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SocietyFebruary 22, 2019

How NZ decking timber choices compound a human rights crisis in West Papua

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A New Zealand ban on kwila would send a signal that we’re serious about protecting our planet, its ancient forests and the people whose lives depend on them, writes Maire Leadbeater of West Papua Action Auckland

Deforestation is said to contribute about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In Brazil and Indonesia logging and forest conversion are the main source of the carbon emissions that have propelled them both into the list of the world’s top ten carbon polluters. Combating deforestation and helping to restore degraded forests could be the key to meeting the global target of no more than 2% rise in global temperature by 2030. Alarmingly, Brazil’s new development-minded President, Jair Bolsonaro has designs for mines and farms that threaten to escalate the destruction of the Amazon, and in our region West Papua’s paradise forests face multiple threats – escalating illegal logging, gigantic palm oil conversion projects and a highway project that will cut deep into intact forest abutting the World Heritage Lorentz National Park.

Almost all the rainforest kwila (or merbau) that comes to our shores originates in Indonesian ruled West Papua. Kwila used to grow across the Asia Pacific but these days it is close to extinction as a species and is only present in commercial quantities on the island of New Guinea. Merbau takes 75 to 80 years to grow to maturity and it grows sparsely, usually only five to 10 trees per hectare. Kwila isn’t suitable for plantation planting and targeting it for logging cannot be done without the collateral damage caused by building roads.

Kwila is an attractive wood that stands up well to climate extremes, so it has been sought after for decking and outdoor furniture. It is now over a decade since Greenpeace exposed the vast scale of illegal logging of kwila. A ‘Don’t Buy Kwila’ campaign got under way in New Zealand and a number of retailers agreed to cease selling kwila furniture. Unfortunately, in 2008, a Labour-led government decided not to regulate against kwila imports and illegally logged wood, instead opting to encourage importers and consumers to do the right thing. A subsequent National-led government reinforced this approach. The New Zealand Imported Timber Trade Group (NZITTG) developed a voluntary code that commits its members to source their wood from third party certified sustainable/responsible sources. On paper government backs listing kwila with the Convention on the International Trade in endangered species, but it hasn’t actively pushed the issue.

Despite the good intentions of the NZITTG, these half-hearted measures have failed. Kwila decking continues to pour into New Zealand and unsurprisingly there are importers who don’t subscribe to the voluntary code and source “dodgy” kwila at lower prices. TradeMe has a policy that requires sellers of new kwila to provide certification of sustainability but current listings suggest it is not enforcing its pledge. As far as I am concerned, none of it, certified or not, can be viewed as sustainably supplied. We don’t certify ivory, we ban it because we want the elephants to survive and we should follow the same preventative strategy for kwila.

At the end of last year, on-the-ground reports provided damning evidence that West Papua’s extensive forest cover is under renewed attack. A report published by the well-respected Indonesian journal Tempo set out the subterfuges used to get around the Indonesian government’s weak system of policing illegal logging. The report described “timber laundering” that included the manipulation of barcodes and the taking of timber from unpermitted community forests. Investigators compared the satellite imagery showing recent deforestation with the quantities of kwila and other tropical timber being exported and estimated that only about one third was being officially accounted for.

New Zealand is not the main market for West Papua’s kwila – Europe and China cannot get enough of it – but we contribute to the problem.

Linked to the logging scandals are industrial scale palm oil conversion scandals.

Plans for the “Tanah Merah” project would see 2,800 square kilometres of forest (larger than the size of Stewart Island and Lake Taupo combined) logged out to make way for palm oil. Tribal people were reportedly pressed for their consent under military and police intimidation, and environment groups are pushing the Indonesian President to revoke the web of permits.

Since Indonesia took control of West Papua in 1963, indigenous rights have taken a distant back seat as Indonesia and multinational companies exploit the territory’s timber and mineral resources. Jakarta touts development as the answer to Papuan discontent, but disrupting traditional subsistence living causes nothing but hunger and misery. This land grab is a significant contributory factor to a human rights crisis which is so bad it is a kind of “slow genocide”.

A New Zealand ban on kwila would not end illegal logging or stop climate change, but it would send a signal that New Zealand is serious about protecting our planet, its ancient forests and the people whose lives depend on them.

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Confetti falling kissing couple enjoying New Year celebration

SocietyFebruary 21, 2019

In defence of pashing

Confetti falling kissing couple enjoying New Year celebration

‘Kissing’, ‘necking’, ‘snogging’, ‘making out’ – there are a plethora of ways to describe the locking of lips. But Elle Hunt’s favourite is one that’s deeply unique to the Kiwi vocabulary. 

After a year and a half in London, my accent is increasingly English, my standards for flat whites have plummeted, and I’ve come to see any personal line of inquiry (“So did you get here by train?”) as unforgivably rude. I’ve even started eating, with some regularity, boxed sandwiches bought from a pharmacy – a decision that would’ve struck me as strange and misguided just 18 months ago.

In many ways – the confused, non-specific dismay I can convey over Brexit, my careful study of weather conditions – I can pass for a born-and-bred Briton. But get me started on a workplace-inappropriate conversation and I quickly betray my antipodean roots. Recall, refer to, or suggest (on more than one regrettably memorable case) a pash, and I’m met with confused silence.

Pash. Third-person singular simple present: pashes; present participle: pashing; simple past and past participle: pashed.

Australia, New Zealand slang: To passionately kiss.

Though it seems reasonable to assume that it derives from that adverb, its origins are opaque. Playwright Roger Hall claimed in his autobiography, Bums on Seats, to have been introduced to it on arriving in New Zealand from England in 1958. Google Trends reveals steady interest in searches for it from 2004 onwards (especially, somewhat sweetly, in “girls pashing”) overwhelmingly from New Zealand. Urban Dictionary first recorded it in 2003 – gratingly as being of Australian origin, despite my definitely having had to explain it there too.

In New Zealand, it’s as close to institutionalised a word can get without being recorded in Hansard (I’ve checked). It’s appeared in headlines (Madonna was papped “pashing Kiwi fan”), in signage (“NO SMOKING OR PASHING”), medical advice (“My Boyfriend Has Stubble And It Is Giving Me Pash Rash”), and even public safety campaigns (from a 2006 ACC campaign: “Friday nights are for pashing, not crashing”). The Herald’s 2010 review of the third Twilight film was headed, “Lots of pashing but no passion”, which also stands as a pretty accurate summation of my love life that same year.

In New Zealand, one could – hypothetically speaking – list “pashing babes” in the description of the Facebook event and everyone would get that it was going to be a sexy party. In England – or, indeed, anywhere else in the world – any reference to it prompts immediate questions, irritatingly encumbering your funny anecdote, fond reminiscence, or polite but firm request.

“We snog,” they inevitably respond, as though doing you a great service. Yes, well, I’ll leave you to it then.

“Snogging” is certainly the equivalent word in the UK. But to my ear, it confers an overabundance of alcohol, saliva, and almost-contemporaneous regret. And I prefer my regret to develop over time.

Snogging is steeped in Smirnoff Blacks, indifference or shame. Pashing is fizzy, flirty, fun – the type of delightful distraction that you’ll look back on fondly, or at least laughingly, come Monday morning. It’s the difference between grimly reaching for the cheapest bottle of sav on the Friday night bottle shop run to get as drunk as you can; and spending the same amount, with the same intent, on Passion Pop – just for the fun of it.

That’s why I’ll continue to use “pash”, even though doing so commits me to telling criminally laboured anecdotes to all but the 12-15 people I’ve already explained it to, in the hopes that it’ll eventually catch on. No other word or phrase that’s commonly used to refer to the recreational exchange of saliva captures, in the same succinct, onomatopoeic way, just how fun it can be.

“Making out” is sort of clinical, like the kind of kissing that that sexy robot Sophia might eventually learn to do. “Necking” suggests disturbing muscular force. And “getting with” is ambiguous, leading to follow-up questions you’d rather not have to ask, especially not in England. Because if inquiring about their commute raises eyebrows, you can only imagine how “Sorry, do you mean penetratively?” goes down.

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