Multinational logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea are involved in widespread human rights abuses, political corruption and the brutal suppression of workers, women and opponents, according to a joint report by Australian and Papua New Guinea researchers.

PNG’s social, political and economic histories have been moulded by its tropical forests. Covering 60 per cent of the PNG land mass and largely impenetrable, the forests have limited trade, defined customary laws and delineated life and culture. Gloriously, the forests account for 6 percent of the world’s biodiversity. When the world thinks of PNG, they see its forests. Now, the logging of these incomparable life systems is corroding PNG’s society and politics, with only trivial economic benefit, and with alarming fl ow-on effects in the region.

The PNG logging industry is dominated by a handful of Malaysian companies, the largest of which is Rimbanan Hijau. It is an industry that is synonymous with political corruption, police racketeering and the brutal repression of workers, women and those who question its ways. Its operations routinely destroy the food sources, water supplies and cultural property of those same communities. They provide a breeding ground for arms smuggling, corruption and violence across the country.

In return, the industry generates no lasting economic benefit to forest communities, considerable long-term cost and a modest 5 per cent contribution to the national budget. This record is a far cry from fulfilling PNG’s Fourth National Goal – set upon its independence in 1975 – that its “natural resources and environment … be conserved and used for the collective benefit of us all, and be replenished for the benefit of future generations”.

Australia and the World Bank have been involved in several attempts to reform the industry. At stake has been not only sustainable forestry in PNG, but legal trade and investment with Asia-Pacific neighbours. Still, all such attempts have failed. Why? In PNG, the capacity and political will to uphold legal and human rights is being undermined, not least by the logging industry itself. International financial institutions struggle to see beyond the frame of large-scale forestry to glimpse the vision of sustainable forest communities. In countries, such as Australia, that both sponsor and trade with PNG, consumers and politicians underestimate the severity and reach of abuses in PNG’s large-scale logging. They should show more interest. Australia imports PNG timber and invites investment from the same companies that stand behind the PNG abuses.

The report documents new and alarming testimony on the extreme human rights abuses that shadow the PNG logging industry. First hand accounts have been recorded between 2003 and 2006 in Western Province, Southern Highlands Province and Gulf Province. They complement documented evidence from official sources. The research is intended to raise the lid on human rights abuse in PNG, to identify their underlying cause and purpose, to propose necessary steps to stop the abuse and to reignite the political will to do so.