Government blamed for status of forest
Updated
The Solomon Islands Forest Association has blamed lack of political will by successive governments in the past for the unsustainable harvesting of the country's natural forests. Spokesman for the Association, Kaipua Tohibangu says the commercial forest would have been better managed had there been political will and proper planning. He says conflicting reports by foreign institutions on the available natural timber forest also made it hard to make proper planning in the industry.
Mr Tohibangu says an example was an earlier estimate that Solomon Islands' commercial forest was to have been gone ten years ago.
Presenter:Sam Seke
Speaker:Solomon Islands Forest Association spokesman, Kaipua Tohibangu
TOHIBANGU: All this controversy was very big in the early 90's in past Australia spend millions of dollars to carry out some research work on our timber stand. They did not complete it. They were supposed to continue to monitor the regrowth potential of the natural forest which they abandoned the whole program and then they predicted that the commercial timber stand will run out in 1998, but that time line has gone. There were some reports also predicting that the forests have been depleted by 2004. That time line also are gone and they talking about another one. So really I don't know whether all these figures are true. May be they are true, but some of this predictions already gone.
I am not saying that logging is good or we try to come up with some good figures to enable decision makers to make a good plan other than putting all this emotional rhetoric, all those stories, that were not any opportunities for us to enter into any plan.
SEKE: But Kaipua, why has it been so hard for foreign logging companies to mill timbers locally and the resource owners and the companies themselves would benefit more instead of just undertaking unsustainable, destructive logging as has been the case?
TOHIBANGU: Investors are not missionaries as some people would like to think. All investors in all sectors are looking for money, but there are opportunities which I think big government, the whole government should negotiate dialogue with them on how to work together.
In the Solomon Islands, we don't have enough adequate power supply, adequate water supply, adequate port facilities . It's very big. I mean we must prepare before we ask the investors, because some of these infrastructures have been here long ago or we negotiate with investors to help us establish all this infrastructure. So I think Solomon Islands Government plus may be donor needs to be more to attract, not only people to do downstream processing of timber, but for others to enter into manufacturing.
SEKE: Kaipua, could the other main reason be that the government has been very heavily reliant on logging revenue and because of the fact that it didn't have any sort of alternative. It just continued to turn a blind eye on the depleting forests and just continued with accepting logging companies to come in and do the logging?
TOHIBANGU: I'm not necessarily criticising the current government, but all successive governments don't have the will I think to really focus on how we should establish a profile for the timber. All these years, the only thing we know in the timber industry is controversy, rows everyday, every night, and then in fact if they have the will, they should quarantine the extra harvesting of the forest for any day. The allowable cartage we have 320-thousand cubic metres. Any over harvesting they should put that money into investment.
What our government did over the years is to increase public service staying to consume those moneys. So I don't know who to blame, because everybody is doing the wrong thing.
