As part of the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP) and the follow-up to the One Forest Summit in Libreville, coalitions of stakeholders are providing technical and financial support to achieve international climate and biodiversity objectives.

In Papua New Guinea, the SoNG project is part of the French contribution. This is a project financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and implemented by Expertise France, focusing on community-based management at local level for biodiversity conservation and rural development.

The overall objective of this project will be to ensure the long-term sustainability of forests and marine and coastal ecosystems, as well as the improvement of living conditions for the people who depend on them. This general objective would be divided into two specific objectives:

-  Sustainably strengthen the resources and means available to communities, especially women and youth, with a view to strengthening their organisational, legal, technical and economic capacities, contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of marine forests and ecosystems and to the improvement of their living conditions;

-   Strengthen the governance framework for marine and forest ecosystems, biodiversity and climate at all levels of government to achieve the 30x30 target.

The planned operational components will aim to:

-    Strengthen and extend the network of protected areas and other conservation measures by supporting community and civil society initiatives, improving their management capacities and developing sustainable agricultural and fisheries sectors that ensure the livelihoods of local people and generate income. Activities will focus on the Bismark Forest Corridor and the Bismark Sea, in particular for tranche 1 of the project;

-    Support the implementation of national and provincial public policies for the conservation and management of natural resources and to ensure their coordination and coherence with actions carried out by local communities and civil society on the ground;

-    Support training and research for the recognition and enhancement of traditional knowledge and cultural practices associated with the conservation and management of biodiversity (in conjunction with the projects supported under the previous component).

-    Strengthen the role of the Papua New Guinea Climate and Biodiversity Fund as an independent vehicle for long-term financing of protected areas and other conservation and climate change measures.

The main objective of the project, which is rated B+ (important) in terms of E&S risks in AFD’s E&S safeguards management Systems, concerns the management of natural resources in rural areas, which could potentially raise several environmental and social risks. The most significant risk pre-identified to avoid in AFD's exclusion list[1] is that of the absence of residual impacts (after Avoidance and mitigation, and without compensation) on critical habitats (as intended by WB Group ESS6 / IFC PS6), even though the project is intended to preserve biodiversity, and therefore to conserve/restore these critical habitats.

It therefore needs to be fully taken into account, both through prior screening of ecosystems and their biodiversity (an access to iBAT will be granted), and through planning to ensure that community activities likely to have an impact (subsistence farming, etc.) take place in degraded habitats. This is all the more important in PNG, given the status of land tenure and the local development imperative to be pursued as part of any biodiversity conservation/management activity via protected areas or other conservation measures.