Centre for Environmental Law &
Community Rights Inc /
Friends of the Earth Papua New Guinea
(PNG)
Manila, Philippines, June 30, 2003
Asian Development Bank – a partner for
poverty reduction in PNG?
Thousands of protesters from the
Philippines and abroad converged on June 30
on the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
headquarter during its symbolic annual
meeting in Manila.
This action is the result of decades of
failed projects funded by the ADB. Many of
these projects have created severe hardships
for poor people and caused serious
environmental problems for developing
countries in the Asia-Pacific region. ADB is
blamed for funding projects and setting
development agenda that profits the private
sector rather than fulfilling its stated goal
of poverty reduction.
For Papua New Guinea (PNG), the irony of
ADB’s approach to poverty reduction can best
be examined through its proposed feasibility
study into Smallholders Nucleus Estate Agro
Enterprises (NE) projects. It is a US$7.4
million project under the ADB’s Technical
Assistance Loan scheme. ADB’s rationale for
this project is premised on its assertion
that the most effective means of poverty
reduction is through broad-based economic
growth lead by the private sector. “This
assertion is flaw in that the private sector
is concerned with profit making and not
poverty reduction.” Said Damien Ase,
Executive Director of CELCOR. Social and
environmental impacts are often overlooked by
ADB. In PNG, private sector such as the
logging and mining industries are responsible
for poverty and conflicts. Foreign logging
companies in many remote areas continue to
pillage and plunder rich forest resources,
putting rural communities at risk of losing
their very basis of subsistence. The Panguna
Mine in Bougainville has led to a brutal
five-year civil war with many deaths and a
costly conflict which is still being sorted
out today. These are results of private
sector seeking quick profits. Even before the
commencement of the feasibility study, ADB
has already concluded that the best example
of NE is oil palm production in PNG. And that
oil palm development in the country has been
through nucleus estate production
supplemented by smallholders who sell their
produce directly to the estate for
processing. GOPNG’s recent announcement of
tax breaks for potential oil palm companies
and its plan to expand oil palm plantation
has sparked fear amongst civil society groups
in PNG that this feasibility study will pave
the way for ADB to fund NE oil palm projects.
There are already many lessons to be learnt
from existing smallholder NE oil palm
projects.
-
Growers are unhappy with the very low
return from oil palm and that they are
responsible for repaying the loan provided
by the international financial institutions
such as the ADB;
-
Fertile lands and pristine rainforests
which are the basis of subsistence for
rural communities have been sacrificed for
planting oil palm with unrealistic promises
of wealth
-
Pollution of waterways and
environmental degradations will undermine
long-term food security of rural
communities. This is a potential for
conflicts as downstream communities are
increasingly bearing the blunt of
pollution’s from growers upstream.
Of utmost concern is the impact of such
project on the customary land tenure system
in PNG. Plantation projects, whether they are
large-scale plantations or nucleus
smallholder plots effectively changed the
relationship of land and the community.
Damien Ase asserted that, “Lands are
communally owned and shared within and
between clans in PNG. Once the land is
converted into cash crop plantation plots,
this relationship and ‘ownership’ will be
permanently changed thus undermining the
communal ownership structure which has
sustain PNG for over 50,000 years.” This
concern is so strong that a group of
landowners recently put up an advertisement
in several newspapers to declare their
resistance as follows: “We, the landowners
are developing and will continue to develop
our land on our own term. We therefore
sternly warn all those parties involved in
wanting to use our land for oil palm to STAY
OUT! Any attempt to bring oil palm on our
land will be strongly resisted.” On
environmental concerns, ADB claims that it is
formally committed to following its
environmental policies including the
Environmental Assessment Requirements and
Environmental Review Procedures of ADB.
However, ADB’s own poor track records from
its projects elsewhere leave much to be
desired. The Samut Prakarn Waste Treatment
Project in Thailand resulted in a full
inspection investigation that found the ADB
to be in violation of most of its own
policies and procedures; the Pakistan Chasma
Right Irrigation Project has displaced tens
and thousands of rural poor – the very people
ADB are supposed to help! This project is
currently under investigation by the ADB
Inspection Panel. These examples and other
complaints from affected communities and
civil society elsewhere clearly show
weaknesses within the system of governance of
ADB. This situation, couples with the
notoriously weak institution of governance
and widespread corruption’s in PNG will put
PNG in great risk of adverse social and
environmental consequences from ADB funded
projects.
For more information, please contact in
Papua New Guinea:
Damien Ase on +61 417 082 294.
Electronic images of the protest actions
are available.
The briefing paper 'ADB and Smallholders
Agriculture Projects in Papua New Guinea' is
available at
www.foei.org/ifi/adb.html
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