Alotau Environment

PNG Oil Palm

2005-06-28T21:54:00.000Z

FinancePNG Post Courier Thursday 23rd June, 2005Palm oil company set to reach markNEW Britain Palm Oil Limited is on target to reach its six monthbefore tax profit target of K64.6 million, the company said yesterday.But this will depend on shipping schedules not being disrupted.In its report to the Port Moresby Stock Exchange, NBPOL said oilproduction to May this year was 96,834 metric tonnes

Australia's neo-liberal PNG land agenda: exposed

2005-06-28T09:31:00.000Z

27 June 2005 Media release For comment, please contact Dr Mike Bourke, co-author (02) 6125 4345 Dr Clive Hamilton Jun 10 2005 Sainsbury's staff at the

Getting Tony Blair ready for prosecution?

2005-06-14T09:31:00.000Z

Ray McGovern is a co-founder of the Truth Telling Coalition and of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He had a 27-year career as a CIA analyst, and now works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. Yesterday, London's Sunday Times published the text of another SECRET UK EYES ONLY briefing document prepared for senior British

Alotau MP & NGOs take on illegal loggers

2005-06-14T08:17:00.000Z

Good on you Isaac Taitibe MP, the Alotau representative in the PNG National Parliament.! Good on you EFF and Greenpeace...Go you good things!PNG Post Courier Tuesday 14 June 2005 MP asks Chief to sack Pruaitch ALOTAU MP Isaac Taitibe asked the Prime Minister during Question Time on Friday if he (Sir Michael Somare) would sack Forest Minister Patrick Pruaitch.This was in relation to Mr Pruaitch

Conserve tuna: Stop Whaling!

2005-06-14T08:15:00.000Z

Source: The National, Tuesday 14 June 2005 Editorial Difficult to understand the logicIT is indeed difficult to understand the logic behind Japan's decision to attempt to double its slaughter of whales in our region.The Japanese cannot seriously believe that the rest of the world subscribes to their announced claim that the increase is for "scientific purposes."Precisely what kind

All police should be amenable to civil actions

2005-06-14T08:11:00.000Z

Sir Rabbie speaks out on ECP ‘There is no Papua New Guinea conspiracy against the Enhanced Co-operation Program’ — Sir Rabbie L. Namaliu ANYONE reading the article “Nose cut off to spite the face” by Helen Hughes and Susan Windybank (Courier-Mail, May 31) could be excused for believing the Enhanced Co-operation Program (ECP) between Australia and Papua New Guinea has been derailed by an evil

PNG NGOs protest against forestry bill

2005-06-13T12:42:00.000Z

Brian,the NGOs have beem picketing at the Parliament roundabout for almost a weekagainst the Proposed Forestry Act Amendment.On Friday, all the landowners plus some members of the NGO's, including X, Y and others, extended the protest inside the parliament chamber public gallery, by removing theirshirts and exposing their yellow t-shirts they wore inside, that had themessage:"Vote Against the

greenhouse gas cycle

2005-06-11T07:31:00.000Z

Ex-PNG Newcombe drives World Bank carbon trade

2005-06-11T07:20:00.000Z

THE CARBON SPIN DOCTORS: HOW THE WORLD BANK EXPLAINS EMISSIONS TRADING TO JOURNALISTSBy Chris Lang. Published in WRM Bulletin 84, July 2004."Carbon emission trading, a vehicle for development. Is this a story that's worth telling? I think it is," Sergio Jellinek, a communications advisor at the World Bank told a room full of journalists at the Carbon Expo in Cologne last week.Organised by the

World Bank funds bad pulp-mills

2005-06-11T07:07:00.000Z

To: All Executive Directors of the World Bank and IFCFrom: Uruguayan and Argentinian Organizations and individualsDate: June 3, 2005The undersigned wish to support the serious concern that Uruguayan and Argentinian organizations raise over the possible installation of two pulp mills on the Uruguay River in the vicinity of Fray Bentos, Uruguay. One of the projects has been submitted by the

PNG Land registration, de Soto, da man?

2005-06-10T12:46:00.000Z

Interview Capitalism and the Road to Prosperity INTERVIEWER: Why does capitalism fail everywhere else and triumph in the West? HERNANDO DE SOTO: Because the West has a property rights system, and property rights systems seem to be about ownership. What we're discovering more and more is that it's really the system that undergirds the

Somare: private ownership of customary land is a mistake

2005-06-10T12:33:00.000Z

PNG PM regrets land rights decisionPapua New Guinea's Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, says one of the bigmistakes he made at the beginning of the country's independence wasrecognising traditional land ownership.Sir Michael has told Radio National's Hindsight program all governments inPNG since independence in 1975 have had problems promoting economicdevelopment, because of communal land

Columbia U helps appropriate PNG customary land

2005-06-10T11:22:00.000Z

Which ever way we look at it, Papua New Guinea landowners will be the loosers with carbon trading.Prof Jeffrey Sach and his team at Columbia University, at best, are misguided. But that is charitable. These are people who believe in the whole neo-liberal project of so-called "globalisation" [giving big capital access to cheap labour, resources, raw materials, markets, and land], and export led

Somare,Sach, Columbia U, carbon trading

2005-06-10T11:20:00.000Z

Somare speaks out FOUNDING father of the nation, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare, has “no other aims in life” other than the country’s well-being in the hands of Papua New Guineans.“I have no other intention; I have no other aims in life. My aim is to make sure Papua New Guinea is in good hands before I go,” Sir Michael said.The Chief said this while responding to the stinging attack on

PNG courts no answer to forest corruption

2005-06-10T11:15:00.000Z

Landowners back calls to stop Bill A MOROBE landowner company is supporting former chief justice Sir Arnold Amet’s call for parliamentarians not to pass the controversial Forestry Bill.Jenny Veisame, managing director of Bugabu Resources Limited from the Mongi/Busega area in Finschhafen, said yesterday the Forestry Bill should not be passed because it did not take into consideration the

PNG land registration,forest dirty deals,carbon trading

2005-06-10T11:10:00.000Z

PM taken to task again PRIME Minister Sir Michael Somare, his National Alliance party and links with key players in the forestry industry and carbon trade initiative all came under scathing attack in Parliament yesterday.And while Sir Michael delayed his extensive response to next week, he later called a press conference at which he blamed the questions and inferences on ignorance by MPs and

PNG - Boliva; think about it

2005-06-10T11:04:00.000Z

Bolivia crisis: Your reaction The head of the Supreme Court Eduardo Rodriguez has been sworn as interim president of Bolivia following the resignation of

Land Rights

2005-06-03T10:35:00.000Z

Article: Privatise Aboriginal land rights? The lessons from Papua New Guinea.By Tim AndersonGLW2005-04-11 | The federal government, backed by mining company-funded “think tanks”, has a new agenda for Aboriginal land rights: privatise them. And privatisation here, as elsewhere, means that the sharks will move in.Privatise Aboriginal land rights?The lessons from Papua New Guinea.The federal

Yali's Question

2005-06-03T10:28:00.000Z

Errington, Frederick and Deborah Gewertz Yali's Question: Sugar, Culture, and History. 360 p., 28 halftones, 3 maps. 6 x 9 2004 Series: (ML) Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture SeriesCloth $67.50sc 0-226-21745-0 Fall 2004Paper $27.50sp 0-226-21746-9 Fall 2004Yali's Question is the story of a remarkable physical and social creation--Ramu Sugar Limited (RSL), a sugar plantation created in a remote part of

Collapses

2005-06-03T10:26:00.000Z

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond [ Buy from the London Review Bookshop ] · Allen Lane, 575 pp, £20.00 Are our dealings with nature sustainable? Can we expect world economic growth to continue for the foreseeable future? Should we be confident that our knowledge and skills will increase in ways that will lessen our reliance on nature despite our growing numbers

May 05 in Iraq

2005-06-03T10:22:00.001Z

Diary from Mosul by Patrick Cockburn, London Review of BooksThe three months it took to cobble together a government in Iraq after January’s election shows the depth of the divisions between the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities. In the north of the country the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds are close to civil war. Their savage skirmishes, around the oil city of Kirkuk and in the streets of Mosul,

Land Registration PNG a response

2005-06-02T20:15:00.000Z

On thinking about land registration in Papua New GuineaBrian BruntonAlotau Environment.Let me start with a story of what can happen when a state imposes land reform on polyglot communities, and does not have the capacity to implement its programs.A story from MesopotamiaIn 1858 the Turkish government in Constantinople, began its Midhat plan to extend Ottoman authority to Mesopotamia, now known as

How to get people to agree with you

2005-06-02T08:25:00.000Z

Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers David Runciman Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth by Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro [ Buy from the London Review Bookshop ] · Princeton, 392 pp, US $29.95The politics of taxation can sometimes be gripping for a nation’s citizens, but not often: the arguments

BINGO self-regulation doesnot work for PNG

2005-05-30T13:25:00.000Z

Bloggers will see the large post we did on the RSPO 2nd draft criteria for oil palm.As a group which has been associated with these BINGO-led self regulation voluntary industrial schemes for about 8 years, we think we are able to judge the likely effect in Papua New Guinea of this type of arrangment.So have a look at the RSPO fine-print, if you have a spare 2 hours.While your thinking about

Roundtable On Sustainable Palm Oil 2nd set criteria

2005-05-30T11:16:00.000Z

RSPO Draft Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil Public consultation draft version 2 25 May 2005 This report was prepared by ProForest on behalf of the Criteria Working Group of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Acknowledgements: The development of the RSPO principles and criteria for sustainable palm oil is being funded by HSBC Malaysia and Doen Foundation Netherlands

BINGO, World Bank forest destruction

2005-05-28T19:48:00.000Z

27 May 2005 Pandering to the industrial lobby? WWF resurrects failed World Bank policy in Cambodia’s forests. Whilst welcoming the recently announced WWF/World Bank Forest Alliance objective of a 10% reduction in global deforestation rates by 2010, Global Witness questions its ability to deliver, given the Alliance’s track record in Cambodia and other countries. The Alliance’s support

PNG Argentina monocropping

2005-05-26T19:53:00.000Z

Final Document of the Iguazú Counter Conference on the Impacts of Soya and Monocultures ITEPA (Technological and Educational Institute for Agrarian Reform) San Miguel de Iguazú, Brazil, 16 to 18 March 2005. We resolve: To struggle and mobilise, jointly with other movements and organisations, against the present model of development, agro exports and the proliferation of transgenic crops,

Papua New Guinea: loggers & guns

2005-05-26T07:20:00.000Z

Logging ships smuggling guns in A former senior Customs officer yesterday told a public meeting in West New Britain he saw high-powered guns smuggled into the province from a logging ship which berthed near Kimbe.Henry Buku, the former assistant commissioner for Customs at the Internal Revenue Commission, told a meeting of the National Guns Control Committee at the Hoskins Secondary School

PNG: starting to go down the tube?

2005-05-25T08:53:00.000Z

Now we have it: after bowing down to the Malaysian loggers [bad] and cancelling the World Bank's [bad] Forest and Conservation Project [other some parts good and some parts bad] the government is going to fund the Highlands Highway from internal revenue [good: if they are cashed-up].Well they should be doing that and not mortgaging our children and grandchildren...but the question is: can it be

PNG Government sells out to Malaysian loggers

2005-05-24T15:08:00.000Z

editorial PNG Post Courier, 24th May 2005Will national pride lead to big fall?SO our national planners and decision-makers have scrapped the K111 million Forestry Conservation Project and are looking around for other ways to fix up the Highlands Highway.No doubt there will be some financiers strolling down the corridors of Waigani offering what appear to be generous terms to replace the aid

PNG oil palm Fresh-fruit bunch tonne blossoming?

2005-05-24T15:01:00.000Z

WNB ‘most dangerous’WEST New Britain has become the most dangerous province for police to work, a former senior police officer told a meeting at Bialla yesterday.John Toguata — formerly the Assistant Commissioner of Police and Commander of the Islands Region — said at a National Guns Control Committee meeting at Bialla that since 1996, four policemen have been gunned down by criminals in the

PAPUA NEW GUINEA:the Haiti of the Torres Strait?

2005-05-20T18:30:00.000Z

What happens to small black states when they have large white imperial powers, as big neighbours? When the US marines at Guantanmo are at spitting distance? or the border of big-brother is 600 metres off-shore, at low tide?There but for the Grace of God, go us?Democracy’s DeathHaitian dissidents find themselves the targets of massive repressionBy Ben TerrallIn sync with its grandiose claims about

Oil Palm in Columbia

2005-05-17T21:19:00.000Z

There is a crazy ideal that in order to stop cocaine production in Columbia, Columbians should plant Oil Palm. The bright sparks who thought of that one need to snort a few fresh fruit bunches...here is what happens, when you do oil palm for poverty alleviation/or is it export replacement: Colombia: Expansion of the oil palm in a framework of Human Rights violationThe Colombia Plan has proved to

Why Australia has bad forest policy in Papua New Guinea

2005-05-17T19:17:00.000Z

=================================W R M B U L L E T I N 94May 2005 - English edition=================================- Australia: Gunns plans massive new pulp mill in TasmaniaBefore cutting any trees, Tasmania's timber industry divides the forests into coupes. It bulldozes roads through the forest. When the coupes are clearfelled only the large logs are taken. The vast amount of wood remaining