Niue blankets the middle of nowhere, an isle of green woven amongst the wild blue of sea spray. Stepping off the plane is like coming home - there is something about the place that calls the soul. But much of Niue’s heart has gone. If this beautiful island feels empty, that’s because it is.
Just over a thousand people live on what’s believed to be the world’s largest coral island. More than 22,000 live in New Zealand. You can see it. Rows of empty houses - some gutted by the last cyclone but nearly all stripped of people.
“I have often used the word grovelling and grovelling is a bad word, it’s humiliating to go and beg for assistance,” says Niue’s Premier Young Vivien. “The word sovereignty is an empty word in the sense we depend so much on financial assistance.”
But rely on it Niue does. With a seriously dwindling population and limited economy, aid is the country’s main source of income – about $12 million of it coming from New Zealand every year.
It’s hardly surprising the Niue government is desperately keen to make money from its own resources: but at what cost?
Last year it signed up an agreement with a Malaysian company to log its tropical rainforest. The vast expanse of peaceful greenery covers around 70% of Niue’s land although only a sixth of this is primary forest. The logging project was to be a joint operation between the Niue government and the Malaysians. The problem is, the Government doesn’t own the rainforest. The people do.
“I’m devastated actually because they didn’t even talk to us consult us as landowners,” says landowner Ahi Cross. “We’ll be ruined. The whole place will be ruined.”
While some families disagreed and thought selling their trees would be a great source of income, there was cause for deep concern. The initial documentation was signed up in secret with a company known as Enrich Corporation, registered in New Zealand. At the time of the signing the company had been struck off the NZ companies registrar and very little information was known about the people involved. At the time even the Premier wasn’t sure of their background.
“I still don’t know the details,” he said. A thorough check may have revealed what a TVNZ One News investigation did. That one of the signatories to the agreement, Steven Fong Hak, was the regional general manager of Silvania Products Ltd in the Solomon Islands. Silvania has been condemned by environmental groups as having one of the worst forest practises in the world and had its licence revoked several times in the 1990s for illegal logging.
"We are coming to Niue, not to cheat and run, we are coming here with sincerity. We want to protect the forest”
The other signatory, Phillip Chung, also has a reputation in the Pacific. In the 1980s a Solomon Islands High Court found his company, Solmac Construction and Timber Ltd, had operated without a licence and destroyed a plantation
But the Malaysians insisted they were coming in good faith. All they wanted, they said, was to help Niue, increase tourism and, most of all, log responsibly.
“We are coming to Niue, not to cheat and run, we are coming here with sincerity. We want to protect the forest,” said Phillip Chung. “We cut the big tree, turn into money, improve the lifestyle of the people, improve the economy of the country - from there we do replanting, the trees will continue to grow for the future generations.”
The promise does not wash with local logger Harry Bray who, most of the time single handedly, mills a very small amount every year.
“The only way this would be viable (for a large company) is to come in, clean the forest out in a very short time, say in 12 to 18 months, then the place is just deserted. It would kill everything,”
he says.
Such has been the opposition to logging both in Niue and overseas, the deal is now on hold. It has been a disastrous public relations exercise for the Niue government. It can, however, take heart from its more successful partnership with New Zealand’s Reef Group. Reef has invested millions into Niue’s fishing industry, building a fish processing plant and providing employment and exports for the strapped cash nation. And dubbed ‘The Rock’ Niue is anything but.
Its lush landscape overlooks an ocean expanse, the peace only broken by a pod of passing whales. The tropical heat is tempered by trade winds and the warmth of a tiny population. This may be a land with few people, but little wonder that despite everything, there’s no shortage of hope.
