Issue 166 – May 2011

As well as celebrating the International Day for Biological Diversity this month, on May 22, we are also on the eve of another international climate change conference: the 34th session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), which are responsible for providing advice and guidance for the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The two bodies will be meeting in Bonn, Germany from June 6 to 16.

Certification has become a perverse tool in the hands of big corporations that are using it like a “green seal” to impose intrinsically damaging systems of production that become a menace to valued ecosystems. This is happening now to a highly biodiverse ecosystem like mangroves. Several NGOs working with local communities in the shrimp producer-nations and consumers in the shrimp-importing nations have rung the alarm bell regarding the draft standards and the whole fault-ridden WWF-ShAD (Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue) process.

Often hidden, neglected or unknown, the underlying causes of deforestation are multiple and varied. And even odd. Maybe many people are rather familiar with the idea that overconsumption in high-income countries constitutes a major underlying cause of deforestation but not so aware that pet’s consumption patterns share responsibility for the dissappearance of forests.

On May 24, environmental activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo, who were husband and wife, were shot and killed near their home in the southeast of the state of Pará, in the Amazon rainforest region of Brazil. As leaders of the National Council of Extractive Workers (CNS), formerly known as the National Council of Rubber Tappers, they fought for the sustainable and diversified use of the forest and against illegal logging and deforestation. Their murders are two more on a long list that seems never-ending…

After almost five month’s of dithering, Indonesia’s two-year forest moratorium started this month. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono faced a choice between two options: one version of the moratorium would have prevented new concession in all forests and peatlands; another version applied only to primary forests and peatlands. Yudhoyono chose the second.

The Shawi indigenous people, also known as Chayhuitas, live in the territory made up by the basins of the Paranapuras and Cahuapanas Rivers, located in the provinces of Alto Amazonas (in the region of Loreto) and San Martín (in the region of San Martín). Distributed among 180 communities, the Shawi share a system of social organization and symbolic representation. Traditionally hunters and gatherers, they also practice agriculture, growing crops like cassava, corn, beans, rice, peanuts, bananas, pineapples, papayas, cotton and tobacco. (1) They also raise poultry and small animals, in addition to cattle. They market rice, peanuts, corn and beans, and currently practice fishing as well.

What the big forestry companies have done with our territories in Chile is so devastating, so sad and so irreversible that it brings to the mind the “shock doctrine” described by Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein in her book of the same name (1). Using the same line of reasoning, we can state that in less than 30 years, our native forests have been steadily and systematically replaced by monoculture tree plantations under a model promoted during the Chilean military dictatorship and sustained over the following years by a predatory and unjust economic system which is so difficult to combat that today, now that is a fait accompli and continues to be upheld by surreptitious violence, we are simply in a state of shock.

When Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai launched in 1977 the Green Belt Movement – promoting  the planting of indigenous trees in forest catchment areas and riparian reserves, private farms with high community access, and public spaces to preserve local biological diversity – she was wary that that the introduction of exotic plant species can have a severe effect on the balance of the ecosystem. Professor Maathai called for a ban on commercial eucalyptus tree plantations in the country on the grounds that their high rate of water demand was contributing to the depletion of water. Not only Maathai is aware of the impact of eucalyptus plantations on water: “munyua mai” (water guzzler) is the name given by Maathai’s native Kikuyu to the tree.

The High Court in Kuching, the capital city of the East Malaysian state of Sarawak in the island of Borneo, has made a landmark decision when it ruled out on last 20 February that any joint venture agreement between a non-native and native in oil palm plantation is in contravention of the Land Code that provides that ‘a person who is not a native of Sarawak may not acquire any rights or privileges whatever over native customary right”. The decision is a victory for plaintiff ethnic Ibans, natives of Sarawak in the Pantu Land district, who have sued The Land Custody and Development Authority (LCDA), Pelita Holdings Sdn Bhd, Tetangga Arkab and the state government of Sarawak on behalf of themselves and 90 others.

Montes del Plata is the name of the joint venture created for operations in Uruguay by two forestry, pulp and paper transnationals: Arauco of Chile and the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso. The two have joined forces to build and operate a pulp mill that will produce at least 1.45 million tons of pulp annually. As a result of this merger, the Montes del Plata consortium became the largest landowner in the country. It controls 250,000 hectares of land devoted to monoculture tree plantations, which will provide the raw material needed by its mega-pulp mill.