The confronting truth behind the carbon trade in Papua New Guinea | Four...

It has been a while since I last pen some words on my blog. I feel the passion to write again in my veins therefore my brains are figuring out what topic would I be penning my thoughts about? 

I just came away from watching a documentary on 4 corners about Carbon Trading in PNG. Still a foreign concept and much is yet to be understood in this nation about this topic. PNG is plague by logging companies who come in and rape our virgin forest and loot whatever they can land their hand on and then leave our villagers in a much worst state than before. Now we have another lot of greedy foreign companies who are coming in this time, to exploit the people on their lack of knowledge and understanding of carbon trading and then leave them with a meagre income in the form of compensation. To the mind of an innocent village they feel logging gave them more tangible development than carbon trade which should not be the case. But because they are greedy much of what they get does not pass onto the hand of the little people.

I shudder at the way they roll out their awareness of the program, printing literature in pidgin and thinking that it is appropriate for the people to read and understand. How can a ordinary villager understand what carbon trade is? He/She has not idea of how to read and write even if they do they don't have the capacity to comprehend a subject like that. In their own simple words they said "you katim diwai and kisim win blo em" (you cut the tree and suck air out of it) Should you not engage local personal who could explain this concept in more detail and at a level that they can grasp the concept?  As corporate companies who have a social responsibility to global citizens in any nation you would think they know better.

It saddens me that even the government is not involved at that level and foreign companies are coming in and discussing matters directly with the locals. One would think that as responsible companies they will do the right thing and ensure that proper checks and balances are put in place so not to capitalize on the ignorance of the village people. Most developing nation have corrupt governments and so that is why multinationals are expected to have a level of responsibility that tries to eliminate that risk.

They make money which is kept in off shore accounts giving penance to the locals. They make  millions from other global brands having absolutely no idea that this fancy salesman is exploiting innocent people in developing nations. If we though colonialism has left us it has only changed it's disguise and came back in another format to deprive our people of what is rightfully ours.

It is time we locals start speaking up boldly against corrupt foreigner companies and individuals and not allow them to capitalize on the ignorance of so many innocent local people.

I also take time to thank ABC and 4 corners for this report. We need more of these foreign investigative journalism to put theses multinationals on spot so they do the right thing for the little people. They wont get away in their developed world but they would in developing nations if such stories go unreported.