South Africa

Like many other Third World countries pushed by the global policies of colonialism and later neocolonialism to poverty and indebtedness, Congo has a current debt of $4.9 billion. Like many other southern governments, too, advised by multilateral agencies to commerce their wealth –natural resources-, the government of Congo has been placing greater emphasis on the growth of the timber industry in the Congo Basin, which has the world's second largest stretches of virgin rainforest after the Amazon in South America.

The environment pressure network Geasphere has charged the international Forest Stewardship Council with acting irresponsibly in certifying the massive spread of Industrial Timber Plantations (ITPs) in South Africa. ITPs come at a massive cost to the natural and social environment, and these costs have not been quantified, says Philip Owen of Geasphere, in an open letter to the chair of the Forest Stewardship Council, David Nahwegabouw.

‘Pulping the South’ by Larry Lohmann and Ricardo Carrere was a watershed publication for many groups and individuals around the world. Concerned people had been aware of many issues and problems associated with the expansion of industrial monoculture tree plantations in Southern countries, but it was this WRM publication that made the world sit up with a jolt.

A wide range of stakeholders from environment and community groups, research bodies and decision-makers from government and industry came together in Nelspruit, South Africa in mid-November to discuss a burning issue - the impact of timber plantations.

Timberwatch, a coalition of environmental NGOs and individuals, has renewed an appeal made during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, calling on the South African government, as well as on the timber industry, to halt the planting of new industrial timber plantations in naturally vegetated areas, especially grasslands.

Just prior to the Vth World Parks Congress, a consortium of mining, oil and gas companies announced that they would accept that all World Heritage Sites were off limits to further exploitation.

The month of September has certainly been rich in important events, warranting the active participation of relevant social actors. The ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, was doubtlessly the most resounding one, both because of the presence of thousands of people and organizations from all over the world, demonstrating in the streets against the WTO, and because of the firm attitude of some countries from the South, in facing the domineering attitude of certain governments from the North. The world will never be the same after Cancun.

The colonial period of South African history has left a mindset that encourages the exploitation of anything that can be dug out of the ground and shipped off to feed the rapacious appetites of first world industries and consumers. This is what drove the colonial imperative of England, Portugal, France and Spain in centuries gone by, and although there has been political transformation in previously colonised African countries, the economic forces remain largely unchanged.

Recently, an article on the major "threat" posed to South African indigenous forests by illegal gatherers of medicinal plants has been widely disseminated. Michael Peter, Director of Indigenous Forestry Management of the South African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, said that "The medicinal plant trade is the single largest cause of indigenous forest degradation in South Africa".

Last year I attended a conference in Capetown on the above subject, where the push appeared to be for the involvement of the Private Sector in the ownership and management of Plantations. As an Indigenous person from a country with huge areas of monocultural exotic plantations, I had never thought much about the ownership of these plantations. In my country they had a history of state ownership, although recent times had seen the sale of some of these plantations. Ethically, I am opposed to the privatization of state assets by any government and regard it as a false economic measure.

For the global pulp and paper group Sappi, money does grow on trees. Indeed, the company's latest annual report suggests that it grows most efficiently in South Africa. The report noted that Sappi's southern Africa division, Sappi Forest Products, represented 15% of group sales, but contributed 36% to the group's operating profits in the year to September 2002. "We have an extraordinarily low cost base in South Africa, which has unique competitive advantages in fibre production because of the speed at which trees grow and low inherent energy costs," the report noted.

South African activists have for years been campaigning against the spread of industrial alien tree plantations. Wally Menne, from the Timberwatch Coalition says that "certification of monoculture timber plantations as 'sustainably managed forests' by the Forest Stewardship Council makes an absolute mockery of the concept of sustainable environment and ecosystem management."