Less than two weeks before the Papua New Guinea (PNG) general election, the campaign to prevent millions of hectares of rainforests being handed over to logging companies while bypassing indigenous landowners has taken to the Internet, and become an election issue.

While few individuals have direct access to the Internet, a targeted e-mail campaign providing scanned copies of leaked documents and investigative background information is proving a powerful tool in the hands of media-savvy activists.

"If you feel angry about the lack of government action on illegal logging in Papua New Guinea, write to the newspapers and to the prime minister, and make sure the candidate you vote for in the election is committed to closing down all illegal logging projects," the feisty landowner support group, Forest Watch, urges in an e-mail bulletin.

Malaysian company

The efforts of groups like Forest Watch have been fuelled by the inability of PNG's Prime Minister, Sir Mekere Morauta, to take action to overturn a series of government approvals of logging licenses without the agreement of landowners.

At the centre of the furore is the Kiunga-Aiambak logging project by the Malaysian company Concord Pacific, which has been clouded in controversy ever since it was approved a decade ago.

As part of the venture, a road originally touted as a regional 'development project' in reality has become little more than a rough temporary road. Begun in May 1995, the road zigs and zags its way through over 180km of rainforests. The real value of the arterial road lies in the network of vein-like tracks into the commercially valuable forests.

Two weeks ago, Morauta condemned the project after international environmental group Greenpeace occupied a barge destined for overseas markets with logs from the controversial project, stalling its departure.

In a statement Morauta said the Kiunga-Aiambak project "should never have occurred".

PNG's forest industry is no stranger to controversy. In 1988 Justice Barnett undertook a Commission of Inquiry into the forest industry. While the inquiry was under way Barnett himself was almost stabbed to death and the records of the National Forest Authority were destroyed in a fire.

Robber barons

In his damning report Barnett wrote that some of the logging companies "are now roaming the countryside with self-assurance of robber barons; bribing politicians and leaders, creating social disharmony and ignoring laws in order to gain access to, rip out, and export the last remnants of ... valuable timber."

In the 14 years since Barnett's report, there have been major revisions to the law laying down better procedures. However, as the scale of logging of the world's third largest remaining areas of rainforests has escalated, so too has the flouting of landowner rights and environmental protection measures.

A review in 2000 of the allocation of forest concession in PNG found that the Concord Pacific project did not comply with legal requirements, Morauta said. However, the government had to confront a legal hurdle in the form of an injunction Concord Pacific gained when the Forest Authority, the government agency regulating the timber industry, first attempted to stop the road in 1999.

Morauta directed his Attorney-General, Francis Damem, to intervene in a court case on May 17 in an attempt to calm landowners frustrated by the logging of their ancestral lands.

"I have a strong personal commitment to the forestry reforms and to a responsible and sustainable industry that benefits all Papua New Guineans, especially resource owners", Morauta said in his statement.

Net activism

Despite the direction, no lawyer from the Attorney-General's department bothered to appear and the case has now been adjourned indefinitely. Faced with inaction by the government, Internet activism has flourished. Ever since, background documents and scanned images of leaked government approvals have been flying around the Internet.

While Internet election activism is relatively new to PNG, it taps into the power of the ''word of mouth networks'' in the country's myriad of small communities.

With over three thousand candidates vying for a fraction of the seats — many endorsed by more than one political party — swaying a few handfuls of voters may well tip the scales against candidates seen as unresponsive to landowners' concerns.

Last December, Concord Pacific gained another logging permit, without going through the procedures specified in the Forestry Act.

The permit allows it to log for 3km on either side of an 831km-long road corridor. While the 6km-wide strip is attractive in itself, the real prize is the 2.7 million hectares of forests in eight unallocated concessions that straddle the road corridor. Ever since this was discovered, scanned copies of the permit have been circulating via e-mail.

The PNG Eco-Forestry Forum, a coalition of community groups promoting low volume, high value eco-forestry, worries that decisions allocating landowners forests in a pre-election blitz will prove hard to overturn later.

"Illegal permits may later prove very difficult to overturn ... If nothing is done, the last remaining scraps of forest will very soon be allocated," said Eco-Forestry Forum spokesman Tim King.