Fiji is overhauling a forestry system built around timber harvesting, with a new Forestry Act 2025 that ties the country’s logging future to biodiversity protection, climate resilience and entry into global carbon and biodiversity credit markets. That is according to Fiji’s Minister for Forestry, Alitia Bainivalu, who told Parliament the legislation moves national forest governance beyond extraction towards conservation, restoration and equitable benefit sharing.
Forests cover 1.1 million hectares of Fiji, close to 56 per cent of its land area, and the minister told the chamber they remain among the country’s most valuable natural assets, contributing to rural livelihoods, watershed management and climate change mitigation. The new law replaces a narrow focus on harvesting with a broader framework spanning biodiversity conservation, forest restoration, scientific research, and the protection of ecosystem services.
Bainivalu said the Act sweeps aside a model centred on timber extraction in favour of one that “adopts a holistic approach to forest management,” built on sustainability, biodiversity conservation, climate resilience and equitable benefit sharing. Scientific research and reforestation each carry statutory weight under the new framework.
The legislation also opens commercial ground in the global green economy, creating a statutory basis for carbon financing, biodiversity credits, and payment for ecosystem services — services that official estimates already value at around FJD $544 million a year. Each mechanism would allow Fiji to generate revenue from standing forests rather than solely from felled timber.
Beyond credit markets, the Act enables financing mechanisms and forest-based bio-economy initiatives intended to channel money back into conservation and restoration work. The government casts these instruments as a way to fund forest recovery without relying on harvesting receipts.
Implementation will run through continued stakeholder consultation, technical training and institutional strengthening as the Ministry of Forestry brings the Act into effect. That work builds on a Ministry replanting programme already credited with an estimated 19.9 million seedlings across 17,200 hectares, and Bainivalu said it would continue as the legislation moves from statute into practice.
