am and the money comes,” he said. “It is kind of like a miracle thing happening.” Photograph: Sam Knight

On a recent Tuesday evening, Hooper was back at the In Wewak Boutique hotel giving out mobile phones. The latest sales of the carbon credits from the Sepik have been to Qantas, Australia National Bank and Rema 1000, a supermarket chain in Norway. Hooper wanted people in the five districts involved in the project to take pictures of their daily lives, which he could then share with their customers. “Maybe someone finds a big snake?” Hooper prompted. The chairmen nodded and looked at their phones. Nolwo was not there. He was out in his district, preparing to welcome Hooper and the rest of the chairmen the following day, when oneof his villages was due to receive a shipment of solar lights paid for by the project.

Hooper has been pretty much ever present alongside REDD+ in Papua New Guinea. At first he came for the money. By 2010, he had remortgaged his family house outside Perth, sold his car, boat, and the last stock options in Quest Minerals, the mining company he used to run. “It was probably around that time that I realised there was no pot of gold,” he said. Since then, Hooper has become a vaguely controversial figure in Papua New Guinea, simply for refusing to give up. When I was there, Hooper seemed to be everywhere, lobbying ministers, cajoling officials, trying to get a target of 2m hectares for REDD+ projects into the country’s