To mine or not to mine Kokoda
By KAEPAE KEN AIL
THERE is growing concern among both Papua New Guineans and foreigners over the future of the Kokoda Track following reports that there are some quarters which wish to develop parts of it.
The Kokoda Track is well known and has been a historical landmark of Papua New Guinea and Australia.
It holds much emotion for both countries and continues to be a pillar of the bilateral relationship.
One question the Australian public could ask is; does the Australia and PNG relationship hinge on the Kokoda Track or modern trade and bilateral relationship?
For sure, the newly-elected prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, will not allow it to be destroyed in the name of development.
PNG tends to deny the fact that the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels have a special place in our history and play a key role in our political and economic developments.
With the Julian Moti affair still fresh in our minds, the National Government appears careful in its dealings with the Rudd government.
Our Government has been tight-lipped over the Kokoda Track issue.
It appears to be caught between its objectives of promoting the mining industry and keeping our historical ties with Australia.
It has not come out clear on many aspects on the issue and some stakeholders have accused it of compromising our country’s sovereignty.
Local landowners are seemingly upset that the Government has not renewed Exploration Licence No 1348 held by Frontier Resources, an Australian-based company.
This is an economic problem which attracts a political solution.
Water, bush materials, fresh air and wildlife do not remain under the confines of the Kodu landowners alone.
Kokoda has been enjoyed by all people living along the trail, Papua New Guineans and foreigners.
Frontier Resources asserts that if it is allowed to carry out mining in the area, the operation will bring substantial net benefits to local communities.
Unfortunately, the company is encroaching into a blood-stained region where resource services become public goods, tied to local communities, the Australian and PNG people.
PNG has no clear policies on public land use to protect historical and cultural lands and there is a huge legislative loophole governing the recognition of protected land use such as Kokoda Track.
In Australia, all national parks and cultural sites are protected by the Australian Heritage Commission (AHC) Act.
The PNG Government is unable to make an independent stand as an independent nation, and any feasible solution is unlikely.
It is apparent that market forces of the commodity in question will override other concerns.
The Kokoda Track is open to entry by any interested poachers, so Frontier was not at fault when it was granted the EL No 1348.
Since market values of the Kokoda Track and minerals in the ground will determine a prudent solution, it is a question of natural resource utilisation to Kokoda people and PNG during mineral extraction.
Quantifying aggregate benefits is quite difficult but by the way of discounting, the Kokoda Track presents higher net value than mining in the long run.
The PNG Tourism Promotion Authority forecasted that some 100,000 tourists could visit Kokoda alone.
Fronter Resources has claimed that 80% of tourism receipts would go to Australian tour operators, airlines and hotels.
On the other hand, it said that over 5% of the US$10.6 billion in situ value would go directly into the Kokoda economy.
A consistent income injection into the Kokoda economy spanning over 100 years favours the option to preserve the Kokoda Track, compared with mining for some finite years.
Mining now will accelerate resource extraction and thereby would be at the expense of our children.
Generally, the value of the in situ minerals will decrease due to increasing cost of extraction in the future and today’s in situ price levels (high or low) will never be realised in the future.
Landowners want mining to begin now and there is nothing wrong with their demand because conceptually, mining tends to favour the current generation, negating all other possibilities.
With mining, there is low net value over a 100-year period depicting diminishing benefits over time but high value in favour of the present generations.
In contrast to mining, the Kokoda Track benefits do not decline but will continue in a cyclic fashion annually, even beyond the mine’s life.
The net benefits generated each year by the existence of the Kokoda Track is far less compared to huge inflows of benefits during a finite mine life.
Likewise the local people’s income per capita will increase with the development of the Kodu mine but sustainability of the income per capita depends on consumption patterns and investment decisions of the benefactors.
As prevalent with most of the mining regions in PNG, landowners are irresponsible with benefits from mining.
There is high consumption of goods and services and less of wealth generated by mining re-investment into productive sectors.
Whatever the economical or political decisions, there must be sustainable outcomes for the local Kokoda communities, PNG economy and its relations with Australia.
If the mine is designed with the best global environmental practice, then tourism and mining could coexist as suggested by Frontier.
Supposedly for some political reason, which always prevails at the end of the day, that the Government seeks to preserve Kokoda at the opportunity cost of US$10.6 billion ground value mineral, it must be an independent and a prudent decision.
The Government could set up a Kokoda Heritage Commission Act to protect Kokoda until such time that mining could be allowed.
In 1992, Australia had 30% of the world’s easily-accessible uranium but due to opposition, output from three existing mines was restricted.
These uranium mines were Narbalek (Queensland), Roxby Downs (South Australia) and Ranger Mines.
Such lesson provides PNG with some possible alternatives in making informed decisions.
If the Government does not renew the EL No 1348, it may give the wrong signal to the mining world that historical sites in PNG are no-go for mineral exploration.
This will erode the international competitiveness of the mining industry.
Then there is also the threat of the landowners have (at the time of this article) already blocked the Kokoda Track.
The persistent public protests by the Kodu landowners may jeopardise the future existence of the Kokoda Track.
Thus, no mining means no Kokoda, both of which will have consequences.
This analysis shows the Kokoda Track has higher value in the long term but not in the short term. Mining Mt Bini offers higher benefits in the short term but not in the long term.
At the national level, the new mine will expand the country’s production of goods and services.

Note: The writer is a lecturer in mining and engineering at the University of Technology.

 

Preserving our environment for the future
YESTERDAY, March 10, was Commonwealth Day. For two billion Commonwealth citizens, it was a day to share and a day to celebrate.
Yet to share is not always to celebrate.
Our theme this year, ‘The environment – our future’, reminds us that we have a responsibility to share all that is good about the environment today with the generations of tomorrow.
If we forget about future generations today, they will never be able to forget – or to forgive – what we did to them, tomorrow. To bequeath a barren and polluted landscape is to disinherit.
The science is clear: our current exploitation of this planet’s environment is unsustainable.
We cannot move away from the problems we have created, or wish them away. To carry on unchanged is not an option.
More than 50 years ago, Mahatma Gandhi said: “There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need, but not for man’s greed.”
Today, we cannot be certain that there will after all be a sufficiency for humankind’s basic development needs, unless there is fundamental change by all.
Long before it was fashionable last century, the Commonwealth had already entered the debate about a world that was changing before our eyes.
A far-reaching Commonwealth report in the 1980s led to the 1989 Langkawi Declaration on the environment, in which our heads of government said “any delay in taking action to halt this progressive deterioration will result in permanent and irreversible damage”.
It was also in the 1980s that Maldives used the Commonwealth to raise the alarm that it was disappearing underwater.
Since then, while the world has struggled to agree international action plans, Commonwealth environmental challenges have got greater.
We see them in shrinking rainforests, made worse by unsustainable logging practices in Asia and the Pacific; in dwindling fish stocks in the Atlantic and other oceans; in a thawing of the tundra in northern Canada; in encroaching desert in northern Nigeria; in flooded lowlands in Bangladesh; and in rising sea levels around Tuvalu.
We also see the environmental challenges of the future, caused by rapid urbanisation and the growth of slums, which are now home to 300 million Commonwealth citizens.
The bill for industrialisation in the developed countries is only now arriving, and it is bigger than we could ever have expected.
An even bigger bill will come if other countries follow, and so we must find alternative paths to prosperity.
Real development lies in the best use of our natural as well as our human resources: it is development without damage.
How is the Commonwealth to react? We must respond in word and deed.
We must do so through using our coalitions of governments; of civil society organisations; of businesses; of professional associations like the Commonwealth geographers, foresters, statisticians and meteorologists; of families and individuals.
Our environment ministers have agreed a new Commonwealth-wide strategy to fight climate change.
Our finance ministers have agreed on the need to bring climate considerations into every aspect of government policy and financing, including putting a greater focus on the economics and the financial implications of climate change, and on richer countries’ obligations to help poorer ones, both financially and technologically.
On the shores of Lake Victoria last November, our heads of government agreed the Commonwealth Action Plan on Climate Change: a serious political commitment supported by practical actions to tackle the impact of climate change.
We are already active – helping to manage fish stocks in the Pacific Ocean, for instance, and supporting sustainable tourism in West Africa and the Caribbean.
Our advisers are developing marine and coastal resources in Guyana, Mozambique and Papua New Guinea; meteorological data services in Botswana; and flood and coastal management plans in Seychelles. The work will go on.
Commonwealth citizens can play their own part: reducing, repairing, re-using and recycling.
Businesses can help us to improve energy conservation and efficiency in manufacturing, transport systems, buildings and homes.
We can act collectively, and across borders, to protect forests, have clean water, and manage pollutants and other wastes.
As 53 countries, we can build the national and international institutions involved in our environmental protection, and strengthen the laws and the education programmes, which help us to take action.
It is perfectly possible to change the way we behave, in order to share our resources and live within our means.
Let us sow the seeds of good environmental stewardship.
The environment is our inheritance to cherish – it is our past and our present. And it is, more than anything else, our future.
Let us ensure through our actions that future generations have an even better environmental inheritance – to share, and to celebrate.
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