Greenpeace Papua New Guinea says the government's international push for a carbon-trading initiative is at odds with its massive concessions to logging companies.
PNG could earn hundreds of millions of dollars for reducing its rainforest destruction if the carbon-trading initiative it proposed last year makes headway this week at the UN Climate Talks in Kenya.
Under the initiative, countries are rewarded with carbon credits for reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas of which potent amounts are released into the atmosphere in deforestation.
Greenpeace's Dorothy Tekwie says she doesn't know which tracts of forest the Somare government plans to use for carbon trade because they've already committed most of it to logging.
"It's a bit too late for the Somare government to go to the international community and push for carbon trade when they have already issued concessions to these international logging companies. It means that the government now will have to deal with the legal issues that the companies will now be bringing up for loss of logging or loss of business because the government has changed its position."
