Institutional Forestry Development

Institutional Forestry Development

Responsibility for the administration and development of the forest resources of Papua New Guinea and control of its forest industry was vested in the Department of Forests under powers conferred by the Forestry (New Guinea) Ordinance 1936-62 and the Forestry (Papua) Ordinance 1936-62 and the Forestry regulations as amended.

TPNG Department of Forests 1961 Log Measurement (Full Volume) Tables Super Feet regulation 35 (1) Forestry Ordinance.

Nearly all forest in PNG is grown on customary-owned land. The Department of Forests after 1945 had to create a forest concession system that catered for all parties i.e., landowners, government agencies and developers. For any timber to be harvested on an area, the State had first to acquire timber rights from the landowners before allocating the rights to a logging company. Prior to 1992, this was done through either the negotiation of a timber rights purchase or a local forest agreement. Since 1992, when a new Forest Act came into force, state acquisition of timber rights has been through the negotiation of forest management agreements between the PNG Forest Authority and customary owners. The territory policy for the extraction of timber from customarily owned (‘native’) forests was developed over time through the mechanism of a ‘timber rights purchase’ (TRP) agreement, which was a way of purchasing so-called ‘timber rights’ from customary owners of forests, but not alienating the land. Virtually all logging companies in the territorial period were Australian-owned or Australian-based. Some of these did a degree of processing locally, but most timber was exported as round logs. The legal framework for forest exploitation had three main elements: Timber Rights Purchase (TRP). Under this arrangement the State acquired timber rights where customary owners were willing to sell. The State then issued a permit or licence to remove the timber on agreed terms and conditions, including the payment