Bulletin Issue 41 – December 2000

There is an increasing and worrying gap --in international processes-- between stated objectives and actual action. This was clearly perceived during the recent Climate Change Convention conference in the Hague, where the actual mandate --to find solutions to climate change-- was mostly absent in the discussions.

The first conference of Central African forestry ministers took place in Yaoundé from 4-7 December, within the framework of the follow-up of the implementation of the decisions of the Heads of States Summit held in Yaoundé in March 1999. The ministerial meeting had been preceded in September by a meeting of experts from the forestry departments of the Central African countries. The aims of the organizers of the event --as could be perceived clearly from the agenda-- were the following:

By mid 2000 the World Bank approved a polemic 650-mile oil pipeline project to link the Doba oil fields in southern Chad with the Cameroon's Atlantic coast. The project, led by Exxon-Mobil, and sponsored by Chevron and the Malaysian state-owned company Petronas, is the largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of the strong opposition by local and international organizations, which feared the impacts of the megaproject on people and the environment, the Bank finally approved the project, claiming that oil revenues would help to alleviate extreme poverty in Chad and that the environmental impacts of the megaproject could be mitigated (see WRM Bulletin 35).

In many tropical areas mining is a major cause of deforestation and forest degradation, generating a large number of social and environmental impacts. A recent study published by Third World Network-Africa provides a detailed picture of those impacts in the Wassa West District of Ghana. What follows has been extracted from that publication.

Malaysia is the world's top producer and exporter of palm oil, generating fifty percent of the global output, of which 85% is exported. Within the African continent, Nigeria is the country having the more extensive oil palm plantations, with at least 350,000 hectares planted to this crop. According to recent news, a Malaysian corporation will begin to invest in Nigeria's palm oil sector, with government support from both countries.

A recent study, sponsored by CIFOR and WWF International’s Macroeconomics Program Office, provides an in-depth analysis of the features and consequences of the rapid expansion of the pulp and paper sector in Indonesia during the last decade.

The Government of Laos (GoL) has halted the Forest Management and Conservation Programme (FOMACOP) after the first five-year phase because of difficulties between the GoL and external actors including the World Bank over the management of logging revenues from the programme. Initiated by the GoL to promote “Sustainable Forest Management”, the Fomacop was planned to be a 10-15 years programme with the first phase beginning in January 1995 and ending in September 2000. Fomacop had two subprogrammes: forest management and biodiversity conservation. The forest management programme consisted of “Village Forestry” in 60 villages comprising 20,000 village people and 145,000 hectares (ha) of land and forests in the Savannakhet and Khammoune provinces.

Nowadays only about 10,000 Penans remain in Sarawak and very few of them are still able to carry out their nomadic lifestyles. As well as other Dayak people, they have been and still are the victims of all kinds of abuses by the State police and the timber companies themselves. That of the Penans indigenous people in Sarawak is a paradigmatic example of a long and unsolved conflict involving territorial rights. To the official viewpoint there is a 'Penan problem' originated by the resistance the Penans have opposed to the destruction of their lands and rainforests, setting up blockades to prevent the transit of logging machinery and trucks.

Bruno Manser is still missing. The Swiss Ambassador to Malaysia officially requested now the Government of Malaysia to assist in the search and rescue of Bruno Manser, the indigenous peoples rights activist and special envoy in the struggle of the Penan People, who went missing in Sarawak over six months ago and whose presence in Sarawak was denied earlier by the Malaysian authorities. The traditional Penan people of Sarawak, whom Bruno Manser supported for so many years, have now written a letter to the international community. Please read it and distribute their message widely.

Thailand’s main logging agency, the state-owned Forestry Industry Organisation (FIO), is looking to certification of its tree plantations and ecotourism as a way out of its financial troubles as well as to cover-up its infamous past. Founded in 1947 as a state-owned forestry enterprise with the mandate to manage logging concessions in Thailand’s forests, the FIO operates under the Royal Forestry Department (RFD) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. At the time of its establishment, the agency had three main operations: logging of teak and non-teak tree species in concession areas; logging in non-concession areas that include the sites of proposed reservoirs and dams, and the use or sale of confiscated wood cut or imported illegally into Thailand.

The Vietnamese government is currently negotiating with a range of bilateral and multilateral "aid" agencies to raise funds for its five million hectare reforestation programme. So far, little of the estimated US$4.5 billion needed has been formally committed, but in December, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced a US$287,000 project "to promote the programme in Vietnam". On 7 December, Nguyen Van Dang, Vietnam's Rural Development Minister and Fernanda Guerrieri, FAO's representative in Vietnam, signed the agreement for the FAO project.

After nine months of denouncing the destruction of wetlands at "El Carey", Marcovia, Choluteca; after several months after members of CODDEFFAGOLF (a local environmental organization) and the Environment Attorney were driven out with threats from that site; after several months of requesting international solidarity for this case; two months after the visit of a RAMSAR representative, and a few days after announcing the mobilization of fishermen and farmers to Choluteca, near the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca, CODDEFFAGOLF launched a Peoples' Peaceful Demostration, which has already achieved the following results:

Mexico was urged in an international declaration released on 27 November in Wellington, New Zealand, immediately to release tortured farmer environmentalists, Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia who have been imprisoned after conviction on trumped up charges following their peaceful opposition to logging in the Mexican state of Guerrero (see WRM bulletins 26, 35 and 38).

In the last issue of the WRM bulletin we included an article --"Argentina: A shady carbon sink project"-- detailing an absurd and destructive tree plantation project in that country. Now we are pleased to inform you that the struggle against it has been successful. The Argentinian justice has prohibited the company to "carry out all the works related to the forestry project", which involved the clearcutting of 4400 hectares of native forest to be substituted with Oregon pine.

More than a year ago, the Pataxó indigenous peoples re-took an important part of their traditional territory located in the state of Bahia (see WRM Special Bulletin May 2000). Since then, they have been struggling to have their rights recognized by the government, with little support from environmental organizations, many of whom seem to deny them their capacity to manage the forest that rightly belongs to them.

In order to revamp its deteriorated image, the Chilean forestry sector launched in August the multimillion-dollar campaign “Forests for Chile”, consisting of propaganda in mass media aimed at convincing public opinion about the benefits of what it calls "forests" and which are in fact monoculture tree plantations (see WRM Bulletin 39).

For more than 10 years Uruguay has been implementing an unsustainable forestry model, substituting its natural prairie ecosystems with large-scale eucalyptus and pine tree plantations. Apart from the already proven environmental and social impacts, the country could soon be confronting new impacts generated by the use of genetically modified trees in commercial plantations. Genetic engineering seeks to increase the commercial efficiency of plantations, "producing" trees that will grow faster, resistant to herbicides, more uniform and with less lignin content, thus making their industrial processing into pulp and paper cheaper.

A coalition of non-government organisations is calling on the Government to make some fundamental changes in the forest industry. They are calling for the continuation of the current moratorium on new logging concessions until reforms are in place to deal with the many problems in the sector. Speaking as Chairperson of the Eco-Forestry Forum, Mr Sasa Zibe Kokino said, “the Prime Minister has already admitted that the forest industry is in a mess with poor practice, corruption and unsustainable logging operations. We are now calling on the Government to ensure that the necessary reforms are made before the current moratorium is lifted.”

The Solomon Islands have been devastated by Australian and Asian logging companies; which have swept through the country's forests, leaving a trail of disintegrating communities, flattened and degraded forests and silted coral reefs from runoff of exposed fragile soils.

One of the major myths about tree plantations is that they help to alleviate pressures on forests by providing alternative wood sources. This has been proven false in practically all southern countries, but the myth still prevails in many circles, particularly among professional foresters. Another major myth is that plantations are "planted forests", having the same positive impacts as forests. This has also proven to be absolutely false, but foresters still insist in calling then "forests."

The Heinrich Böll Foundation awarded the Petra Kelly Prize 2000 to two Mapuche women --Berta and Nicolasa Quintremán Calpán-- as a recognition of their struggle to protect the Mapuche Pehuenche's rights against the Spanish ENDESA Company and the Chilean Government over the construction of the RALCO dam. The RALCO dam would be the second of the six hydroelectric dams ENDESA has planned to build along the Bio Bio river. The first dam --the Pangue dam-- was completed in 1997 only 30 km down the same river, and received a US$ 150 million loan from the World Bank. This was eventually recognized by World Bank's president James Wolfensohn as having been a big mistake. The Bank was even accused "of contributing to ethnocide of the Mapuche-Pehuenche indigenous community."