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Fuelwood and other Traditional Wood Usage
from PNGAF MAGAZINE ISSUE # 9D 2 of 15th October 2021 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PNG'S FOREST MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
by rbmccarthy
Fuelwood and other Traditional Wood Usage
In PNG, outside of the 10 % of land area under possible legal concession, there is much other wood produced, which is unaccounted for in any country statistical database, and which does not attract any taxation charges. FAO in 1976, with a then PNG population of some 2 million people, estimated that annual fuelwood usage alone would be some 3.7 million cubic metres. Other traditional uses of wood including village house building and canoe construction could easily account for another 500,000 cubic metres of wood annually,
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Photo left Cloudy Bay Timber Area 2005. Photo credit Dick McCarthy.
Markham Valley fuel wood A. mangium. Photo credit Dick McCarthy 1995.
Construction of Lakatoi Papa Lea Lea north of Port Moresby. –double hulled sailing watercraft Hiri Trade. Photo Credit Dick McCarthy 2009.
FAO reported in 2020, that many PNG citizens (over 80 percent) live in rural areas and depend on wood for their energy requirements, especially for cooking and heating. Even for the remainder of the population living in urban areas, wood continues to be an important part of their cooking and heating needs.
With increasing costs of electricity and cooking gas (LPG), many urban populations resort to wood for their energy requirements. The result is that forests close to urban areas, such as the capital city of Port Moresby and other cities and towns, are being cut and sold as firewood in local markets either in the city or on the fringes of the city. Currently, in the Highlands Region of the country, there is a problem with scarcity of wood supplies for heating and cooking.
Extension programmes by the Government to encourage people to plant trees and woodlots in the early 1970s and 1980s have largely been abandoned, thereby resulting in less wood being available for domestic purposes. Apart from domestic use of wood as a source of energy for cooking and domestic heating, wood is also used in the agriculture sector, especially for hot air drying of copra, tea, and other agricultural commodities. Up to now there have been no policies or regulations in place to address the use of wood as a source of energy.
