Port Moresby-based Pacific Green Technologies and Eco-Solutions is helping Papua New Guinea achieve a balance between development and environmental protection. Founder and owner, Dr Wari Lea Iamo, talks with Business Advantage PNG about the company’s work.

Dr Wari Iamo. Credit: Ramumine

‘Our prime objective is to balance socio-economic development and the sustainability of the environment,’ says Dr Wari Lea Iamo, founder of Pacific Green Technologies and Eco-Solutions.

Founded in 2010, the company employs 11 core staff with a roster of expert external consultants to call on as the need arises. Iamo himself has a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and has held advisory roles to government and resource companies. The company also trades as Pagreetech and/or Pacific Green Tech.

‘Primarily, we provide environmental and socio-economic advisory services,’ he tells Business Advantage PNG.

These include providing much-needed Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), analyses of water quality, studies of populations and demographics, and socio-economic studies.

‘Secondarily, through partnership arrangements with reputable international consulting management and engineering firms, we deliver on green technologies to create cleaner environmental management,’ he says. This includes installing water and sewerage treatment plants.

‘Our purpose is to provide to our client a product that is technically and economically sound and value for money in terms of depth and quality,’ says Iamo.

Growth

‘From our operations so far, Pacific Green Tech has grown significantly,’ says Iamo, ‘achieving excellent business relations with clients and assisting the development and growth of the young and vibrant social and environmental scientists and researchers of PNG.’

Sampling at the Bassei Oil Palm Project

‘We have always been faced with the challenges of accepting development into rural areas and the protection of environment and local communities’

Recent projects include carrying out EIAs, and lodging permit applications for, the East-West Patpatar Agro-Forestry Project and Konoagil Oil Palm Development Project at Namatanai, New Ireland Province; the Paga Hill Estate Development in Port Moresby and the Bassei Oil Palm Development Project at Ambunti, East Sepik Province.

Challenges

Dr Iamo says his team has to deal with the inherent difficulties of working in remote parts of PNG, and have to deal with rural communities who often have a high levels of illiteracy. That leads to real challenges when collecting and collating data and information.

‘We have always been faced with the challenges of accepting development into rural areas and the protection of environment and local communities,’ he says.

He believes that international developers entering the PNG ‘have always underestimated Papua New Guinea’s legal and other regulatory guidelines, which in most times integrate the customary land ideologies of Papua New Guinea and western ideologies of development.’

Two PNGs

However, he recognises that while large projects generate billions of kina and increase GDP per capita, the 85% of PNG’s population who still live in rural communities continue to need basic development services.

‘PNG has grown in the last 40 years along with local entrepreneurs. Nationals themselves can now be able to initiate, administer, operate and sustain their small-to-medium and large-scale business activities.’

‘They are cut off from the national economy because the tree crops and other local products they grow cannot reach the market,’ says Iamo.

‘Government services and officers cannot reach them.

‘As far as we can see, there’s another Papua New Guinea inside Papua New Guinea—the rural majority who lacks basic socio-economic and infrastructure services, and even does not fully participate in the national economy of PNG.’

That said, Iamo is proud that ‘PNG has grown in the last 40 years along with local entrepreneurs. Nationals themselves can now be able to initiate, administer, operate and sustain their small-to-medium and large-scale business activities.’