Bulletin Issue 46 – May 2001

The United Nations Forum on Forests will be holding its first meeting in June in New York. The mandate of this body is to ensure the follow up of the process initiated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) in 1995, which was continued under the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) from 1997 to 2000. We believe that the previous processes --particularly the IPF and its proposals for action-- have produced more than sufficient analysis on the causes of deforestation and forest degradation and have come up with a large number of ideas to address the problem. What is now needed is political will resulting in concrete action.

A UN mission has recently presented its report on the widespread exploitation of mining and forest resources in Congo (ex-Zaire) by forces of Rwanda and Uganda, in collaboration with Congolese opposition groups in the Eastern region of the country.

Apart from its well-known oil operations, Shell company is also involved in a less known activity: tree plantations. The company has planted --on its own or in joint-ventures-- almost 150,000 hectares of mostly eucalyptus and pine trees in Argentina (10,000), Chile (36,000), Republic of Congo (42,000), New Zealand (23,000), Paraguay (8,000) and Uruguay (28,000).

For its size, Equatorial Guinea holds a remarkable biodiversity both in its continental zone --Mbini-- and in its two main islands, Pigalu and Bioko. Continental Equatorial Guinea is covered by dense tropical rainforest that is exploited by the lumbering industry. It contains more than 140 wood species, of which the most commercially important are okume (Aucoumea klaineana), African walnut, and various mahoganies. This has attracted the logging industry, which has been the main responsible for a severe process of deforestation particularly in the coastal regions of Mbini.

Dams constitute a major direct and indirect cause of nature destruction and disruption of local population's lives worldwide. Even though international concern on this issue is on the rise, national governments, together with transnational consulting and construction firms and with the aid of international financial institutions continue going ahead with this kind of megaprojects. They are usually surrounded by corruption and almost always result in widespread human rights violations against local communities.

A numerous group of Indonesian NGOs that gathered last April 21st issued a letter questioning the certification of forest concessions in that country, because those concessions are based upon the extinction of native customary (“adat”) rights. They reasonably argue that it is not possible to grant a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate to a forest concession holder under those circumstances. They “reiterate the call to LEI (Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia) and FSC for a halt in all scoping, pre-assessment and assessment activities with concessionaires (HPHs), as well as an immediate moratorium on the issuing of any certificates, until core issues related to "adat" rights are agreed and settled among stakeholders.”

Bruno Manser, a Swiss human rights activist devoted to the defence of the Penan indigenous people of the rainforests of Sarawak, disappeared in May 2000 (see WRM Bulletin 40). Bruno became a friend of the Penan and supported their struggle against logging companies, which, in collusion with the government, have been and still are destroying their forests. A year has already gone by without news about Bruno’s fate. This uncertain situation has provoked concern and pain among the Penan people (see WRM Bulletin 41) and the international environmental community.

Nobody knows exactly how many people have been evicted from their homes and land to make way for China's 22,000 large dams. Official Chinese government statistics give a figure of 10 million people, but Dai Qing, the Chinese hydropower critic, estimates that the true figure is somewhere between 40 and 60 million people. Another 280 dams are currently under construction in China, and state policy is to increase the proportion of electricity generated by hydropower plants from 19 per cent to 40 per cent, by 2015.

Since the 1970's, the Costa Rican government has been carrying out studies to implement the Boruca Hydroelectric Project on the river Térraba which, with a 1,500 megawatt generating capacity, would be the largest project of the type in Central America. If the 260 metre high dam were built, it would mean the flooding of 25,000 hectares of lands, among which the entire Rey Curré Reserve and parts of the Térraba and Boruca territories. At the same time, the Ujarrás, Salitre and Cabagra reserves would be also affected by dam-related infrastructures such as roads. For both the indigenous and peasant communities living in the area, the building of the dam would imply their relocation to other parts of the country.

Fisherfolk from the Pacific Ocean port of Champerico are currently fighting for their livelihoods against the shrimp farming firm Camarones S.A. (Camarsa) and its subsidiary Pesca S.A. Although Camarsa has been operating in the area since 1959, it was only in 1995 --with the arrival of the new owner Domingo Moreira-- that the conflicts arose, including the closure of access to the wetlands used by the local fisherfolk --with a fence--, thus preventing them access to their traditional fishing grounds.

The isthmus of Panama stretches in Central America, one of the regions of highest natural and cultural diversity in the world. Different forest ecosystems constitute an essential component of such richness. Several indigenous nations have found in the forests their home and source of livelihoods. In Darién, San Blás and Panamá Oriente live the Emberá-Wounan and the Kuna indigenous people, while the Teribe occupy the area of Bocas del Toro, in the border with Costa Rica, together with the Ngobe-Bugle, who also inhabit part of the provinces of Veraguas and Chiriquí Oriente. According to the 1990 National Census, the indigenous population of Panama is composed of 180,700 individuals, which represents 7.8% of the total population of the country.

In mid-March, 2001 concerned Oregon State University (OSU) students and alumni targeted three GE test sites where Poplar and Cottonwood trees were being grown by Steve Strauss, a forestry professor at Oregon State University and the founder of the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative. According to an open letter sent after the action to professor Straus, the test plots "at these places were independently assessed and found to be a dangerous experiment of unknown genetic consequences".

In May 2000, a parliamentary initiative that would have resulted in the legalization of forest destruction was defeated as a result of a strong national and international campaign to save the forests (see WRM bulletin 35). However --in an apparent electronic "inertia"-- during the following months many people continued receiving calls for action through the internet asking them to send messages to the Brazilian government, ignoring the fact that the proposed legislation had already been shelved. It is important to clarify the above confusion, because a new battle is now under way and a large number of organizations in Brazil --national and international-- are struggling against the same enemy they defeated a year ago.

In the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo there are currently two different production sectors facing completely different situations.

In the last issue of the WRM bulletin we included an article written by Acción Ecológica on an oil pipeline project in Ecuador, which would cross the country from east to west, carrying oil from the Yasuní National Park in Amazonia and affecting indigenous peoples and ecosystems throughout the country.

The FAO is portrayed by many as the expert body on forests. One single example will suffice to question FAO's alleged expertise. The organization's web page includes a "country profile" area containing the basic data on the countries' forest resources and we would recommend everyone to compare what the FAO says with what they know about their own country. In the case of Uruguay, the FAO says:

The Australian SBS Television Dateline programme has produced a documentary concerning fraud, incompetence, corruption and human rights violations by transnational logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea. The documentary exposes widespread cases of loggers raping local women at the barrel of a gun and landowners being forced to sign legal documents, also at gunpoint. The programme states that police are on logging companies' payrolls and that foreign loggers "are a law unto themselves" in their logging concession areas.

During the intergovernmental negotiations on climate change (COP-6) at the Hague last November, the Australian government sided with the US, Japan and Canada in refusing to negotiate reductions of its own carbon emissions. Five months later, the Australian government announced five projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Predictably enough, the projects, which are funded through the government's International Greenhouse Partnerships (IGP) Programme, are not aimed at reducing Australia's emissions, but are to be carried out in Peru, Fiji, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Recent research findings provide additional arguments to the opposition movement against the inclusion of tree plantations as carbon sinks within the current Convention on Climate Change debate on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory say that biodiversity is an important factor regulating how ecosystems will respond to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The team of investigators, led by Peter Reich of the University of Minnesota, just released results from a major field study that appears in the April 12 issue of the journal "Nature."

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have found evidence linking cooling earth temperatures between A.D. 1000 and 1900 to widespread deforestation. The discovery adds layers of complexity to the already difficult endeavor of predicting climate change and casts doubt on a commonly held belief that planting trees will slow "global warming." Though scientists have known ground cover affects temperature, the new findings indicate drastic climate temperatures attributable to land-use. "The main way humans influence climate is by burning fossil fuels, which make greenhouse gasses," Philip Duffy, leader of the lab's climate and carbon cycle modeling group, said recently. "But we also suspected large-scale changes in land-use contributed to climate changes."