A few years back, we spent 12 months together working as environmental lawyers in the Solomon Islands Public Solicitors Office (PSO). For several years, the PSO have worked to provide free legal support to customary landowners, local chieftains and other tribal representatives affected by commercial logging in the Solomon Islands.
To set the scene for those unaware, eighty per cent of land in the Solomon Islands is customarily owned. Land ownership is steeped in centuries of tribal and familial tradition and, in many respects, land can’t be allocated using principles of common law. Covering that 80 per cent of island landmass are dense tropical forests with huge old-wood trees. Theoretically, under most customary laws across the Solomon Islands (though there are some differences from province to province), if you own the land, you own the trees on that land. Solomon Islanders have always carried out small scale logging for their own purposes, but a deep connection with their land and understanding of its natural limits has meant that forests and ecosystems have been able to replenish themselves naturally to account for this. Large scale commercial logging in the Solomon Islands commenced with force in the 1970's when logging industry multinationals – predominantly from Malaysia and China – started canvassing local landowners across the archipelago for access to their land to take wood. Before this point, most logging had taken place on government owned land.