Eddie Tanago, Campaign Manager

Papua New Guinea’s rating as highly corrupt in the latest global assessment published by Transparency International reflects the complete failure to tackle widespread forest crime

Transparency International recently released its 2024 Corruption Perception Index which reveals PNG is still languishing in 127th place out of 180 countries with a CPI score of just 31 out of 100, the worst in the Pacific region.

Despite the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and repeated promises from the government, there has been no discernible progress in the fight against corruption because of funding and other issues.

The government’s failure to tackle corruption is particularly evident in the forestry sector where the problems of corruption, illegal logging, money laundering and human rights abuses were first brought to public attention in the Barnett Commission of Inquiry way back in 1989.

Since the Commission of Inquiry there has been no effective action to address forest crime and the problems identified by Justice Barnett remain as rampant today as they were in the 1980’s.

Reforms like the new Forest Act and subsequent amendments along with the establishment of the PNG Forest Authority have failed to improve the standards of forest management because the underlying corruption has not been addressed and has undermined the new laws and institutions. 

ACT NOW is particularly concerned that while the National Forest Board has recently put a stop to issuing new Forest Clearing Authorities (FCAs), no action has been taken to stop existing FCA projects which are responsible for one-third of all log exports.

The PNG Forest Authority is also continuing to rely on Colonial era agreements with resource owners that pre-date the Forest Act to justify a further one-third of log exports.

It is also concerning that the Bank of PNG has failed to publish its money laundering risk assessment for the forestry sector which is one of the issues identified by the Financial Action Task Force in its threat to grey list the whole country.

Illegal logging, money laundering and associated human rights abuses have plagued Papua New Guinea from the very earliest days of Independence.

After 50 years, ACT NOW is calling on all government agencies, overseas regulators, financial institutions and donors to finally take decisive action to stop forest crime. 

The government should take immediate steps to suspend logging in all FCA project areas, stop all log exports and instigate a transparent, public review of all logging operations, licences and other approvals.

At the same time, the Bank of Papua New Guinea should immediately publish its forestry sector money laundering risk assessment.