With palm-fringed white sand beaches and lush, biodiverse rainforests, Solomon Islands gives an impression of being extremely untouched and unspoiled. But a closer look, and you see the reality.
The South Pacific nation, along with its neighbour Papua New Guinea are the victims, of the huge costs, of the timber industry. If logging continues at the rate at which it currently is, the natural forests in the Solomon Islands stand no chance of survival in the next 15 years.
The movement of foreign-owned companies in the Pacific region, clearing large chunks of lush forests, exporting enormous quantities of timber while leaving behind social and environmental destruction, in the last few decades is the reason behind the inflicted environmental destruction of the Solomon Islands.
Being the largest exporter of wood products in the Pacific, exporting 3.3 million tonnes of wood in 2019, worth US$690 million, approximately equivalent to about 236 Eiffel Towers, Papua New Guinea exported 90% of these logs to China whereas just 4% of the total production by weight, was exported to the next largest destination, India.
Despite losing their rich natural forests to decimation by the timber industry, the Pacific countries do not receive the full value of their resources. Of the hundreds of millions of generated revenues, the forest industry in Papua New Guinea has claimed a profit of just a few million dollars.
As gathered by an investigation by the Oakland Institute, some of these timber companies ended up losing $15 for every dollar in the total declared profits.
“Remembering What Was Once My Home”
In this account of a local of one of the small islands in the Solomon Islands, House Kaisai conveys how it was like growing up amidst lush green forests that the country has now lost to the wrath of the timber industry.
In the village of Naórua, on the island of Malaita, Kaisai recollects spending his childhood swimming in clear waters and fishing for crabs, especially mud crabs that were widely available and sea cucumbers, with friends and family.
He left his village in 2012 and returned in 2020. On his return, he came home to utter devastation and felt as if doom had taken over what was once his beautiful home. What used to be floors of green forests were now covered with dried reddish-coloured mud all over. Unwanted machines and rejected logs covered the land as far as the eyes could see.
An Unsustainable Practice
Large-scale commercial logging began in the Solomon Islands in the 1980s and the country has been hooked ever since. This logging has been in practice in an unsustainable fashion for decades. In the 1990s, the sustainable harvest rate had been estimated as 3,25,000 cubic meters a year but 2017 saw the country exporting more than 3 million cubic meters of logs, with the production naturally being more than what was exported.
The country has lost around 7% of its tree cover since 2000 and according to the Ministry of Finance, if logging is prevalent at what is its current rate, all the natural forests of the Solomon Islands will cease to exist by 2036.
Logging has presented both its promises and curses to the South Pacific country. By exporting nearly 2 million tonnes of timber in 2019, the industry accounted for more than 60% of the country’s exports that year. In addition to this, the logging industry is one of the country’s largest employers.
According to Dr Edgar Pollar, Mai-Ma’asina Green Belt conservation area’s coordinator, logging has had a considerably great impact on schools and health and has generated quite vast amounts of revenue. He claims the industry to be the lifeblood of the country and that they cannot afford to cut down the same.
He attributes all the infrastructural development such as the construction of better roads and better houses in small villages such as Naórua, to the influx of cash from the timber industry.While the industry promises many benefits to the communities, they are seldom fulfilled.
Hundreds of people across different Solomon Island provinces were interviewed for a study in 2013, and the results derived indicated that agreements between logging companies and local landowners are many a time left unfulfilled, as the promises made about employment and infrastructure are often not formally written into contracts.
China, being the country to which maximum timber from the Solomon Islands is exported, has the clock ticking to protect the deteriorating condition of the Solomon Islands from which it gets its profits as well as to protect its position as a responsible trade partner.
It should ensure that the displaced and affected communities get what they are promised and that the logging is carried out in as sustainable a manner as possible. Being the main importer of logs from the Solomon Islands, it carries a responsibility to act for the benefit of the local people of the Islands.
Written by - Rishika Taneja
Edited by - Piyush Pandey
Edited by - Piyush Pandey
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