Solonon Islands forest is he

signed over for clear telling

THE government of the Solomon Islands has signed over 10,000 hectares of rainforest land on Vangunu Island in Marovo Lagoon to the logging company Syl vania Timber Products at a special ceremony in Honiara.

This is despite the Government’s pre vious promise to await the outcome of an intensive area-wide planning process that has been looking at economic alternatives to Sylvania’s oil palm plantation propos al.

Sylvania is proposing to clear fell some 6,000 hectares of land, known as Lot 16, to establish an oil palm plantation.

The company has also expressed inter est in extending the oil palm plantation into surrounding areas of virgin rainforest held under customary tenure.

Oil palm, which is grown for its oil by product, is notorious throughout the Pacific because it wipes out native forests, strips soils of nutrients and pollutes near by rivers and reefs through soil run-off.

The signing-over ceremony at Parliament House took place despite strong opposition from the landowners represented by the Marovo Butubutu Development Founda tion and the Marovo Council of Chiefs. The landowners have fought Sylvania’s plan to clear fell Lot 16 for the past three years.

The Marovo Butubutu Development Foundation and Marovo Council of Chiefs argue that clear-felling the land will have dramatic environmental impacts including high levels of soil erosion on land and silta tion of Marovo Lagoon which is being pro posed for listing as a World Heritage site.

They are also concerned about oil palm’s high nutrient demand that is likely to deplete the weathered volcanic soils of the island, increasing the need for massive doses of nitrate and phosphate fertilisers.

The people fear that the fertiliser would leach straight through the topsoil and into the coral-rich lagoon where it would gener ate ecologically dangerous levels of eutrophication. WWF, through its five year-old Community Resource Conserva tion and Development project has been

working with the Marovo landowners to research alternative developments for Lot 16. Proposals include sustainable agricultural and forestry alternatives such as replanting the areas Sylvania has already logged with Balsa (a high value export commodity that requires no indus trial infrastructure, bulldozers or roads unlike oil palm); growing high value fruit and vegetables for domestic and tourist markets; and developing the ecotourism potential of Marovo Lagoon. 'Only a very few of the landowners of Marovo were made aware of the intended sign over. At a meeting in May with Solomon prime minister, Bartholomew Ulufa’alu, the landowners were assured that no decision would be made until the Gov ernment received an alternative develop ment proposal agreed by all the Marovo landowners. However, since then, there has been major civil unrest in the country arising from long-held tensions between the Maiaitan and Guadalcanal communi ties. This led to the imposition of a State of Emergency which is still in force. ■