Greenpeace Press Release

Leaders of Pacific Nations failing the forests, Greenpeace charges
Japanese Prime Minister only one to even mention forestry issues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 27, 2006 (Okinawa, Japan) - As the fourth meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum came to a close today, Greenpeace unfurled a 450 square-metre banner on the beach of the venue where the heads of government were meeting with a call to "Stop Forest Destruction." For the past two days, the 14-nation Forum has been meeting to discuss issues of common interest in the region, and yet has failed to discuss illegal logging, an issue of critical importance in the Asia Pacific region. The meeting was co-chaired by Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi and Prime Minister Somare of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The closing statement from the Forum made no reference to illegal logging, but in a separate address issued by Prime Minister Koizumi, he said that Japan is prepared to help other countries in the region address forestry issues by sending experts to regions where logging occurs and is prepared to potentially increase aid to those countries as well. He did not specifically mention 'illegal logging', however, nor did he commit to ban the import of illegally logged timber into Japan, as Greenpeace and other groups have proposed.

The failure of the Forum to meaningfully address illegal logging bodes poorly for the beleaguered forests of the Asia Pacific region. More than 60 per cent of the forests in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have already been logged out, and much of what remains is under high threat from industrial logging, 90 per cent of which is estimated to be illegal. Countries such as Fiji have already lost all their intact forests, and in countries such as Vanuatu less than 10 per cent of the forests are intact.

"It's positive the Prime Minister Koizumi spoke today about forestry in the region, but in reality, we need Japan to take action and ban illegally logged wood from coming into our country," said Yuka Ozaki, forests campaigner for Greenpeace Japan. "If more effort is not made to address illegal and destructive logging, we're going to lose the remaining ancient forests in this region within a decade or two. This is one of the richest regions of biodiversity on the planet, and we're forcing hundreds of species towards extinction."

Papua New Guinea, a country roughly the same size as the state of California, is home to approximately 5 per cent of the world's known species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. It also is home to 5-million indigenous people, most of whom depend on the forests for their livelihoods, and yet whose rights are routinely ignored as illegal logging continues unabated. Next to China, Japan is the world's largest importer of logs coming from PNG, and other Pacific countries such as Australia and New Zealand are also large buyers of PNG wood.

This year's winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, lawyer Annie Kajir of Papua New Guinea, traveled to Okinawa, Japan where the Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting was held, to deliver a message directly to the Pacific Island leaders.

"My people and our forests are being destroyed by illegal logging, and it is shocking to me and will be shocking to people at home that Prime Minister Somare did not try to make progress on this issue," Kajir said, who was awarded the Goldman for her work in the courts of PNG challenging those involved in illegal logging. "There is a high level of corruption in PNG that prevents us from solving the problem on our own, and since many of the countries represented here today are buying so much of our wood, it's clear that for now we just need all countries to institute bans on importing timber from PNG."

Greenpeace is calling on all governments in the region to adopt transparent monitoring systems to track wood products that includes third-party verification of claims of legality and sustainability. At present, the best system globally that provides credible chain-of-custody for tracking wood products from the forest to the marketplace is certification by the Forest Stewardship Council.