Conflict of interest? Business as usual? A matter of concern? I guess it all comes down to who you ask. We at RAN recently sponsored a environmental advocate and impacted landowner from Milne Bay, PNG to come to the US to speak about her experiences with oil palm expansion and carbon trading in Papua New Guinea.

Matilda Pilacapio brought with her testimonials and photographs of the struggles small shareholders are having with ecological destruction and debt at Cargill's massive oil palm operations in Milne Bay.

She also brought a little heard first person perspective on the tumultuous process PNG is experiencing with carbon trading. Matilda stressed the likelihood that carbon trading schemes will be subject to the dangers of transfer pricing, where corporations and government actors receive kickbacks and under-the-table payments for selling PNG's natural resources, in this case carbon, at lower than market prices, filling their pockets while further exploiting local people and PNG taxpayers. Matilda pointed to a long history of transfer pricing in the forestry sector in PNG as a precedent.

Although James Kond and Carbon Planet want us to believe they are just following normal business procedures, the recent reporting by Gridneff for the AAP shows that carbon speculators are establishing government connections to find a way to line their pockets, not to implement carbon projects that will reduce deforestation in PNG's tropical forests.

You can see a full interview with Matilda on oil palm and carbon trading over at Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0925-png-palm-oil.html

David Gilbert
Research Fellow, RAN