Bulletin Issue 11 – April 1998

Last 18th of March the Brazilian Government launched a military operation -similar to the actions against the indigenous peoples undertaken during the dictatorship period- seeking to put a definitive end to the struggle of the Tupinikim and Guarani for the demarcation of their traditional lands. Clearly the aim of the authorities’ action was to create the necessary conditions for the indigenous peoples to be forced to accept the imposition of Aracruz Cellulose.

The second meeting of the Conference on Central African Moist-Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC) will take place in Bata, Equatorial Guinea from 8 to 10 June 1998. CEFDHAC meets every two years in one of the countries of the sub-region and is the result of the political will expressed by the Central African states in their 1996 Brazzaville meeting. The conference is a concertation framework open to all actors participating in the sub-region's forest sector, particularly politicians (parliamentarians and ministers), forestry experts, the private sector and NGOs, aiming at the sustainable managemente of forest ecosystems in Central Africa.

A group of NGO representatives from many countries of the region met in the Environmental Forum of the Peoples' Summit of the Americas held in Chile and analized the forest issue within the framework of the trade-related integration process being promoted by governments through ALCA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas). The results of the analysis clearly showed that deforestation and forest degradation constitute a common denominator in practically all de countries of the region and that the current integration process, which emphasizes on the economy in detriment of the environmental and social issues, will do nothing but aggravate the situation.

There has been, over the course of the last decades in Thailand, many developments concerning the rights of the tribal peoples found throughout the country, but predominantly in the north. The difficulties faced by the entire country, stemming from bad environmental management, came to rest upon the shoulders of the tribal people as they now inhabit the last remain stretches of forested land. However, is the basic assumption made here valid? The assumtion that the small remaining forested lands must be kept free from human habitation, indeed, that the human occupants must be removed and the wilderness kept in a pristine and isolated state to be used for day excursions by the rich. That this is the most effective conservation strategy that could be adopted?

A group of fourty community activists from around Asia and the Pacific have recently held a meeting in Baguio City to review the impact of mining in the Cordillera region in northern Philippines, home of the Igorot indigenous peoples. The meeting, that concluded on April 21st., was organized by Friends of the Earth-Philippines and the Mineral Policy Institute of Sydney, Australia. The activists agreed to support each others' struggles for social justice in the wake of an explosion of new mining projects throughout the Asia-Pacific.

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. Kimyung operates through the subsidiary SOLCARSA (Sol del Caribe: Sun of the Caribbean), and its objetive is to produce plywood from the region’s broadleaf forests.

The municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico is witnessing with great concern how the overdevelopment that has taken place in nearby Puerto Vallarta has attracted the attention of big investing consortia and spurred the ambitions of politicians and senior government officials from this country, resulting in a hoarding of lands, federal zones and mangroves for the purpose of commercial development.

In a press conference during the recent Summit of the Americas held in Santiago, Chile, Mr. James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, admitted that the Bank's support to the Pangue hydroelectric project in the Bio Bio River watershed, in Chile, had been a mistake. Mr. Wolfensohn said that the WB had performed “bad work” during the evaluation of the environmental impact of the project, since the Pehuenche indigenous peoples that inhabit the area had not been consulted. The Pengue hydroelectric plant, that began operating in March 1997, cost U$S 340 million and the International Financial Corporation -an agency of the WB that supports private sector projects- lent U$S 150 million of the total investment.

We have received the following contribution from Leonardo Acurero, through our Venezuelan friends from AMIGRANSA, related to the actors behind the scenes involved in the recent fires that devastated the Brazilian state of Roraima . A providential rain has extinguished it but the danger of future fires is still looming. “The fire of development and occupation covers Roraima.

One of the more widely publicized arguments for the promotion of industrial tree plantations says that fast growing plantations help to alleviate the main pressures on native forests and consequently help to preserve them. This argument was been proven false in all cases and Chile is no exception. According to the local NGO CODEFF, the substitution of native forest by fast growth exotic plantations constitutes -within the process of destruction of native forests- one of the most important factors. A recent study carried out by the government agency CONAF shows that annual deforestation during the 1985-1994 period reached an annual average of 36,700 hectares and that almost 40% of such area was deforested to make way to industrial tree plantations.

In WRM Bulletin No. 10 we included the article "Comments on WWF's 'Forests for life' campaign", as having been produced by Paul Romeijn, Director of Treemail. We have now learned that those comments -which we had received through Paul Romeijn- were actually written by Prof. Julio Cesar Centeno. We apologize to both for the confusion.

Ricardo Carrere was invited to participate in the Environmental Forum of the Peoples' Summit of the Americas, held in Santiago, Chile from 15 to 18 April. In his presentations he emphasized on the underlying causes of deforestation and on the need to implement policies which ensure the conservation of forests and the respect of the rights of peoples that inhabit or depend on them for their survival. He also participated actively in the Forest Group discussions, which resulted in a document aimed at influencing the region's governments (see under Americas)

We have recently created the WRM web page as an effort to facilitate the dissemination of the Movement's viewpoints and relevant information to a wider audience. At the same time, it is our aim to put the web page at the service of our affiliates and friends, who can use it as a means to both access relevant information and to feed it with information about their own specific concerns. We therefore request you to send us any information (in electronic format) which you wish to be included in the web site and/or to give us the address of your or other web sites which you think we should link ours to. We are of course also open to your suggestions about ways by which to improve our current service. The address is: http://www.wrm.org.uy

The tenth issue of our Bulletin has been published in Spanish and distributed to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking people. Future issues of the Bulletin will be published in both languages. We hope that this innovation will contribute to broaden our contacts in this linguistic area of the world. We are now producing two mailing lists -one for Spanish-speakers and another for the rest. Those who wish to receive both versions of the bulletin are requested to let us know.

The March-April issue of "World Watch" (published by the Worldwatch Institute) includes an article by Ashley Mattoon on pulpwood plantations ("Paper Forests"), which constitutes an important contribution to clarify this issue to a wide audience. The WRM Internacional Secretariat contributed with comments to the author's first draft.

We have received a letter signed by Mr. Stephen Kakfwi, Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development of Northern Territories, Canada, as a response to the one sent by WRM International Secretariat on February 25, 1998, expressing our concern on the issuance of logging rights in the Cameron Hills, a territory occupied by the Deh Cho indigenous people. Mr. Kakfwi assures that his Government "will not permit any operation to cause serious ecological damage" and is "quite prepared to work with the Deh Cho First Nations."