Issue 142 – May 2009

On May 6th, Minister of Science and Innovation of Flanders (Belgium) Patricia Ceyssens planted a tree. Nothing strange in that of course. What was unusual about this type of “green” ceremony what that this was no common tree. It was in fact the first genetically modified poplar to be planted in an open field trial by the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), to be followed by the planting of 119 more GM poplars over the next few days in the same site.

Prey Long is the largest area of intact lowland evergreen forest remaining in southeast Asia. It covers an area of about 3,600 square kilometres in the north of Cambodia. The name, “Prey Long”, means “Our forest” in the language of the Kuy indigenous people who live there. Elephants, tigers, bears, gaurs and banteng roam the forest. The hooting of the pileated gibbon can be heard. Hornbills, vipers, wild pigs and rare crocodiles, turtles, otters and frogs live in the forest. Dipterocarp trees tower above the forest canopy, some reaching 45 metres in height.

In Muisne, on the Northeast coast of Ecuador, the inhabitants have developed a lifestyle adapted to mangrove ecosystems, based on fishing and gathering shellfish and crabs. However, their livelihood has been under threat since the eighties, when shrimp farming started expanding in the region (WRM Bulletin nº 51, October 2001).

At a ceremony held in San Francisco, USA on 20 April 2009, Marc Ona Essangui was presented with the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, which recognizes grassroots activists who take significant risks to protect the environment and communities in their countries.

Since 9 April, the communities of the Peruvian Amazon have started what they have called an “indefinite strike” all over the Peruvian Amazon, in response to the failure of the Congress of the Republic to repeal six decrees considered prejudicial to the indigenous peoples. These decrees were issued by the Executive in the framework of the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and involve the imposition of industries destroying the Amazon and its inhabitants, such as mining, oil exploitation and timber plantations.

The rapid rise in global demand for cheap shrimp and farmed salmon has caused extensive degradation of mangrove wetlands and other coastal ecosystems and subsequent losses in biodiversity. These losses have also destroyed livelihoods among local communities and indigenous peoples in many nations across the global South. Without changing the production-commercialisation-consumption pattern, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) plans to create a certification body for the industrial production of shrimp and salmon which would just “greenwash” the unsustainable industrial aquaculture.

Australia like all colonial countries was founded upon the theft of indigenous peoples land. However in Australia, the authorities took the theft one step further by declaring the continent to be ‘Terra Nullius’, meaning an empty land or a land belonging to nobody. Terra Nullius guaranteed indigenous people no legal rights, for how could they have rights if legally they did not exist?

In the remote Cambodian province of Mondulkiri, the villagers of Busra feel their future fragile and uncertain since the Cambodian government has decided to grant an economic concession to a project of rubber plantation on their ancestral lands. Some of them have sold their land thinking that money was the only reliable thing they could get after months and months of defiance and mistrust. Their mistrust was turned against Khaou Chuly Development (KCD), the Cambodian shareholder denounced for its brutal methods and more recently against its partner in the joint venture between Khaou Chuly and Socfinal, a subsidiary company of the Bolloré Group, key actor in the rubber plantations in Africa.

In response to the global economic crisis that erupted late last year, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has announced a series of measures to foster job creation and economic recovery. One of the most surprising measures is the decision to temporarily increase the subsidies granted to tree plantations under Decree Law 701.

Eucalyptus plantations have become a harsh issue for Chinese farmers of the villages north of the city of Hepu in the province of Guangxi, south of China. Their collective land has been expropriated to make way for monoculture tree plantations. Behind the move is the Finnish-Swedish forestry giant Stora Enso, that plans to lease 180,000 hectares of land for half a century to plant eucalyptus that will feed the company’s pulp mill near the city of Beihai.

Back in 2003, we said that “using the term reforestation for the establishment of a monoculture tree plantation has historically conferred on this type of activity all of the positive characteristics that people rightly associate with a forest, although this is far from the actual reality” (Ambientico magazine, issue 123, December 2003,www.una.ac.cr/ambi/Ambien-Tico/123).

In comparison, Guatemala is a relatively small country but it is very rich in biodiversity. The country is located in the Meso-American* region, the centre of origin of traditional maize and bean landraces, as well as of various species of pumpkins among others. The fact of being located between two big oceans, the differences in altitude ranging from sea level to an altitude of 4,220 metres at the summit of the Tajumulco volcano and being part of a great continental bridge has generated great biological wealth resulting in a wide variety of ecosystems and animal and plant species, many of them used by local communities for their subsistence.

The Southern African organization GeaSphere has produced the online video “Earth Matters” which can be viewed (in two parts) athttp://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Earth_Matters.html