"At current rates of deforestation, more than half of the country's forests could be lost or seriously degraded by 2021, according to a new satellite study of the region.[28] Nearly one quarter of Papua New Guinea's rainforests were damaged or destroyed between 1972 and 2002."
This is what happens when indigenous peoples are taken away from their land. They wind up being given nothing and they become impoverished without being able to subsist like they have for countless millennium.
I always wonder about this narrative of foolish brown skinned "natives" signing their lives and land away to tricky white skinned industrialists. Even though it was only a generation ago, the fathers of the men being interviewed in the beginning of the film may be buying into the idea without critical reflection.
I don't know if there was an indigenous system of enforcing signed contracts through violence in Papua New Guinea, but there certainly was one in Australia.
My point is that the story really isn't about the signature...
There could be violent coercion going on. It wouldn't surprise me. The point is that the government is so corrupt it goes along with whatever the logging companies want to do unless Australia comes up with money for police enforcement. I also found out that Papua is becoming a major sex trafficking country for slaves bound to the Philippines and Thailand.
This country was virtually untouched by modern society just a generation ago and now it has all this shit to deal with. It's monstrous to go in and destroy native culture and profit off of it and the fact that it is still happening today in a way that utterly enslaves everyone there is horrifying.
Saying "enforcing signed contracts through violence" is kind of redundant. That's how you always enforce contracts. The underpinning of the law is the fact that men paid by the state will beat the shit out of anyone who doesn't follow the law.
This is is disgusting... I was reading recently in "collapse" by Jared Diamond how the new Guinea highlanders had one of the few sustainable societies based on a unique form of silviculture (cultivating trees) they had developed. I liked to think that after western society goes to shit they will still be fine living as they have been... yeah, thats not gonna happen, of course we will grab whatever few resources are left on the planet before we fall.
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