Annie Kajir was just 24 when she won a precedent-setting case in the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea against illegal logging.
Eight years later, the lawyer and activist is involved in another case launched on behalf of indigenous landholders who have taken the Malaysian logging company Rimbunan Hijau, the PNG Minister for Forestry and the Forest Authority to court for illegal logging of 450,000 hectares of kwila forest.
She has been physically attacked, intimidated and robbed because of her involvement in such cases, but her work has also attracted international accolades.
Last week, Ms Kajir was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism. The $US125,000 ($165,000) award, founded in 1990 by the US philanthropists, Richard and Rhoda Goldman, is the world's largest prize honouring grassroots environmentalists.
In Sydney to warn Australians that the timber they are using to build or renovate their homes could come from illegal logging, she said PNG's indigenous landowners needed greater control over their forests and help in standing up to big logging companies that clear-felled the land and paid local owners little for the timber.
"The Government is also implicated because it granted permission for the logging to go ahead," Ms Kajir said. "It's clear-felling. Nobody does selective logging in PNG - it's a joke."
Foreign timber companies have worked PNG forests for decades and although land rights for traditional forest communities are guaranteed under the country's constitution, Ms Kajir said she had uncovered evidence companies were ignoring the terms of logging permits, and intimidating indigenous owners into signing over their land rights.
The timber Australians chose to use in their homes could make the difference between whether dwindling forest resources in the Pacific survive or are logged out of existence, said the Greenpeace campaigner Danny Kennedy.
"The Paradise Forests of New Guinea are being destroyed faster than any other forests on earth," he said. "The Australian Government can help stop this destruction by honouring the election promise to ban illegal timber imports into this country."
A study by the engineering consultants Jaakko Poyry for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry shows Australia imported more than $400 million worth of illegally logged timber products, each year.
The report estimates that half the illegally logged imports were furniture.Sydney Morning Herald
