Bulletin Issue 225 – July/August 2016

Ten years ago, the Indian writer Kiran Desai published a novel called The Inheritance of Loss, about the long-lived wounds and suffering connected with colonialism and globalization. Such topics are normal territory for a novelist or poet. But what do they have to do with the World Rainforest Movement? What with never-ending pressures to respond to new outrages, the always-unique lived experience of loss is a topic that forest activists may not always dwell on very much.

In 2003, Australian philosopher Glen Albrecht (1) coined the term “solastalgia” to define the combination of psychological disorders that afflicted native populations as a consequence of the destructive changes in their territory as a result of mining activities, desertification or climate change. The term, which means pain of the land that is inhabited (“solas” means land in Greek, and “algia” means pain), can manifest itself as an intense visceral pain and mental anguish that can result in health problems, substance abuse, physical illness and suicidal tendencies.

Different words, different sides

“This small family, the father, the mother and their two children, enters the sacred forest in order to find solutions to the illnesses and various problems that afflict them.”

Modern people usually refer to medicinal plants as resources at the service of humans. This way of referring to them does not seem to be universal. The Quechua-lamas of the Amazon foothills regard plants as people, even more, they treat them as if they were a living community.

Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a palm oil company, holds hundreds of thousands hectares of land as an agricultural concession. GVL is now pushing to allow logging for export in its concession. Were the government to permit the sale of timber from the legal clearing of forest for oil palm concessions, it would simplify the laundering of illegal timber and dramatically increase the pressure on Liberia’s forests. Support the calling for a ban on the export of such timber to prevent the further destruction of rainforests.

The Indian Parliament approved this July a passage from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, better known as CAMPA Bill, which seeks to hand over large funds for promoting enormous “afforestation” plans; that is, monoculture tree plantations. Social movements and groups in India are strongly criticizing the Bill as it threatens the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, a fundamental law that recognizes the rights of forest people while empowering village institutions to govern their own forests as well as all other forests they depend on.

The short film “Sacred Voices”, supported by the African Biodiversity Network and the Gaia Foundation, shares the messages of eight traditional Sacred Site Custodians from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Uganda. Sacred Sites in Africa are being increasingly threatened by mining companies, investors, plantations, tourist developments and governments. “They do not respect our ancestral lands or our Sacred Natural Sites, which are potent healing places for maintaining vitality of our planet.