PNG government bids to be the ultimate carbon cowboy

PNGExposed Blog

While the activities of unscrupulous ‘carbon cowboys’ have attracted much attention in Papua New Guinea over recent years, a confidential proposal shows that the PNG government is itself hoping to carry off the biggest scam of all.

The Papua New Guinea government has submitted a proposal to the Norwegians that would see up to US$ 1 billion flow into the corruption riddled Pacific island country.

The Somare government came into power in 2002 promising to immediately fast-track 10 large-scale logging projects and soon after threw a World Bank funded forest conservation project out of the country. Since then it has also sanctioned more than 2.5 million hectares of forest clearance for spurious ‘agriculture projects’.

But now it is claiming it will change its ways and will bring this forest rape under control – if the Norwegians will just deposit anything between $750 million and $1 billion in its coffers.

As we reveal here, the PNG government’s proposal to the Norwegians would surely make any High School teacher proud but in truth it lacks any meaningful political. social or ecological analysis.

This is despite the fact that it was put together at a cost of over $1 million by international consultancy firm McKinsey and Company.

According to the proposal PNG “subscribes to principles of transparency and equitability” – about as weak a statement about endemic corruption as you could hope to see.

And what will the PNG government do in return for $1 billion?

Well almost nothing. It is promising to only revoke 50-100 thousand hectares of illegal agroforestry projects (the other 2.4 million hectares will be untouched); introduce reduced impact logging across just 500,000 of the 5 million hectares currently allocated for large-scale logging (funnily enough, RIL was one of the concepts that Somare trashed when he cancelled the forestry and conservation project in 2002); and establish 30,000 hectares of oil palm on degraded land.

The Norwegian’s have already promised $1 billion to Indonesia in return for it reducing its carbon emissions – a deal that surely has Prime Minister Somare salivating.

But surely the cash rich Norwegians are not going to be conned by Somare and his American carbon ambassador Kevin Conrad into funding their carbon scam?

Click here to read the Confidential Proposal

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