Bulletin Issue 107 - June 2006

Much of the world’s population –especially males– will spend the coming weeks glued to the TV as the FIFA World Cup unfolds. While many are fully aware that this is no longer a mere sporting event, but rather a massive globalized business in which the players are little more than disposable gladiators at the service of big corporations, they are still drawn to keep watching, celebrating the victories and suffering the defeats as if they were their own.

A leaked World Bank Inspection Panel [1] report heavily criticises the Bank’s own forest management project in Cambodia for breaking internal safeguards, ignoring local communities and failing to reduce poverty, says Global Witness, a non-partisan international non-governmental organisation --co-nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in uncovering how diamonds have funded civil wars across Africa-- focused on the links between the exploitation of natural resources and the funding of conflict and corruption.

Since 1990, a lot of noise has been made about the forests of the Congo Basin, both good and bad. Now a new environmental wave is descending on the Democratic Republic of Congo, of a scope very similar to that of the “Zaire boom” in the seventies. However, the question is: are the Central African forestry administrations -generally subject to insidious sociological factors- aligned with the aspirations and needs regarding welfare of the region’s inhabitants?

A computer. That is what the US citizen Paul Lambert, representative of the Tortuga Landing company offered the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) as compensation for having built a 105 metre long and 4 metres wide road and for having eliminated natural regeneration in a forest in the terrestrial maritime area of Quepos, a Central Pacific locality. This occurred during a “conciliation” hearing which took place on 17 February at the Environmental Administrative Tribunal (file No. 184-05-3-TAA).

In the early 1900s Gambia was covered by dense and almost impenetrable forests. Today there are only some few remnants of primary forest left, with 78% of the remaining forest area classified as “degraded tree and shrub savannah vegetation.” The main cause of this forest degradation process can be traced back to the introduction of groundnut (peanut), which became the main export-oriented cash crop, mostly aimed at supplying the French market with industrial and cooking oil.

The National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW) welcomes the report submitted by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the draft Forest Rights Bill and is hopeful that the Central Cabinet will approve it and will send it to the Parliament. NFFPFW further acknowledges the role played by the Chairman and members of the JPC, and contribution of all other social movements, struggle groups of forest people and movements in shaping this Bill through their suggestions, and submissions before the JPC.

Many letters have been sent from abroad to the Government of Ecuador in the framework of the campaign to support Ecuadorian social and indigenous organizations that are endeavouring to avoid the adoption in that country of a legislation that will imply the expansion of large scale monoculture tree plantations (see the article on Ecuador in this bulletin). But we want to publish the full version of the letter sent by the Council of Traditional Indigenous Doctors and Midwives of Chiapas (the Compitch) because it reflects the feeling of many and is dictated by the heart of a Latin American people that at this time beats in unison with the Ecuadorian people. “Dr. Ana Alban Mora, Minister of the Environment of Ecuador and… the others

Paulo Henrique de Oliveira, a Tupinikim leader of Caieiras Velhas and Coordinator of the Articulação de Povos e Organizações Indígenas do Nordeste, Minas Gerais e Espírito Santo - APOINME (Articulation of Indigenous People and Organizations from the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo), and Antônio Carvalho, a Guarani chief, travelled to Europe in April/May 2006, to publicise their struggle to demarcate Tupinikim and Guarani lands in Espírito Santo (see WRM Bulletins Nº 94, 96, 102, 103) . They spent three weeks travelling to Norway, Holland, Germany and Austria where they talked to various groups about the 11,009 hectares of their land currently in the possession of Aracruz Celulose --Brazil’s giant pulp producer. The following is Paulo de Oliveira’s account of the trip.

The social and environmental impacts of monoculture eucalyptus plantations have been well documented in many countries. However, the gender dimension has usually been overlooked, thus hiding the differentiated impacts they have on women. The following quotes from a research carried out in Brazil on Aracruz Cellulose’ plantations and pulp mill operation are therefore very useful to shed some light on the issue and to encourage other people to look further into these less well-known impacts.

Colombia is involved in the same process taking place in several Latin American countries regarding the establishment of fast-growing monoculture tree plantations.

In May 2003, we said that “In nearly all countries, large-scale monoculture tree plantations have been imposed and implemented once the laws of each country have been changed in such a way as to enable national and foreign companies to obtain all kinds of benefits, such as direct and indirect subsidies, tax breaks and even soft loans and refunds for large-scale plantations.” (See the article on Ecuador in WRM Bulletin Nº 70.)

On April 12, 2006, the report “The Kalimantan Border Oil Palm Mega-project” was released to show the plans of the Indonesian government to develop up to 3 million hectares of oil palm plantations on the island of Borneo, of which 2 million hectares along the Kalimantan-Malaysia border and 1 million hectares elsewhere --in areas still heavily forested and inhabited by indigenous communities--, to cater for international demand for cheap palm oil to meet the domestic and global demand for bio-fuel.

In May 2006, the Mozambique Ministry of Agriculture submitted for discussion the document “National Reforestation Strategy” (the complete document in Portuguese can be found at http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Mozambique/Estrategia_Reflorestamento.doc). As stated in the document, the bases to promote the establishment of tree plantations in the country involving fast-growing species are set out. Following the pattern present in all the other countries that have introduced large-scale monoculture tree plantations, the proposal comes with the promise of generating jobs and eradicating poverty, contributing to national development particularly in rural zones.

As evidence of climate change becomes ever more compelling, the battle over who gets to frame its causes, effects and solutions will intensify. In popular as well as policy venues, whose voices get heard and whose don't will become a key political issue of our time. Today, at the international policy level, gender is conspicuous by its absence in climate change debates. In fact, the words "women" and "gender" are missing in the two main international global warming agreements, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Recent feminist scholarship and advocacy challenge this invisibility of gender, pointing in particular to the importance of gendering the analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to global warming.