Katharina Hesse: LAND - Country Life in the Urban Age, Noordelicht Festival 2010
5 september - 31 october 2010
Katharina Hesse among the photographers exhibited in LAND - Country Life in the Urban Age, Noordelicht Festival 2010.DEFORESTATION IN PAPUA. The enormous rainforest of West Papua, where the ecology and the population are threatened by expanding logging.
DEFORESTATION IN PAPUA
KATHARINA HESSE/PROSPEKT
Papua, New Guinea, 2007
The enormous rainforest of West Papua, where the ecology and the population are threatened by expanding logging.
Logging is one of the major causes of environmental destruction in West Papua. As Indonesia's own forest resources decline, it has turned its attention to West Papua. Indonesia's forest practices generally have little or no attention paid to the environmental impact of logging. Many of the indigenous people of West Papua are threatened as vast tracts of land have been granted as concessions to timber companies, a practice which is having severe social and physical consequences.
The island of New Guinea is one of the most biologically diverse in the world. There are species of flora and fauna in common with Australia, such as some marsupials, the bird of paradise and eucalyptus trees. Numerous species, unique to the island, are threatened by logging and other development projects.
Second only to the Amazon, the island of New Guinea has one of the largest tracts of tropical rainforest left in the world. West Papua's forests, rich in bio-diversity, account for approximately 34.6 million hectares or 24 per cent of Indonesia's total forested area of 143 million hectares. Over 27.6 million hectares of forest in West Papua have been designated as production forest.
noorderlicht-photofestival.pdf