Sustaining indigenous forests with Blockchain Technology in Papua New Guinea

REDD+ & helping reduce emissions with blockchain technology

Virgin rain forest in Papua New Guinea

By PETER S KINJAP | PNG Attitude blog

PORT MORESBY – Deforestation is responsible for up to 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is crucial for the international community to achieve its goal of keeping global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Papua New Guinea is the world’s second largest island with a landmass of 46 million hectares, of which 29 million are virgin forest. PNG is second only to Brazil in having the largest tropical rainforest still intact.

Legally, land in PNG is owned by the indigenous people. Only 3% was acquired by the government during the colonial period and 97% is recognized by the Customary Land Registration Act for customary landowners.

PNG also has large mineral deposits and currently exports gold, copper, nickel, oil, liquefied natural gas and other resources in which customary landowners are important stakeholders.

Meanwhile, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index reveals that PNG is one of the most corrupt nations in the world, much of the corruption involving illegal land grabbing.

The country’s biggest land scandal has been triggered by Special Agriculture and Business Lease (SABL) agreements. Using the pretext of promising customary landowners agricultural, the government has used many of these SABL leases for other commercial purposes.

This has all occurred without a proper policy framework in place, enabling ‘carbon cowboys’ to illegally use the land for their own purposes.

The government established a climate change office in 2010 but it soon came under public scrutiny for its dubious activities and was condemned by international observers.

According to leaked documents, the government pre-sold carbon credits for almost four years prior to 2009 without a framework being in place or proper legal documentation.

A gardening site near the Kuk heritage area  in Western Highlands Province

In 2014, the climate change office changed its name to the Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA), with new management taking over.

The hope was to curb out corruption and implement an agreement known as REDD+, a global effort to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and to foster conservation, sustainable forest management and enhancement of forest carbon stocks

Even though the PNG government is now trying to seize back the SABL leases and return the land to customary landowners, the effectiveness of this, and of CCDA, is questionable as is the implementation of REDD+.

Papua New Guinea’s greenhouse gas emissions mostly come from land use and forestry. As a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, it is a requirement that PNG reduces these emissions. But reducing emissions from deforestation and the degradation of forests will be neither cheap nor easy.

But is has been stated that, in the midst of illegal land grabbing and carbon corruption, blockchain technology can potentially be beneficial to PNG communities.

A decentralized public blockchain-based offsetting and compensation mechanism for indigenous communities in PNG to sustain their forested land with REDD+ mitigation instruments is already mooting to the aid of indigenous landowners.

Scheduled to be officially launched this year, T4G PNG project is an autonomous nonprofit private project designed to implement REDD+ programs in Papua New Guinea.

With REDD+, it provides a distributed ledger payment mechanism to assist landowners gets their royalty payment in full and provides accountability and transparency on the transactions.

With a secured database to house big data on customary land in PNG with genealogical links to their bloodlines, sacred sites, linages, maps and traditional significant sites. By far, it remains as an alternative source of ILG data and customary land title information on a digital platform. 

Acts as an escrow to collect donations from travelers worldwide and provide incentives to indigenous landowners to sustain the standing forests and planting new trees.

The T4G PNG project also act as the plaintiff in the environmental damage litigation against polluters and share the rewards with other plaintiffs including ILGs and indigenous communities as well as providing a consensus mechanism of ILG members to nominate and elect individual members to have legitimacy of ILG land title investment decisions. 

No customary land is individually owned and thus this project provides the platform required to assist for consensus decision making.

 ILGs comprised of many people who own the land and thus the land title which can be easily tempered with by individuals and thus a consensus decision needed to be made for deals in investments of and with the title.            

Overall, T4G PNG is a digital platform (supported by IPCI and Airalab) to implement REDD+ programs in Papua New Guinea in association with CCDA for UNFCCC.

Peter S Kinjap is a freelance writer and an advocate for the T4G PNG project. For more information and technical detail you can email Peter here: pekinjap@gmail.com

 

Addressing the threat of climate change in Papua New Guinea

By PETER S. KINJAP | PNG ATTITUDE BLOG

PORT MORESBY – The earth experienced very warm periods 50 to 70 million years ago and very cold periods 600,000 years ago and most people are aware that the climate is changing again.

But this time the change is not caused by extreme volcanic periods or projects from space colliding with earth. It is anthropogenic – created by us, the people who live on the planet.

The history of climate science is relatively recent. The first scientist to publish on the subject was the Swede Svante Arrhenius in 1896 who hypothesised that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions would be large enough to cause global warming.

Nearer to the present, a report published in 1979 predicted that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would double from pre-industrial levels by about 2035. Today it is expected this will happen by about 2050. A doubling of carbon dioxide will lead to an average warming of the planet of 2°C to 3°C.

The temperature at the polar regions will increase by approximately 12°C and the tropics by less than 1°C. These forecasts are being seen in the record melting of Arctic Sea ice.

For Papua New Guinea, the 2011 Pacific Climate Change science program reported temperatures would rise between 0.4°C and 1.0°C by 2030.

Kavulik village on Tsoi Island in New Island Province is already showing signs of climate change evident in the rise of sea levels.

In Bougainvlle Province, living no more than 1.5-meters above sea level, Carteret Islanders have been some of the first people to succumb to rising ocean tides and are giving the world its first recorded climate refugees. Spokeswoman Ursula Rakova says the encroaching tides have had a major impact on people's health.

"We're beginning to get more requests for people wanting to move because of the situation worsening due to increase water levels and the dire need for food on the island," she said.

The Carterets people have secured land for new homes on the Bougainville mainland. Land was made available from the Catholic Church, enough to resettle about 100 people from 10 families.

But the access to safety and secure land is only half the battle. “The elderly people do not want to move,” Rakova says. And funds for new housing have also proved to be a major hurdle.

Ms Rakova says the islanders want to maintain their independent way of life and need more support.

"The islanders on the Carterets are victims of what other people have caused and the international community needs to aid and support the work that we are doing," she says.

Sea levels are rising at 7 mm a year in the vicinity of PNG, double the global average of 2.8 - 3.5mm a year.

Regions like Momase are wetter and the roads of Morobe and the Highlands provinces will continue to require increased maintenance. The rainfall in Lae has increased by approximately 500mm per annum, or nearly 11%.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and increasing forest restoration will be extremely important in limiting global warming to 2°C.

Forests represent one of the best and most cost effective climate solutions available. Action to conserve, sustainably manage and restore forests can contribute to economic growth, poverty alleviation, rule of law, food security, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation.

But forests get too little attention as a potential solution to climate change. There are just two paragraphs in the Paris Climate Agreement about forests. A third paragraph is about finance for protecting forests.

And the Paris Agreement makes no mention of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground, which is most likely the only way we can prevent climate chaos.

The carbon trading mechanism known as REDD+ could offset continued emissions from burning fossil fuels by discouraging deforestation.

Benoit Bosquet of the World Bank said the goal is to jump-start a forest carbon market that tips the economic balance in favour of conserving forests.

But carbon trading does not reduce emissions. At best it simply transfers emissions reduced in one part of the world to continued pollution elsewhere.

To prevent climate chaos, two things need to happen: reduced greenhouse emissions and an end to deforestation.

In 2003, the World Bank offered PNG a US$17 million loan if the country closed down its notoriously corrupt logging industry.

A few years later, Kevin Conrad’s MBA thesis at Columbia University concluded that the revenue from carbon credits could equal the revenue from logging in PNG.

Now, a smart project to sustain tropical rainforests by providing incentives to indigenous landowners has emerged through the T4G PNG project in association with PNG Climate Change and Development Authority – which have developed a digital platform for implementing REDD+ programs.

*Peter S Kinjap is a freelance writer and a blogger in Papua New Guinea, email pekinjap@gmail.com

REDD+ awareness in PNG with T-shirt. Image credit. T4G PNG project (1)

REDD+ awareness in PNG with T-shirt. Image credit. T4G PNG project (2)

REDD+ awareness in PNG with T-shirt. Image credit. T4G PNG project

Sea water and people in New Ireland. Image supplied.

Shortage of food is an impact of climate change. Kevieng Market. Image supplied

The sea and forests in PNG. Image Credit. T4G PNG project

Tropical forest in PNG. pic by Eddie Wilson Pungal.

Weather  patterns change unpredictably in the highlands of PNG. Image credit. T4G PNG project

Local Environment in Morobe Province. Image Credit. T4G PNG project

Papua New Guinea ready to address Climate Change issues

PAPUA New Guinea is well advanced in its preparations and efforts towards addressing issues concerning forestry and climate change compared to other Pacific nations, an official says.

The chief technical adviser to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, Dr Hitofumi Abe, said this in Port Moresby during a national stakeholder consultation workshop on PNG’s first biennial update report.

According to the Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA), the report (BUR) contained updates of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories (statistics of emissions from all sectors of the economy) and provided vital information on climate change mitigation actions, needs and challenges and the support received in the country.

The report is expected to be presented to the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards the end of this year and is in line with PNG meeting its obligations under the Paris Agreement.

Abe said the report was important because it contained information that PNG could rely on with confidence and convenience to negotiate and seek assistance to address impacts of climate change.

“Information is power and with the first BUR being completed for the country, PNG now has a very strong information that can assist the country to negotiate for climate financiers, assistance from donors and multilateral partners and from other countries,” he said.

“It is indeed a milestone achievement for PNG.

“I can say that PNG is well advanced in its preparations and efforts towards addressing issues concerning forestry and climate change compared to other Pacific Island nations.”

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) was pleased to assist Papua New Guinea with the report, said JICA representative Takeshi Enoki said.

Source: The National newspaper