Goodbye PNG rainforest - hello ecodisaster!

Papua New Guinea's forests are shrinking faster than the Amazon, says the New Scientist in its latest edition (2659). This report is one of a host sparked in global media this week from a joint new state-of-the-nation's-forests report prepared by a joint University of Papua New Guinea and Australian National University team. The New Scientist summary says:
The lush tropical rainforests of Papua New Guinea are not the unspoilt haven that many believed till now. In fact, they are disappearing faster than those in the Amazon.
That's the conclusion of a team led by Phil Shearman of the Remote Sensing Centre at UPNG in Port Moresby, who applied pattern recognition software to recent satellite images, and paired the results with map data from the 1970s to reconstruct the rate of forest loss. The team presented its findings ... at a workshop on climate change, forests and carbon trading in Port Moresby.
Their study found that in 2002, 1.4 per cent of PNG's forests were cleared or degraded, increasing to 1.7 per cent in 2007. If the trend continues, more than half the forest that existed when PNG became independent from Australia in 1975 will be gone by 2021.

The Guardian reported in a bylined piece by David Adam:
The forests of Papua New Guinea are being chopped down so quickly that more than half its trees could be lost by 2021 ... Papua New Guinea has the world's third largest tropical forest, but it was being cleared or degraded at a rate of 362,000 hectares (895,000 acres) a year in 2001, the report said.
Phil Shearman, lead author of the study, said: "Forests are being logged repeatedly and wastefully with little regard for the environmental consequences, and with at least the passive complicity of government authorities."
The researchers compared satellite images taken over three decades from the early 1970s. In 1972 the country had 38m hectares (94m acres), of rainforest covering 82 percent of the country. About 15 percent of that was cleared by 2002.
Shearman said: "For the first time we have evidence of what's happening. The government could make a significant contribution to global efforts to combat climate change, as this nation is particularly susceptible to negative effects due to loss of the forest cover."
Pictured: Not far behind the PNG rainforest roads, the rapacious loggers. Source: UPNG report.

• New Guinea forests shrinking faster than the Amazon
• Third largest tropical forest could be halved by 2021, study warns
• PNG rain forests under threat
• Full text of the forests report

Pacific j-schools and the sad fate of UPNG

Hard to believe, but the South Pacific has just had its first regional journalism school
workshop - 33 years after the first j-school was established. The University of Papua New Guinea led the way in 1975 - the heady year of independence - with a j-school established with NZ aid by the late Ross Stevens. Sadly, Ross would have turned in his grave if he saw the state of UPNG's j-school today. In his time (1975-77) on the Waigani campus, the teaching was in a creative "dungeon" in the bowels of the Michael Somare library. Today, journalism is housed in the relatively recent Ulli Beier building - in an air conditioned multi-purpose lab - but with no sign of actual journalism. Five e-Macs lacking a printer and a network. Hardly the stuff of a newsroom. Gone is any sign of the history and tradition of what was once the finest journalism school newspaper in the Pacific - Uni Tavur (first Pacific j-paper to win the Ossie award for newspapers in 1995, competing against Australian and NZ publications). That success was during my era at UPNG when I negotiated with the Post-Courier to print the paper every fortnight for 12 editions a year. Thanks OP for your great support in those days!

What is a journalism school without its own press and broadcast programmes? It's hard to imagine that UPNG has 100 j-students plus these days. What do they do? And what is their employment ratio? There are simply not enough jobs. Still, I was pleased to see many of my former students doing so well in the media, people like Titi Gabi, news director at PNGFM Ltd, and Jackie Kapigeno, news editor at The National, and her deputy, Christine Pakakota. Well done team! Good to see Freddy Hernandez still going strong in The National newsroom - check out his letters from Moresby. And a delight to see Jada and team at Wantok.

Now let's not get too nostalgic about PNG. Back to UNESCO and Abel Caine - they deserve a big bouquet for getting this much belated workshop off the ground. And already the second such workshop is in their sights for next August at the PINA convention in Vanuatu. Although some j-schools are more fortunate than others in the region, many of the issues about facilities and resources (including human) are familiar to everybody. And a sharing of issues and a draft plan for the future is encouraging for Pacific j-education. In my book, the only downside of the workshop was the failure of the new polytechnic j-schools to get their act together (apart from Fiji Institute of Technology, which was well-represented by Elia Vesikula) and be represented. Invitations to Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu were wasted. I wonder what possessed AusAID to lash out money on establishing these new schools when the existing j-programmes are so under-resourced as it is. There are simply not enough facilities and human resources to go around all the Pacific schools. The University of the South Pacific with the only regional regional j-programme has the capacity to continue running courses for everybody, providing the industry backs USP to the hilt. Its postgraduate programme is also developing quite nicely. The sheer scale of PNG means both Divine Word (especially) and UPNG have much to offer. But UPNG needs a huge injection of assistance to get it back to anywhere near its former status as the leading j-school in the region (see my book Mekim Nius for the history). Maybe UNESCO could offer a volunteer for a two-year project as well as resources?

Pictured: Top: "Behind bars" - symbolic of post-coup Fiji today. But this is now a sign of the security times in PNG. USP's Shailendra Singh and FIT's Elia Vesikula offer us the caged look at a downtown Moresby jewellery store. Above: Earlier in the day, Vesikula and PINA's Matai Akauola left us in no doubt with Fiji TV's ownership of EmTV when they took over the news readers desk for a laugh! Photos: David Robie

• PNG minister calls for more investigative journalism for the Pacific
• Journalism school lacks resources, lecturer
• Wantok's Jada and two of his characters - Kanage and Toro

Christina Kewa tackles tough PNG issues in new book

I caught up with Christina Kewa, one of my former journo students from University of PNG days, and her husband Andy and four children over the weekend. Both Andy and Christina have been on tough assignments in recent times - she producing a new book on the rough deal faced by women in PNG; he in the construction business in Afghanistan. Now they're enjoying life a little easier at sun-baked Ruakaka, near Whangarei. Christina's book, Being a Woman in Papua New Guinea: From Grass Skirts and Ashes to Education and Global Changes, was launched at Mt Hagen not so long ago. Reporting from the Highlands town for the Post-Courier, she came face-to-face with some horrendous moments. So as a journalist she wanted to put into print some of her observations in a bid to make things better. Her book confronts and challenges issues that are currently affecting women in PNG but - as she says - "the laws and society are doing nothing about it". She adds:
I challenge our denial to education, our freedom of speech, and the fears we have of being rejected raped, abused, killed and much more as women in Papua New Guinea. The book confronts the issues, and searches for solution avenues through government and the laws of PNG. The book does not aim to degrade the men in PNG, but aims to educate, inform, and position them all as loving, respectable and honourable.
Good luck with your book, Christina.
Incidentally, on a quick online search, I noticed this quirky story in the Whangarei Leader (and a photo by Christina) about the day a fishing crew caught a wild pig at sea!

• Info about Christina's book at the Pacific Media Centre
• Ordering books? Email Christina Kewa direct
• Rip snorter catch brings home the bacon