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Environmental and Social Impact Assessment: sabel Timber Company Operations on Santa Isabel Island, Solomon Islands.
The Solomon Islands achieved its independence from Britain in 1978. Customary land ownership was then formally recognised and enshrined in the Solomons' constitution. Members of landholding tribes are therefore the owners of the land. Any commercial ventures or indeed developments of any kind on customary-owned land need to be vetted and approved by customary processes before they can go ahead. Typically this involves local meetings attended by all the primary owners of the land.
Logging proposals need to undergo the same process at a customary level. But logging can go ahead only if all the owners of the land have been consulted and agreed. If ownership is disputed, then a logging proposal cannot go ahead until a local land court has been called to discuss the evidence and decide ownership. This court consists of chiefs with knowledge of local custom, assumed to have no personal interest in the decision. The decision of this court is final in Solomon law, and can only be challenged to higher courts on points of law or process.
Isabel Province is one of eight Solomons provinces, made up of the large islands of Isabel and San Jorge and several smaller islands. It is situated in the northern Solomon Islands chain, between Choiseul and Malaita. The province is 4,136 square kilometres in area, with an estimated population density of just 4 per square kilometre. With the exception of the provincial capital, Buala, which is accessible by air, most villages are located on coastal fringes. As there are virtually no roads, local communities rely heavily on small boats.
Most Isabel Islanders belong to the Church of Melanesia but there exists a continuing belief in custom magic and supernatural forces, and the elders continue to visit Tabu or sacred sites in the forest. The cash economy is undeveloped, with most people active in an extensive subsistence economy. Traditional or custom practices are strongly adhered to in the main and a rich oral history continues.
Land figures daily in the lives of the people of Isabel Province through activities such as gardening and gathering. In small villages in the assessment area adequate garden land exists to support the small population and the use of store bought produce is limited. Important additional sources of nutrition are collected from the forests all year round. With inadequate medical facilities, the forest also provides plants used by villagers for custom medicine.
The forests also provide many resources in addition to food and medicine. For most Isabel islanders they are the only source of materials for building, hunting and fishing, craft and firewood collection.
In Isabel Province, a persons right to use land comes from their membership of a line, tribe or clan. The sub-clan or vike determines the land tenure system. In most cases, the original formation of sub-clans is no longer remembered but their land areas are defined by points in the landscape, such as rivers or mountains, on lands first used by ancestors. In the past, with plenty of available land, these vaguely defined boundaries were not an issue. Today, with good garden land becoming scarcer, and the implications of commercial land use such as logging, land use disputes are increasing.
The most pressing social and environmental issues noted in Isabel Province are disputes over land rights; pressure on existing resources; an intensifying search for cash incomes and deterioration of traditional practices. These existing issues have been exacerbated by commercial logging ventures.
Background to study
A number of landowners on Isabel Island requested a survey of lands to
which they have title which were subject to commercial logging activities.
The landowners had similar tracts of land with respect to forest cover
and location and in one instance were contiguous. All of these lands were
logged by the same logging company, Isabel Timber Company (ITC). Communication
with landowners and operatives of ITC on Isabel Island indicated that
field operations and management staff were the same during the period
of forest harvesting which produced the impacts which became the primary
focus of this study. It can therefore be assumed that similar operations
were conducted across the range of sites investigated for this study.
Several land parcels were surveyed: LR 686; LR 687; LR 689; and LR 691.
(See Maps.)
Compliance with the terms of the Standard Logging Agreements (legislation governing logging companies' operations) for each of these areas was assessed along with a review of the recently Cabinet approved Code of Practice. It was therefore determined that these documents should be utilised as the baseline from which comparisons were made of current logging practices and their environmental soundness in the context of Solomon Islands logging operations. A contemporaneous social impact assessment was undertaken on the communities and landowners most directly impacted by these logging operations.
Additional conclusions were drawn based on other studies as to the likely state of the residual stand in several decades when another commercial harvest may be desired by the landowners. The individual assessment of specific land parcels are detailed in Appendix 1 along with a collection of photographic records in Appendix 2.
Description of study sites
The lands surveyed for this environmental impact assessment analysis lie
along the northern coast of Isabel Island to the north-west of Buala.
The coastal plain is generally narrow. Reefs shelve steeply into deep
off shore waters from often precipitous limestone slopes. It is only in
the broad valleys incised by major streams draining from the central portions
of the island that the steep coastline abates to more gentle slopes and
limited estuarine areas. Fringing these waterway entries into the marine
environment are areas of sandy and rocky shores and beaches.
The areas surveyed encompassed the full range of landscapes observed along the coast of Isabel between Estrella Bay and the Provincial Capital, Buala. Log dumps were placed on foreshores within the larger embayments along the coastline e.g. the entry bays of the Sidu, Kahigi and Ghehe Rivers. Logging operations were located across slopes and crests of the hinterland with some foreshores and environs impacted where forest quality permitted commercial extraction. Much of the near coastal forest and that of exposed slopes exhibited evidence of past storm damage from cyclones and other tropical storms. Some limited areas of landslips and excessively steep slopes were characterised by other forest types with few large stems and hence were of little, if any, commercial logging interest.
The estuarine areas were not subject to commercial logging impacts, although some areas of Rhizophora spp. dominated mangal associations had been felled for fuel for copra production. Other foreshore communities, typical of those across the Solomon Islands, were featured by large Calophyllum inophyllum, Intsia bijuga and associated flora. Low lying areas which became periodically inundated, often for long periods, were diagnostically dominated by Terminalia brassii. The most extensive area of this community in the study area lies in the peneplain which drains into Estrella Bay. Some logs of this species were being readied for exported from the Sisiga Bay log dump during field surveys.
The hillslope forests which occupied the hinterland of these coastal landscapes were dominated by Pometia pinnata. Other frequently occurring taxa which were felled in the study area were Campnosperma brevipetiolata, Vitex coffasus, Calophyllum spp. with occasional Dillenia spp. from some of the drainage lines. Company logging records would yield an indication of volumes and species mix from particular LR land parcels.
The majority of the areas from which logs are extracted are hillslope forests, with many streams draining these slopes and merging into major rivers where catchment areas were of sufficient area. The high intensity rainfall events accounted for highly variable flow rates in these streams. There was greatest variation between high and baseline flow rates in the major waterways as would be expected, but flood debris even in the smaller streams indicated that periodic high flows are experienced even in these smaller waterways. This hydrological regime is not atypical of these tropical regions. It does, however, introduce considerable constraints on possible land use options and management requirements for any use which affects natural vegetative cover. The consequences of not adhering to these constraints can be dire indeed and severely restrict future productivity and landscape stability. The evidence of disregard of these self apparent issues was clear in many of the logged over areas within the study area.
The specific content of this report will detail areas of concern where natural features would appear to have been given little cognisance either related to particular agreements or in the context of sound land management practices in areas such as those represented in the study area.