Data from: Infrastructure expansion challenges sustainable development in Papua New Guinea

The island of New Guinea hosts the third largest expanse of tropical rainforest on the planet. Papua New Guinea—comprising the eastern half of the island—plans to nearly double its national road network (from 8,700 to 15,000 km) over the next three years, to spur economic growth. We assessed these plans using fine-scale biophysical and environmental data. We identified numerous environmental and socioeconomic risks associated with these projects, including the dissection of 54 critical biodiversity habitats and diminished forest connectivity across large expanses of the island. Key habitats of globally endangered species including Goodfellow's tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus goodfellowi), Matchie's tree kangaroo (D. matschiei), and several birds of paradise would also be bisected by roads and opened up to logging, hunting, and habitat conversion. Many planned roads would traverse rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands, contradicting Papua New Guinea's international commitments to promote low-carbon development and forest conservation for climate-change mitigation. Planned roads would also create new deforestation hotspots via rapid expansion of logging, mining, and oil-palm plantations. Our study suggests that several planned road segments in steep and high-rainfall terrain would be extremely expensive in terms of construction and maintenance costs. This would create unanticipated economic challenges and public debt. The net environmental, social, and economic risks of several planned projects—such as the Epo-Kikori link, Madang-Baiyer link, Wau-Malalaua link, and some other planned projects in the Western and East Sepik Provinces—could easily outstrip their overall benefits. Such projects should be reconsidered under broader environmental, economic, and social grounds, rather than short-term economic considerations.新几内亚岛拥有全球第三大连续热带雨林片区。作为该岛东部区域的巴布亚新几内亚，计划在未来三年内将全国公路网络从8700公里扩容至近15000公里，以刺激经济增长。本研究依托高精度生物物理与环境数据对该规划展开评估，发现此类公路项目将引发诸多环境与社会经济风险：包括割裂54处关键生物多样性栖息地，大幅削弱该岛大片区域的森林连通性。全球濒危物种的核心栖息区域，如古氏树袋鼠（Dendrolagus goodfellowi）、马氏树袋鼠（D. matschiei）以及多种极乐鸟的栖息地，也将被公路横贯，并暴露于伐木、狩猎与栖息地改造的威胁之下。多条规划公路将穿越热带雨林与富碳泥炭地，这与巴布亚新几内亚所承诺的低碳发展及以森林保护应对气候变化的国际义务相悖。规划公路还将通过伐木、采矿与油棕种植园的快速扩张催生新的森林砍伐热点区域。本研究显示，多条位于陡峭高降水地形中的规划公路，其建设与维护成本将极其高昂，进而引发未预期的经济困境与公共债务问题。包括埃波-基科里线路、马当-拜耶尔线路、瓦乌-马拉劳阿线路，以及西部省和东塞皮克省的其他部分规划项目在内的多项工程，其环境、社会与经济净风险将远超整体收益。此类项目应基于更广泛的环境、经济与社会维度进行重新考量，而非仅着眼于短期经济利益。