ECOSHARE Pte. Ltd. is a private limited company based in Singapore, and a Rainforest Project Foundation Netherlands initiative. One hundred percent of founding shares will be owned by TRP by Summer 2024. All activities and expenses are provided by volunteers around the globe.

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Business structure

• ECOSHARE Pte Ltd Singapore will handle all commercial sales and investment activities. ECOSHARE will own the long-term forest and coastal marine ecosystem contract leases.

• ECOSHARE will implement all in-country PNG based activities and management of forest and lease areas, in close cooperation with and by landowner clan corporations and their communities.

• THE RAINFOREST PROJECT FOUNDATION will own the founding shares (100%) in ECOSHARE Ltd, by 2023, and lead and oversees all activities of all companies, as well as managing all conservation and scientific activities. Final control will remain in the hands of this Non-profit foundation. 

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The Rainforest Project

• The Rainforest Project Foundation (TRP) is a European-based foundation dedicated to the preservation of the world’s forests, registered with the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce.

• TRP was founded in 1993 by like-minded individuals with backgrounds in the sciences who wished to make a difference in nature conservation.

• The Foundation recruits participants from universities, forestry departments, and grass-roots groups in areas where TRP conducts projects. TRP is committed to people-based nature conservation, merging research, economic development, and a participatory approach to ensure the input of local people.

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Primary goals

• To initiate, support, and promote tropical forest conservation through commercial ecosystems use and conservation.

• To enlist structural support for protection, management, and training in forest conservation to encourage long-term self-reliance.

• To encourage the implementation of environmentally-sound policy to strengthen nature conservation efforts and long-term economic feasibility of people-based nature conservation.

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Partners and People

• Landowners - clan communities in East and West Sepik Provinces, Manus Province, Western Province, Milne Bay Province, Madang province, West New Britain; Papua New Guinea.

• Henry Heuveling van Beek, Team Leader, Chair The Rainforest Project, Netherlands, ECOSHARE Director, Singapore.

• Nadeem Farooq, ECOSHARE Director, IT and Investment Expert, Singapore.

• Michael Poesi, PNG LALPWEH LTD, Forester/Director, PNG management. Local Management - commercial development, implementation, organization of landowner and government collaboration.

• Hans Kemp, Photographer, Netherlands/Thailand, Multimedia.

• Dr. Gabriella Modan, Senior advisor, Linguist, The Ohio State University, TRP Board Member, USA.

• Trevor Angel, IT Specialist, web design and management, Portugal.

• Eddie Vernon, Horticulture, Marketing, and Agri-business specialist.

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Key Team Members

Henry Heuveling van Beek, director ECOSHARE Pte Ltd.

Amsterdam, 1957. MA International Relations, 1992, University of Amsterdam. I started and managed The Rainforest Project Foundation since 1993, currently chairperson. Owner and director ECOSHARE Pte Ltd. Over 25 years’ experience in nature conservation activities. Agarwood expert, project manager, ideas person.

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My aim is to help create viable nature conservation. ECOSHARE is the culmination of many years of conservation study, involvement and professional participation. While providing short term Eaglewood consulting in Papua New Guinea, since 2002, mostly for the Papua New Guinea Social Development Program, PNGSDP, I was enabled to travel to remote locations and walk into forests with PNG clan members, and traveling on their rivers and seas. Most remarkable was the enormous natural wealth, and most disturbing, the deep poverty of the people who own these ecosystems.

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Whenever I had the opportunity, I asked: “Don’t you want to keep your forests?”, as we often encountered logging and devastating open-pit mining. (PNGSDP was financed to alleviate one of the words most damaging open-pit mining disasters). The reply was always something like: “Yes of course, this is my ancestors' land and we are born here and we live here and we love our forest”. But the only avenue open for them to escape a hard, subsistence life, was and remains agreement to logging and mining, often with extremely low returns, or even none at all. And this while mining and logging caused devastating destruction of forests, rivers, and seas, wiping out their forests, and marine-based ecosystems, forever.

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It therefore seems logical to pair conservation to rewards for landowners/conservationists. Papua New Guinea people have been living in environmental harmony with their ecosystems on and around their customary land for thousands of years, and their legal ownership is laid down in the PNG constitution. So, how to do we achieve commercial conservation?

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This is how I came up with ECOSHARE; a way to translate land and ecosystem ownership, to very long term conservation, while creating sustainable income for all involved. Present urgency is highlighted by global warming concerns, coupled with fast decreasing natural forests and marine ecosystems. Pending is an enormous global environmental disaster, endangering human survival, and that requires ECOSHARE now.

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Ecosystems of high quality are still available in PNG, and need to be assessed as an entity, as a commodity, like gold; now or never, and we have no time left. Logs, wildlife, carbon storage, mineral deposits, people and plants, clean air and water, and undiscovered medical applications require action starting with value allocation, profit generation, and sharing. I hope to have explained, together with my close collaborators in PNG and around the world, why and how and what we intend to accomplish, on this website, which admittedly remains a work in progress.

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This personal statement must end with the declaration;
 

I am doing this to create nature conservation which works. It will work, because the primary actors, the people of PNG want this, and need a chance to keep their natural wealth while improving their livelihood. Demand for ecosystem conservation is high and will increase. Value at present is based on estimates of potential commercial outputs, and expected future value as we are selling a commodity, ecosystems, which is in high demand, diminishing forever, and containing unexplored, undeveloped riches. We will set up numerous businesses, coupled with a forecasted value increase over time, good returns on capital investment can be expected. In short, this is an honest, new and feasible way to change failing conservation of high-value ecosystems without seeking personal wealth.

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Henry Heuveling van Beek

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Hans Kemp

Award-winning Dutch photographer and publisher Hans Kemp first arrived in Asia in 1986 at the start of what turned out to be an 18-month sojourn before finally taking the Trans Siberian train from Beijing back to the Netherlands. The nomadic bug had firmly entrenched itself however and Hans soon found himself back in Asia guiding groups across the Karakoram Highway from Northern Pakistan into China's Xinjiang province and onwards into Tibet.

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Establishing a base in Hong Kong in the early 1990's allowed Hans to develop his photography skills, traversing and capturing Asia in iconic images published in a wide variety of international magazines and books. He pioneered the creation of quality postcards in Vietnam and stood at the cradle of Visionary World Publishers in Hong Kong.

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Hans has published seven books of his work with the bestselling Bikes of Burden, an ode to Vietnam’s load-carrying motorbikes, selling over 100,000 copies in four languages. Other titles include Ardent Eye, Burmese Light and his most recent book Divine Encounters - Sacred Rituals and Ceremonies in Asia, the 2020 Silver Medal Award winner in the photography category of the annual Independent Publisher of the Year Awards.

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Since 2012 Hans is also the co-owner, together with acclaimed author Tom Vater, of Crime Wave Press, a young and growing crime fiction publisher, actively seeking to publish international crime fiction, including those set in Asia. In 2014 Hans, writing as Jonathan H Kemp, published his first crime novel, A Nose for Trouble.

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During the time Hans was based in Vietnam he met Henry and became involved with The Rainforest Project Foundation. Over the past four years, Hans has worked as a volunteer for the Foundation, traveling to remote locations in Myanmar and Papua New Guinea to direct, shoot, and produce photos and video in support of nature conservation, the ECOSHARE way.

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Though a long time has passed, Hans' enchantment and fascination with the vicissitudes of Asia has not diminished. Never short on ideas, from his current base Bangkok, he passionately continues to aim his camera and more recently his drone at little known corners of this enervating and energizing continent for his next project or assignment.

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www.hanskemp.com

www.hanskemp.photoshelter.com

www.facebook.com/hanskempphotography

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Michael Mosim Poesi

Papua New Guinea and Australian trained Forester with over 20 years of experience, friend, and PNG landowner. From the start of our working relationship over 10 years ago, Michael was the professional Forestry Expert, who supported ECOSHARE with his indispensable knowledge of land, regulations and love for his country and environment. He always offered his expertise, network, and maybe most sacrificing, lots of his time, even for-going precious leave time dedicating this to coming with us on trips deep down into PNG’s forests and seas, and always promoting and spreading the work of the ECOSHARE concept; tireless and convincing and professional. ECOSHARE would not be possible without him.

 

Nor would ECOSHARE be possible without the many others who helped in big and small ways in PNG and throughout the world.