Bulletin Issue 30 – January 2000

During the last meeting of the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), NGOs and IPOs made a statement expressing their disappointment and frustration regarding the lack of implementation of measures agreed upon in the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests' (IPF) "proposals for action." The statement said that "for whatever reasons, governments seem either unwilling or unable to take substantive action to solve the world's most pressing forest problems."

Seldom are there news arriving from Liberia. This country, located in the West African region, with shores on the Atlantic Ocean and bounded in the West by Sierra Leone, Guinea in the North and Ivory Coast in the East, ranks amongst the world’s poorest countries and bears the weight of a huge foreign debt. An accelerated process of environmental degradation -including forests- is also affecting the country. Several activities -as mining, plantations and logging- are destroying the dense tropical rainforests.

To the reductionist viewpoint of Western silviculture, forests are mainly -if not exclusively- a source of roundwood for industrial purposes. Nevertheless, forests are not only the home for thousands of indigenous people in different regions of the world, but also a rich source of different goods -wood included- and services. Medicinal plants are one of such valuable products which indigenous people use in traditional medical practices. Unluckily, some of them -together with the associated traditional knowledge- are also coveted by multinational pharmaceutical companies, which are actively involved in appropriating them for profit-making.

The expansion of the tree plantation model in South Africa has given place to a heated debate. Philip Owen, from SAWAC (South African Water Crisis), as well as several other concerned people, have repeatedly argued that the plantations scheme is detrimental to grassland and water conservation, thus negative with regard to rural communities. Last month Philip received a letter as a response to some comments he had made on an article entitled "Timber Farmers Praise Paper Giant", related to a tree plantation project by SAPPI -called Project Grow- in Kwa-Zulu Natal, which was published in The Citizen on November 18th 1999. Among other things, the reply stated that plantations do not make the land useless for growing vegetables, and that cattle grazing is to be seen in the project area.

Corruption and incapacity among forestry officials, as well as the activity of illegal loggers, timber product dealers and sawmillers are responsible for the disappearance and degradation of Tanzania's forests (see WRM Bulletins 27 and 29). This not only means the destruction of a valuable ecosystem in a tropical region but also the loss of the source of resources and incomes for forest dwellers and forest dependent people.

Uncontrolled logging threatens the future of Cambodian forests. A review of logging concessions in Cambodia was initiated last year, with the aim of identifying those concessions which should be terminated due to their repeated legal infringements, and those which should be continued under new contracts. The initiative, which was funded by the Asia Development Bank (ADB), has been crippled by time and financial constraints resulting from shortcomings in the ADB's management process.

The preservationist approach to forest protection, which considers people as a threat to nature, ignores the human and territorial rights of rural communities and indigenous peoples living in the forests, who in fact usually contribute to their conservation. The view of nature as a void space, at the same time beautiful landscape and store of biodiversity for humanity, is not only unrealistic -since practically all the Earth is nowadays a geographic space modified by human intervention- but also leads to social and environmental conflicts. Even if this approach has been largely superseded, it is still being enforced in some cases, such as in India.

Borneo, one of the biggest islands of the Malaysian archipelago in South East Asia, is under the sovereignty of three states: Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Originally this big island was completely covered by dense tropical forests. The expansion of the lumber-exporting industry, together with oil palm and pulpwood plantations both in Malaysia and Indonesia have nearly completely destroyed the Bornean forests. Consumers of tropical timbers in the North, such as buyers of plywood for home building in the USA are ultimately responsible for this ecological disaster. Timber exports contribute $8 billion annually to the Indonesian economy and provide 80% of the plywood used in the US home building industry.

The Selangor dam project is being strongly resisted by local communities, indigenous peoples and environmental NGOs, since it means the destruction of 600 hectares of rainforest, the eviction of the native Temuan from their ancestral homelands, and the destruction of the green sanctuary of Pertak in Ulu Selangor. It is also feared that the wetlands near Kuala Selangor, as well as the montane forest of Pertak will be adversely affected. Additionally, safety matters regarding the dam structure have not been adequately addressed. With well founded arguments the Consumers' Association of Penang (CAP) has severely questioned the Environmental Impact Assessment study (EIA) prepared by SMHB Sdn. Bhd for the project proponent, Konsortium TSWA-Gamuda-KDEB (see WRM Bulletin 22).

Democracy and environmental groups in Thailand and beyond are shocked and outraged at the way Twentieth Century Fox used the force of power and big money to produce the movie 'The Beach', starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In late 1998, the US company, which belongs to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire, bulldozed and reshaped Maya Beach, part of Phi Phi Islands National Park, for just two weeks of filming because its natural scenery was considered not good enough to project Hollywood's ideal of a "tropical paradise". The film-makers not only committed gross eco-crimes to be prosecuted by law, they also need to be condemned for their contempt of local people who revere Maya as a sacred ground.

The following letter from Jorge Varela of the Committee for the Defence and Development of Flora and Fauna of the Fonseca Gulf (CODEFFAGOLF) was published in Late Friday News nr. 53, a publication of Mangrove Action Project (MAP). In 1999, Jorge was one of the seven environmental and human rights activists to receive the Goldman Prize 1999. In his letter he expresses: "Tegucigalpa, Honduras, December 8, 1999 Good News From Honduras! With so much satisfaction, we send you an affective and cordial greeting. We are about to end the year 1999 and want to share with our friend and partner organizations, the happiness that we feel in having attained the following achievements:

In February 1998, representatives of indigenous communities -Sumus and Miskitos- local and regional authorities, environmental NGOs, and community and religious leaders joined in Rosita, a village on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, to discuss a common strategy against the illegal activities of the Korean transnational logging company Kimyung, which in 1994 had received a concession from the central government on 62,000 hectares of forest in indigenous territories (see WRM bulletin 11). Kimyung operated through the subsidiary SOLCARSA. Even if such concession was considered to be in violation of the constitution, the company began its depredatory logging activities, provoking resistance among local communities.

The issue of the environmental services that Southern countries can provide to Northern countries to mitigate the effects of global climate change is controversial. On the one hand there is the question of environmental justice at the global level, since those countries that are most responsible for the dangerous alteration of climate on Earth, instead of addressing the causes that are provoking it -for instance the unsustainable energy use and the huge emissions of CO2 by industry- are looking for doubtful and partial solutions, that can be bought for a low price in the South. Additionally, there is the question of who has got the right to participate in such kind of negotiations, as well as who will be the beneficiaries, and eventually who will be worst hit by them.

The indigenous people Pataxó-Hã-Hã-Hãe are claiming their territorial rights on an area of 53,000 hectares in the Southern Region of the State of Bahia, which contain remnants of the once luxurious "mata atlantica" forest that spread along the Ocean coast. These lands, converted into pastures, were invaded by ranchers, which are using them for cattle raising and, in some areas, for planting cacao. Such use of the land after massive deforestation has caused severe environmental impacts on soils and on water supplies. In 1936 the lands of the Pataxó-Hã-Hã-Hãe were demarcated, but gradually invaded by some 300 ranchers ("fazendeiros"), who even got land titles from local authorities.

The accelerated loss of the Amazon rainforest is perhaps the most notorious case of environmental destruction at a global level. It is not "humanity" as an abstract entity the one responsible for it. A research on forestry policy performed by the Brazilian National Security Agency (SAE) in 1998 concluded that 80% of the timber produced in the Amazon was extracted illegally. Powerful transnational companies were and are direct agents of this devastating activity (see WRM Bulletin 5). At the end of the chain, the demand in Europe and the United States for hardwoods, as well as the consumption by Brazilian urban elites for furniture, promote these large illegal logging operations.

During the long conflict that has involved the U'wa indigenous people -with the support of national and international NGOs and social organizations- and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), there have been constant comings and goings. For almost a decade, the U'wa people have successfully prevented Oxy from exploiting oil -that they consider the Earth's blood- in their traditional territory. But in September 1999 the Environment Ministry, which has always acted in collusion with the company's interests, granted a permit to Oxy that allows it to begin an exploratory drilling just outside the Unified U'wa Reservation, in a site that is within U'wa traditional territories (see WRM Bulletin 27). This arbitrary step was and is still strongly resisted both in Colombia and abroad.

The Urra hydroelectric dam megaproject in Colombia is causing negative impacts on the Embera Katio indigenous people, ancestral dwellers of the affected area. With the support of Colombian and international NGOs, the Embera Katio are bravely opposing the project boasted by the government, which menaces the permanence of their livelihoods and the survival or their entire culture (see WRM Bulletin 29).

The Mashco Piro, Yora, Amahuaca, and Yaminahua indigenous peoples in the amazonic Alta Piedras region of Madre de Dios in Peru, are being threatened by pending forest concessions. These peoples -called "uncontacted"- which have chosen to remain in isolation from Peruvian society, would have their way of life, as well as their natural resources severely impacted if logging in their ancestral lands actually takes place.

Environmental NGOs are celebrating the success of the newly elected New Zealand government in forcing the State owned logging company, Timberlands, to withdraw its plans to log extensive areas of beech rainforests on the west coast of the country's south island.

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Mekere Morauta has announced the intention of the new government to impose a moratorium on new logging, and to review existing logging concessions, many of which are thought to have been improperly granted and implemented. The announcement was well received by environmental NGOs, which consider that it is time to halt any new large-scale logging concessions in the country.

The increasing demand of paper and paperboard, especially in Northern countries, is one of the direct causes of deforestation and, at the same time, of the expansion of pulpwood plantations -which normally constitute an additional cause of deforestaton- for the obtention of fibre. Paper production and consumption at the global level has reached such alarming figures, that this industry has become one of the most resource-demanding and polluting industries in the world. Pulp and paper is the fifth largest industrial consumer of energy and the first water consuming per ton of product in the world.

The social and environmental impacts of tree monocultures in the Andean Páramos of Ecuador in a project carried out by the Dutch consortium FACE are analyzed in a thesis work for a PhD in Environmental Sciences of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain. The author -Verónica Vidal- worked during several months in that grasslands region of Ecuador, inhabited by indigenous peasants, and which is capital for the maintenance of the hydrological cycle and as well as hosting high levels of biodiversity.

The WRM has just published a new Plantations Campaign briefing titled "The carbon shop: planting new problems" by Larry Lohmann. This is the third briefing in our series in relation to tree monocultures, and, as the previous ones, it aims at facilitating understanding of the plantations issue by a wider public and can be used to influence journalists and international fora, to organize public discussions, and to raise awareness within communities facing the hegemonic forestry model.

"Undermining the forests. The need to control transnational mining companies: a Canadian case study" by Forest Peoples Programme, Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links and the World Rainforest Movement, published in January 2000, is the second report in a series which focuses on the social, environmental, economic and political impacts of transnational corporations (TNCs) on forests and forest peoples. The first one, titled "High Stakes; The Need to Control Transnational Logging Companies: a Malaysian case study" was published by the World Rainforest Movement and Forests Monitor in August 1998.