Oro Landowners Declaration on Large Scale Commercial Extraction of Natural Resources and the Expansion
of Oil Palm Nucleus Estates

We, the representatives of all land owning communities from around the Oro province, from our deliberations at this first Oro landowners Forum on land Rights and Community Based Natural Resource Management held at Popondetta have agreed collectively to make this declaration as our commitment to ensuring sustainable resource management and the protection of our rights as the rightful owners of these resources.

Our futures as customary landowners are threatened in many ways by large scale developments which have taken place without our free, prior informed consent and full participation. Our Customary lands and the grasslands, lakes, small islands, forests and mountains which are also important and critical ecosystems have been invaded by logging, oil palm, fishing, mineral exploration and tourism developments which are undermining our survival.

Expansion and intensification of the extractive industries alongside economic liberalization, free trade aggression, extravagant consumption and globalization are frightening signals of unsustainable greed.

Urgent actions must be taken by all, to reverse the social and ecological injustice arising from the violations of our rights as customary landowners which is recognized by the PNG constitution.

We note that “sustainable development” is founded on the pillars which should be given to equal weight if such development is to be equitable namely environmental, economics and human rights.

We the customary landowners reject the myth of sustainable oil palm and mining.

We have not experienced oil palm developments and logging and mining to “ sustainable development” by any reasonable definition. Our experience and that of our fellow customary landowners in Papua New Guinea and around the world shows that expansion of monocultures including oil palm, large scale industrial logging, extraction of minerals, oil, gas, commercial fishing and large scale tourism developments bring serious social and environmental problems so widespread and injurious that we cannot describe such developments as sustainable. Indeed, rather than contributing to poverty alleviation, we find that these developments are creating poverty and social divisions in our communities and showing disrespect for our cultures and customary laws.

Key Concerns:

• The invasion of our customary land and usurpation of our resources.

• Lack of consultation and opportunities to allow us to make informed decisions over use of our lands, include surface resources and our communities and cultures are literally undermined.

• Some of our lands and forests have already been destroyed and our waters polluted by large scale oil palm developments and industrial logging.

• Large scale extractive industries including mining, logging and development of monocultures like oil palm are not transparent, withholding important information relevant to decisions affecting us.

• Consultations have been minimal and wholly inadequate measures have been taken to inform us of the consequences of these schemes before they have been embarked on.

• Consent have been engineered through bribery, threats, moral corruption and intimidation.

• Large scale industrial logging and oil palm plantations and nucleus estates have ruined our basic means of subsistence, torn up our lands, polluted our soils and waters, divided our communities and poisoned the hopes of our future generations. They increased alcoholism, drugs, prostitution, gambling and contribute to break up in marriages due to rapid chances in the local economy.

• Local women have in particular suffered from large scale industrial logging, oil palm plantation development and other cash based economies.

• Large scale resource development projects are unwilling to implement resource sharing with customary landowners on a fair and equitable basis.

• These problems reflect and compound our situation as customary landowners. Our peoples are discriminated against. Those who violate our rights do it so easily.

• Corruption and bad governance compound our struggle to promote sustainable development of our resources and to meaningfully participate in development programmes that promote just and equal distribution of benefits.

Recommendations:

In view of these experiences and in line with precautionary principles:

• We call for a moratorium on large scale industrial logging, expansion of oil palm nucleus estates and mineral extractions that may affect us. Existing concessions should be frozen. There should be no further funding by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and no new resource resource extraction industry initiative by the government and no new investments by companies until respect for customary rights, customary law, and our full and meaningful participation is assured.

• We demand that the proposed Collingwood Bay, Ioma Block 5, Gona- Itokama and Musa-Pongani FMA’s under the Oro Provincial Forest Management Plans be removed as we were not consulted and not involved in the formulation of the plan. Any logging in these areas will be termed as illegal as they are without our free, prior and informed consent.

• We demand that the government review the Agreement for the Higaturu Oil palm Project and environmental plans for the project in a bid to ensure that there is fair participation by the landowners and the company takes full responsibility for all the environmental damages, water pollution and customary lands alienated without consent of the rightful owners. The company be made to pay for all these damages which is the result of its operations for the past 26 years or more.

• The World Bank and AusAid should also be responsible for supporting this environmentally destructive and socially unjust project by providing huge sums of loans and grants to allow its expansion. They should be equally responsible for the damages caused as a result of the project and help fund the costs of clean up of the environmental damages and water pollution and support community driven development projects to alleviate poverty created as a result of the project.

• We demand respect for our customs and traditional knowledge systems, including full sovereignty over natural resources including biological and genetic resources. All projects affecting our land should be subject to our free, prior and informed consent as expressed through our own representative institutions which should be afforded legal personality. The right to free, prior and informed consent should not be construed as a ‘veto’ on development but includes our right as customary landowners to say ’no’ to projects that we consider injurious to us as peoples who have inhabited these lands since time immemorial. The right must be made effective through the provision of adequate information and implies a permanent process of negotiation between us as the rightful resource owners and the developers.

• Education and capacity building is a must as it will allow us to be trained and informed so we can participate effectively and make informed decisions on resource development.

• We demand our rights to equal and effective participation in any of development projects and government policy process of development planning and that they take full account of our rights. Given the country-wide embrace of these national strategies, we demand that agencies such as World Bank and Asian Development Bank give equal attention to the application of existing laws and regulations which upholds our rights in policy and country dialogues and financial agreements. Development agencies should give priority to protecting our rights and ensuring they are effectively implemented before facilitating access to our lands by private sector companies.

• Poverty alleviation must start from our own definition and indicators of poverty and particularly addresses the exclusion and lack of access to decision making at all levels. Rather than being lack of money, resources and services such as health and education , poverty is also defined by power deficits, absence of access to decision making and management processes. Social and ecological inequalities and injustice breed and permeate the impoverishment of local people.

• Independent and participatory environmental and social and cultural assessments must be carried out prior to start of projects and our ways of life respected throughout the project cycle, with due respect and recognition for women’s social position.

• As customary landowners, we do not reject development but we demand that our development be determined by ourselves according to our own priorities. Sustainable development for local communities is secured through the exercise of our own human and rights and enjoying the respect and solidarity of all peoples. We are thus empowered to make our contributions and play a vital role in sustainable development.

A Call for Action and Solidarity

• We call on our fellow customary landowners throughout the country, the local level, provincial and national governments; donor agencies; the private sector; NGOs and the international community to join their voices on this declaration.

• We call upon the national government, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank as well as other Bilateral donors including AusAid to uphold our recommendations and to implement them in their respective policies, programmes, projects and processes.

• We call for democratic national processes to review strategies and policies for natural resource extraction and large scale agricultural projects especially oil palm towards a re-orientation to secure sustainable developments.

• We, enjoin all customary landowners in the country and fellow indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the world, who are original inhabitants of the land and resources to unite in solidarity to address national and global threats posed by large scale resource development projects.

12th March 2004
Popondetta
Oro Province
Papua New Guinea