A rapid biodiversity assessment ("BioRap") project identified candidate areas for
biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and provides an ongoing
evaluation framework for balancing biodiversity conservation and other land use
needs. Achieving a biodiversity protection target with minimum opportunity cost was
an important outcome given that biodiversity values overlap with forestry production
values, and high forgone forestry opportunities would mean significant losses to land
owners and the government. Allocation of 16.8% of PNG‟s land area to some form of
biodiversity protection was required, in order to achieve the level of biodiversity
representation/persistence that would have been possible using only 10% of the land
area if there were no constraints on land allocation and no land use history. This result
minimizes potential conflict with forestry production opportunities while also taking
account of land use history, human population density and previous conservation
assessments. The analysis provides more than a single set of proposed priority areas.
It is a framework for progressively moving towards a country-wide conservation goal,
while at the same time providing opportunities to alter the priority area set in light of
new knowledge, changes in land use, and/or changes in economic and social
conditions.
