Bulletin Issue 116 - March 2007

No one in their right mind can accuse President George W. Bush of overly concerning himself with climate change. In this respect, his curriculum is spotless and both his unreserved support to the oil industry and his oil wars have implied significant inputs to global warming. And if any doubts were left, his persistent refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol has made him the undisputed leader of those making the largest contribution to the destruction of Planet Earth’s climate.

The problem of the loss of territories by peasants and indigenous peoples in favour of industrial projects has several aspects in Brazil and the Landless Peasant’s Movement (MST) has been struggling to counteract this process. We have reported on the successive occupations of land covered with vast monoculture eucalyptus plantations for pulp production – one of such occupations recently involved the women of Via Campesina/MST on the occasion of International Woman’s Day.

Southern Cameroon is red and green. Green like the forest of the Congo basin that breathes and has a heartbeat and that offers its inhabitants the biotic resources necessary to subsist; and red like the dusty roads where trucks run, transporting the bodies of forest giants that will be turned into furniture, flooring, doors, etc. Along Cameroon’s open veins flows its vital element to the port of Douala, where the vampire from the North comes to quench its thirst…

The Ministry of the Environment is placing Ecuador’s indigenous territories in danger. Under a new term, that of “co-management” it intends to hand over our ancestral territories and their natural resources to logging, oil palm and mining companies. On 12 January 2007 the Minister of the Environment, Ana Albán modified the granting of Awa territory and set up a co-management regime between the indigenous Awa and Afro-Ecuadorian communities for the Parish of Ricaurte-Tululbí, Canton of San Lorenzo, Province of Esmeraldas. This resolution affects five Awa communities: Guadualito, Mataje, Balsareño, Pambilar and La Unión, involving 771 inhabitants and a territory of some 17,493 hectares.

Like State governments in many other parts of India, the government of Jharkhand State is planning large-scale industrial expansion across the entire region in the name of “development” and “poverty reduction”. To the dismay and disillusionment of mass movements in Jharkhand, newly elected government officials plan to uphold agreements struck by the previous State government with leading steel and mining companies. In return for 169198 Crore Rupees (c. US$3.8 billion) of investment, these agreements promise companies massive land acquisition, which will deforest no less than 57,000 hectares of forest and displace 9,615 families, many of them located in legally protected Scheduled Areas set aside for indigenous Adivasi peoples in the State.

We had already shared (see WRM's bulletin Nº 111) what the ‘Operation Climate Change’ -- launched on January 1, 1999 -- did in the Niger Delta: activists shut down oil flow stations and gas flares. In response, many houses were destroyed, people were killed and women were raped. However, the struggle continued and mainly women started a joint campaign to protect life by putting a stop to the depredations of Big Oil. They won a fight: in January 2006 Nigerian courts ordered Shell to stop the flaring of natural gas in Ogoniland.

Monoculture eucalyptus plantations are advancing over vast areas of the country, occupying traditional peoples’ territories, displacing them, evicting people from rural areas, thus contributing to the creation of poverty belts, with the context of violence and criminality these necessarily imply. And as if this were not enough, they also have their quota of bloodshed.

Loss of land and loss of access to natural resources is fuelling a livelihood and economic crisis among Cambodia's rural communities. "People are being dispossessed from their lands by those with political power and money," writes Shalmali Guttal in a recent report for Focus on the Global South.* Loss of land translates into "hunger, cash-poverty, poor health and destitution for rural communities", notes Guttal. When indigenous communities lose their land, their livelihoods, culture and tradition are also destroyed. "The loss of traditional/local territories among indigenous communities results in extremely severe consequences including sickness, destitution and even death."

Last December I was travelling with three friends (a Cameroonian and a Swiss couple) along the public route that crosses the oil palm plantations belonging to Socapalm (Société Camerounaise des Palmeraies) in the Kribi region. On reaching the control post installed by the company – that we had crossed earlier on – we were stopped by a private security guard who demanded our identity documents. On asking him why he wanted them he informed us that Socapalm “secret agents” aware of our visit had ordered him to do so. He added that he had been told to take us to the company’s information office. Of course we did not hand over our documents nor did we accept to be taken to the information office because the company has no legal right to demand this.

The Peoples’ Permanent Tribunal – Colombian Chapter met on 26 and 27 February 2007 in Lower Atrato to bring to trial transnational companies focusing on the issue of biodiversity and exploitation of natural resources in Colombia. The participating communities and social organizations – including environmental organizations – accused Smurfit Kapa Carton de Colombia “of violating human, environmental, social and cultural rights.

Sappi's plantations in Swaziland are the epitome of what is wrong with industrial tree plantations. More than fifty years of living with plantations has done less than nothing to develop the country's people. Species-rich grasslands were destroyed and people moved to make way for the plantations, when they were established as a British “aid” project in the 1950s. The plantations are monocultures of pine trees, exotic to Swaziland. Every year, Sappi clearcuts a total of 3,000 hectares of its plantations, leaving vast scars on the landscape. When the clearcuts are replanted, the trees suck up water, drying up streams and reducing flow in rivers. Sappi's plantations and nurseries can only be managed through the use of chemical pesticides.

Ethanol is a biofuel usually made from maize (corn) or sugar cane, which is being enthusiastically promoted as an alternative fuel which can be blended into ordinary petrol or burned directly in special "flex-fuel" engines.

The present energy matrix is basically compounded by oil (35%), coal (23%) and natural gas (21%). The nations of the OECD -- the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- which account for 56% of the planet’s energy consumption are desperately in need of a liquid fuel replacement for oil. Worldwide petroleum extraction rates are expected to peak this year, and global supply will likely dwindle significantly in the next fifty years. The Bush Administration is committed to significantly expanding biofuels to reduce its dependence upon foreign oil (the US imports 61% of the crude oil it consumes). Although a range of prospects for biofuels exists, ethanol derived from corn and soy currently constitutes 99% of all biofuel use in the US.

If we want to curb climate change, carbon trading won't do. In 1992, an infamous leaked memo from Lawrence Summers, who was at the time Chief Economist of the World Bank, stated that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that". The recently released Stern Review on climate change, written by a man who occupied the same position at the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, applies a similar sort of free market environmentalism to climate change. Sir Nicholas Stern argues that the cost-effectiveness of making emissions reductions is the most important factor, advocating mechanisms such as carbon pricing and carbon trading.