[Anthropgrad] RMAP RESEARCH SEMINAR - Dr Colin Filer - 12.30-1.30 pm 17 June 2008

[RMAP Seminars]

THE MORAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF THE LOGGING INDUSTRY IN PAPUA NEW 
GUINEA

Colin Filer (Convenor, Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program)

12.30-1.30pm Tuesday 17 June 2008
Seminar Room B (Arndt Room) Coombs Building

Abstract
The release of a new report* on 'The State of the Forests of Papua New 
Guinea' has initiated a new round of debate about the relationship 
between the moral and environmental impacts of the large-scale logging 
industry.  The new report claims that rates of deforestation and forest 
degradation in PNG are much higher than had previously been thought, and 
thus appears to substitute a fresh debate about environmental impacts 
for what is now a rather stale debate about the extent of 'illegal 
logging' and the corrosive effects of the logging industry on PNGs 
political culture.  Although the forest policy debate in PNG has swung 
back and forth between these two sides of the logging impact coin for 
more than two decades, scientific and political narratives are still 
deeply interwined in ways that make it very difficult to establish the 
difference between rhetoric and reality.  The distinction is all the 
more problematic now that PNGs national government is at the forefront 
of demands for 'rainforest nations' to be compensated for reducing 
carbon emissions from the processes of deforestation and forest 
degradation which this latest study claims to measure.

*(report available at 
http://gis.mortonblacketer.com.au/upngis/Downloads/State%20of%20Forests%20of%20PNG.pdf)

Bio
Colin is the Convenor of RMAP and has research interests that include 
the social context and impact of resource management policies and 
resource conservation or development projects in Melanesia.


--  

Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program

Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

The Australian National University

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