The portable sawmill and other challenges to REDD+ in Papua New Guinea

The future for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is uncertain. Logging companies have been accessing land via a controversial legal framework called Special Agricultural Business Lease, while conservation non-government organisations are struggling to find schemes to stop the deforestation. REDD+ has been the new favoured approach. However, there are as yet only a few pilot projects, several of which are in areas without large-scale logging. Whether REDD+ has a future in PNG is difficult to know. It may come to share the fate of the portable sawmill – a technology previously assumed to promote sustainable community logging, but is now adopted by the commercial logging industry and providing new challenges to conversation efforts. This article argues that to understand the possibility for successfully implementing REDD+, it is necessary to look at the development of the forestry sector in the widest possible terms. This involves analysing the different competing actors, technologies and forms of social organisation that are employed to gain control of species deemed valuable to either conservation or commercial resource exploitation.