Papua New Guinea is home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, but the country is experiencing such rampant deforestation that more than half of its tree cover could be lost by 2021, says a new study. “Forests in Papua New Guinea are being logged repeatedly and wastefully with little regard for the environmental consequences and with at least the passive complicity of government authorities,” says researcher Phil Shearman. Papua New Guinea’s government has touted the forest’s carbon-offset potential, but that’s a bit disingenuous, says Shearman: “Government officials may claim that they wish rich countries to pay them for conserving their forests, but if they are allowing multinational timber companies to take everything that’s accessible, all that will be left will be lands that are physically inaccessible to exploitation and would never have been logged anyway.” The study predicts that some 83 percent of Papua New Guinea’s accessible forest could be damaged or gone by 2021.
