through SABLs granted to landowner companies. These companies are associated with some rather dubious ‘development partners’, most of whom appear to be logging companies seeking to exploit a loophole in the Forestry Act on the pretext of clearing native forests for large-scale agricultural projects that are unlikely to materialise.

Greenpeace published a report in July about this ‘land grab’ in an effort to persuade the PNG government that something must be done about it. Although the findings are yet to be released, the transcripts of the hearings make it clear that the Commissioners were far from impressed with the transparency and legitimacy of the process, which has alienated so much land from its customary owners.

There are also stakeholders inside PNG who have raised concerns about the potential consequences of this ‘land grab’. Some of them are now worried that public pressure from people readily identified as foreigners could be counter-productive because it may lead the PNG government to retreat into a defensive nationalist posture and hence reduce the likelihood of it implementing any of the Commission’s recommendations — even if any strong action is actually recommended. Their sense of alarm was raised when the Secretary of the Commission recently announced that there is ‘no moratorium‘ on new SABL grants by the Department of Lands and Physical Planning.

A moratorium was in fact part of the Cabinet decision that led to the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry, but responsibility for implementing it should have rested with the Minister for Lands, not the Commission itself. In fact, the Lands Department did not issue any new SABLs after the Cabinet decision was announced — until the week before the Greenpeace report was published.

The PNG National Gazette published on 27 July announced the grant of two new SABLs in Oro Province, both for a period of 50 years. At first glance, the notices might not seem too alarming, as the two leases are said to cover 21.520 hectares and 16.830 hectares respectively — a tiny area compared to the 5 million hectares already removed from customary ownership. But officials in the Lands Department have developed a habit of substituting full stops for commas. Indeed, the last SABL gazetted before the announcement of the Cabinet decision was said to cover 109.58 hectares, but was later revealed to cover 109,580 hectares — a thousand times larger.

The two new leases seem to lie in close proximity to another set of existing agricultural leases that cover a combined area of 43,902 hectares of ‘state land’, where two developers of so-called agro-forestry projects sought permission to clear the native forests two years ago. A Forest Clearing Authority was granted to one of these companies, and although it only covers 5,552 hectares of forested land, it has already proven its worth. More than 63,000 cubic metres of logs, with a combined value of more than 11 million kina (US$5.18 million), were exported from this area in 2011. An area this size cannot support this rate of extraction for much longer.

It is unclear whether a second Forest Clearing Authority was granted to the other company over the remaining 38,350 hectares of ‘state land’ dedicated to the second ‘agro-forestry’ project in the same part of the province. But there is no record of logs being exported from this second area, nor is it clear whether the same corporate interests are involved in both projects. The Commission of Inquiry has not shed any light on this matter, since the Commission was only asked to investigate the alienation of customary land for projects of this kind.

But let’s now consider an odd coincidence. If the two new SABLs cover 21,520 hectares and 16,830 hectares respectively, they cover a total of 38,350 hectares. So there is a strong suspicion that this is not state land after all, and the Lands Department is seeking to rectify the matter by turning this area of land into customary land so that it can then be ‘properly’ alienated through the grant of SABLs.

If this is the case, we now have to ask whether the grant of two new SABLs is merely an act of rectification or whether it marks the end of the moratorium and the start of a new wave of alienation. If it marks the end of the moratorium, why did it happen when it did, and who made the relevant decisions?

Whatever the answers to these questions, we must now wait until the Commission of Inquiry’s report is tabled in Parliament before assessing the likelihood of the new government implementing its recommendations.

Colin Filer is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

An earlier version of this article was first published here on the Development Policy Blog.

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