The Greens' tropical rainforest campaign
Go to Deforestation is, or should be, one of the world's biggest concerns, and is thought to contribute about 20 percent of human-made carbon emissions world-wide.
The loss of tropical forests is even more tragic as they are believed to contain more than half the earth's plant and animal species.
About half also of the world's mature tropical forests ie between 700-800m ha of the once 1.5m — 1.6 billion ha that once covered the planet have been felled.
Tropical forests are disappearing at an accelerating rate - about 15 million hectares a year right now - and, unless this is checked, by 2030 there will be only 10 to 20 percent of the original — this will mean the irreversible loss of thousands of plant and animal species.
We often champion our success in indigenous forest conservation in New Zealand while turning a blind eye to deforestation in our neighbouring Asian-Pacific region where our role is too often in importing rainforest timbers or financing deforestation operations.
A campaign is needed to make New Zealanders aware of how New Zealand and Australia help cause unsustainable and illegal logging of ancient forests in the Pacific and Asia; the dire long-term implications this has on climate change, and the immediate deaths and displacement of wildlife that occur due to our importation of tropical kwila furniture, which we believe comes mostly from Papua New Guinea and West Papua.
Few campaigns we have run are matters of "future of life on earth" to the extent this one is.
Why South East Asia and Melanesia are important
Forest loss is particularly acute in South East Asia which is the second biodiversity "hot spot" of the world after the Amazon.
Papua New Guinea has the third largest surviving rainforest on earth, with the world's greatest diversity of orchids, the world's smallest parrot and largest butterfly (and it is one of the rarest: Queen Alexandra's birdwing) and more than 500 species of mammals incl. 18 species of tree kangaroo.
Indigenous peoples are trying to live in the forests amidst the devastation. In 2002 the Penan people of Sarawak, Borneo, documented abuses they had suffered from loggers in the "Long Sayan Declaration". But the logging and displacement continues.
Greens Co-Leader Rod Donald met Omanie Sakapeso of PNG in February 2004 in NZ as part of a Greenpeace-organised tour. The PNG land-owners' representative said he was deeply distressed that big corporates were illegally stealing timber from his family and from other indigenous land-owners.
There are many reports from both PNG and West Papua of people still being forced to sign logging agreements at gunpoint or under other duress and of physical abuse of local people by militias employed by logging companies.
Who is doing the logging?
The main "players" in SE Asian and Melanesian forest and wildlife destruction are a few huge corporates who, according to Greenpeace, hide their involvement through subsidiaries, partnerships and the "laundering " of timber products to China (where they are on-sold to Western countries such as Australia and NZ).
Last year the Australian Conservation Foundation tried unsuccessfully to stop ANZ financially supporting one of the largest of these corporates, Rimbunan Hijau, (RH) in Papua New Guinea where Rimbunan Hijau is the main logger of virgin rainforests.
Rimbunan Hijau is working on both sides of the PNG-West Papua border transporting heavy equipment to and fro as required. There are human rights abuses involving RH on both sides of the border.
Rimbunan Hijau is prominent also in Borneo, where the last habitat of the rare orangutan has been gradually destroyed.
After the campaign by the Australian Conservation Foundation and others last year, ANZ promised a Forests and Biodiversity policy. This policy was supposed to be made public in March this year but has been watered down to a Forests policy which has yet to be released by the bank. ANZ is still supporting Rimbunan.
ANZ should cut all links with Rimbunan Hijau because of RH's appalling logging and human rights practices in South East Asia and Melanesia.
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