Source: Radio New Zealand
A Papua New Guinea court has ordered a block on any further work on the controversial “Pacific Marine Industrial Zone†project.
The project in Madang province, was using a multi million US dollar loan from China to develop a a free trade industrial zone, to build fish processing factories, develop port facilities, power generation and waste water processing.
But there is opposition to the project from local landowners, and the court in Madang has ordered a hold on it till next month, when it will decide whether the proposed development has sufficient legal grounds to proceed.
Radio Australia Presenter Campbell Cooney talked to Victoria Stead, Researcher with the Globalism Research Centre at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, who has been researching the PMIZ, a project which has included many visits to the area where it will be based.
Stead: There was a great deal of opposition to the project, from the moment it was proposed and that itself is rooted in long running opposition to various claims on the land that PMIZ is being built on.
Cooney: And what sort of things are we talking about?
Well originally, the site where the PMIZ is now being developed was land alienated by the Catholic Church, so going back over 100 years now. In the late 1990s, part of that land was then bought by the Papua New Guinea government and that’s the area that’s now being developed as the PMIZ. But the Papua New Guinea government’s claim over that land has always been contested by landowners in the area.
So they feel that they’re link to it would go back before it was taken over by the Catholic Church, is that right?
Absolutely. This is land that is people’s customary land and they dispute the original alienation by the church and then strongly contest the fact that the ownership of that land has now moved from the church to the PNG state and is now being developed.
Does it surprise you to see that this legal action has got up now, successful or not, but certainly that the challenge was made?
It doesn’t surprise me that legal action was taken. One of the only options that many landowners have in Papua New Guinea to contest major development is through the court, so there’s been talk of legal compensation around the PMIZ for quite awhile. What is surprising is to hear now that there is this injunction.
It’s not without its supporters this project. There are some in Madang, certainly political people who see it as a great thing and I suppose industry as well?
That’s right. The PMIZ is being hailed as a massive development for PNG and for the region in fact, and so the PNG state is trying to secure itself better access to some of the wealth and profits that have been made with the tuna industry. The PMIZ is on the north coast of PNG, and so in Madang and so that’s an area where there is a lot of tuna fishing at the moment. But what we’ve seen in recent decades, that the majority of that fishing is done by foreign owned vessels, so the PNG state receives a relatively small amount of the overall profits being made, because their profit is reliant on the receipt of fishing licenses paid by international vessels. So the PNG state in developing its own marine industrial zone is trying to get some of that that primary production happening on PNG soil, so they can hopefully start to make some more profit there. But these are the claims being made and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that in fact this will not at all be the profitable exercise that its proponents are hoping it will be.
On what grounds?
Well, there are a number of grounds. One instance is that PNG has an economic agreement with the European Union, so the EU is the world’s largest importer of fish products, both fresh products and canned and the PNG state is hoping to capitalize on its tariff and quota free access to the EU markets. But access to the EU markets also comes with extremely strict hygiene standards; that’s very unlikely that PNG would actually be able to meet. So there are a whole lot of factors like that, that really get in the way of the realization of the PMIZ proponents hope.
Is there a middle ground that could be found? They seem to have pretty strong arguments both ways, increased income, better ways of doing things, perhaps a growth in markets and traditional land and custom. There two pretty different arguments, but I’m curious if there is any thought or any discussion and if there is a middle ground?
There are certainly things that could be done an awful lot better than they are being done at the moment. There’s been a real lack of consultation, middle landowners in the areas that are being affected by the development. There is existing tuna fishing industry in Madang, a Philippines owned company, RD Tuna, currently has one cannery and also operates a wharf at the site that’s now being expanded through the PMIZ. But it’s really got an appalling history in terms of its treatment of locals, of its own workers and the region so far has seen very little actual benefits for the Madang people, for the communities that are being affected. So yes definitely, there are things that could be done better, there could be much more consultation. The administrative and regulatory systems around this just seemed to fail time and time again. All of these things could be improved, but even with those improvements, there are big doubts as to whether or not something like the PMIZ will actually have benefits for local landowners, for the ordinary people in Madang, and even for the PNG state itself.