Research and advocacy organisations Act Now! and Jubilee Australia Research Centre have welcomed a report that the bank accounts of 30 logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have been closed.
Source: ABC/PACNEWS
Tuvalu’s government has rescinded its support to explore deep sea mining in the country’s waters.
The government had sponsored mining firm Circular Metals Tuvalu last December to apply for an exploration permit with the International Seabed Authority.
But Foreign Minister Simon Kofe said the government has now reversed the sponsorship.
Updated 18 March 2022 with the details of four further new log export operations that started in December 2021
Government claims that it has stopped issuing new log export licences to foreign owned logging companies are not borne out by the evidence.
There are twenty new foreign-operated log export operations that have started up since 2020, according to the government’s own log export data.
Nine years after a Commission of Inquiry exposed the huge illegal SABL land grab, government efforts to cancel the leases have completely failed.
Last week Lands Minister, John Rosso, told Parliament that of seventy SABL leases recommended to be be cancelled only twenty have so far been rescinded.
Just twenty leases cancelled over a nine year period is frankly pathetic.
Source: PROJECT SEPIK
Sepik River communities file human rights complaints against Australian company PanAust over its proposed Gold-Copper mine.
Source: Mongabay / Rachel Donald (7 December 2021)
Commercial banks operating in Papua New Guinea have given at least K300 million (AU$144 million) in available credit, since 2000, to the country’s five largest exporters of tropical logs, according to a new report, The Money Behind the Chainsaws, from Act Now! and Jubilee Australia Research Centre.
The following petition was presented on the floor of Parliament by the Hon. Gary Juffa, Governor for Oro Province on November 24, 2021
TO THE HONOURABLE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED
The humble petition of the civil societies of Papua New Guinea, respectively showeth;
(Photo courtesy: UPNG Abau Student Association)
It is a great pleasure as an organization to be part of the incredible initiative by the Abau Student Association group from the University of Papua New Guinea this year on their Advocacy Year-End Awareness Trip.
Research into prosecutions for corruption in Papua New Guinea reveals that despite the enormous extent of the misappropriation of public funds only a tiny number of officials are ever charged and almost none end up being convicted or imprisoned.
This failure is likely one reason PNG shows no signs of overcoming its unenviable reputation as one of the most corrupt nations in the world and why allegations of corruption involving political leaders, the powerful and the wealthy remain rife.