This moratorium comes after industry watchdog group Carbon Market Watch raised “significant red flags” about a 100-year carbon credit deal in Oro province.
The PNG government identifies two separate of carbon credit deals: voluntary carbon schemes and result-based carbon schemes.
“If we have those in place, can safely say that we can go for carbon business,” Pamela Avusi, interim coordinator of the PNG Environmental Alliance, an NGO, told Mongabay.
The governor of Oro province, Gary Juffa, who also pushed for the government to take action, called the moratorium “well overdue,” saying: “I’m going to continue to push so that the government doesn’t just pay lip service.
“Carbon financiers were approaching our landowners, approaching resource owners, approaching different stakeholders to do voluntary carbon projects, which has no control over the process,” Avusi said.
In November, Mongabay exposed how leaders in Malaysia’s state of Sabah signed onto a carbon credit deal covering 2 million hectares without significant consultation with landowners.
Situated on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, which contains the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, PNG is immensely attractive to the carbon credit market.