Nicaragua

Nicaragua is still considered the country having the largest forest cover in Central America, and that with the most extensive primary forests. During the decade of 1980 forest destruction was temporarily halted by the war which was taking place up in the mountains, which forced many indigenous and peasant communities to abandon the region.

The East of Nicaragua is known as the Atlantic Coast (Costa Atlántica), and is geographically divided in a Northern and a Southern region. This area is characterized by being mostly inhabited by indigenous peoples --mainly Miskitos-- and for being the richest area concerning natural resources. Some 500,000 people (8% of the national population) live in this area (42% of the Nicaraguan territory), representing six ethnic groups who obtain their livelihoods from agriculture and fishing.

In February 1998, representatives of indigenous communities -Sumus and Miskitos- local and regional authorities, environmental NGOs, and community and religious leaders joined in Rosita, a village on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, to discuss a common strategy against the illegal activities of the Korean transnational logging company Kimyung, which in 1994 had received a concession from the central government on 62,000 hectares of forest in indigenous territories (see WRM bulletin 11). Kimyung operated through the subsidiary SOLCARSA.

Recursos Nicaraguenses y Australianos S.A. (RENAUSTRA), financed by the Australian companies Mars Geosciencies and Boss Resources Corp., is trying to develop its gold mining activities in the buffer area of the Bosawas Reserve, which is one of the largest remaining rainforests in Central America. This provoked concern among local people and environmental NGOs, which denounced that the sources of fresh water of the community of Luz de Bocay were in danger and that the company was trying to buy the favour of the population of that poor area.

At the end of October and the beginning of November 1998, the Northwestern region of Nicaragua was devastated by hurricane Mitch. The consequences of this natural disaster were enhanced by the extreme vulnerability of the country, by the lack of organization to face this kind of phenomena and by a historically unsustainable use of the land. For example, in the Western Region almost 80% of the rivers have dried up during the last 30 years because of the felling of dry tropical forests (see article below).

The Nicaraguan territory lies in a zone of the Earth especially prone to natural phenomena such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. Their consequences are generally presented as the result of the rage of nature, without taking into account that the negative effects of natural agents depends not only upon their intensity but also on the vulnerability of the affected society and territory.

High rates of deforestation contributed to the flash floods and mudslides which caused most casualties due to Hurricane Mitch, Central America's deadliest disaster. More than ten thousand perished, and thousands more are still missing in Nicaragua and Honduras. According to Father Miguel d'Escoto, a member of the FSLN National Directorate, "This is the worst natural disaster in our [Nicaragua] history; even more so than the earthquake [in 1972]."

Last February in the village of Rosita, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, representatives of the indigenous peoples Sumus and Miskitos, local and regional authorities, NGOs, community and religious leaders, met to consider the illegal activities of the Korean transnational company Kimyung, which operated through the subsidiary SOLCARSA, responsible for invading communal lands and destroying the forests and livelihoods of local people. The meeting approved a declaration demanding the inmediate suspension of the concession awarded to the company (see WRM Bulletin nr. 11).

A large meeting took place last February in Rosita, a village on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, attended by representatives of indigenous communities (Sumus and Miskitos), local and regional authorities, NGOs, community and religious leaders and many others. The reason: the illegal activities of the Korean transnational company Kimyung, which received a concession in 1994 from the Nicaraguan central government -at the time headed by President Violeta Chamorro- to log an area of 62,000 hectares of forest in indigenous territories.