Video

Deforestation is, or should be, one of the world's biggest concerns, and is thought to contribute about 20 percent of human-made carbon emissions world-wide. The loss of tropical forests is even more tragic as they are believed to contain more than half the earth's plant and animal species. New Zealanders aware of how New Zealand and Australia help cause unsustainable and illegal logging of ancient forests in the Pacific and Asia; the dire long-term implications this has on climate change, and the immediate deaths and displacement of wildlife that occur due to our importation of tropical kwila furniture, which we believe comes mostly from Papua New Guinea and West Papua. The main "players" in SE Asian and Melanesian forest and wildlife destruction are a few huge corporates who, according to Greenpeace, hide their involvement through subsidiaries, partnerships and the "laundering " of timber products to China (where they are on-sold to Western countries such as Australia and NZ). Last year the Australian Conservation Foundation tried unsuccessfully to stop ANZ financially supporting one of the largest of these corporates, Rimbunan Hijau, (RH) in Papua New Guinea where Rimbunan Hijau is the main logger of virgin rainforests. The Green Party of Aotearoa NZ believes that ANZ should cut all links with Rimbunan Hijau because of RH's appalling logging and human rights practices in South East Asia and Melanesia.