Bulletin Issue 56 – March 2002

The Sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will take place in April in The Hague. Much is expected from this conference regarding forests, because this is the main thematic issue which will be addressed by the meeting. Additionally, the basis for negotiation is the draft programme of work elaborated last November by the CBD's scientific body (SBSTTA), which we welcomed (see WRM bulletin 52) as pointing at the right direction, including local peoples' rights, participation, equitable sharing of benefits, sustainable use, capacity-building and many other relevant issues.

When described by European officials, the world seems to be divided in two different sets of governments. "Their" world appears to have taken on board environmental --and even social-- concerns, while "corrupt" Southern governments continue destroying the environment. Such simplistic picture does not take into account that the causes of environmental destruction in the South are very frequently rooted in the North. The following example helps to better understand the issue.

The Niger Delta is one of the world’s largest wetlands, and the largest in Africa: it encompasses over 20,000 square kilometers. It is a vast floodplain built up by the accumulation of centuries of silt washed down the Niger and Benue Rivers, composed of four main ecological zones --coastal barrier islands, mangroves, fresh water swamp forests, and lowland rainforests-- whose boundaries vary according to the patterns of seasonal flooding.

Wally Menne, a member of the South African Timberwatch Coalition, sent the following message to Magnus Grylle of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): “The information given [by the FAO] in respect of the total area covered by forest in South Africa is misleading as there are probably more than 3 million hectares of alien monoculture industrial timber plantations and thickets included in your total of 8.9 million ha. In fact, a more accurate figure for actual forest would be 4.5 million ha. Industrial timber plantations are a temporary crop with rotations of 7-20 years and an average of about 10. They destroy indigenous culture and biodiversity, displace communities, and irreversibly degrade the land. It is dishonest to pretend that they are forests."

A country with profuse forests --open hardwood woodlands being the dominant type though there are also closed forests and mangroves--, Tanzania has 33.5 million hectares of forest cover richly endowed with biodiversity, which account for one-third of the total land area. However, this biodiversity is being threatened by several direct and underlying processes which have implied the clearing of forest land at a rate of 400,000 hectares per year during the past two decades. One of those damaging processes relates to forest conversion to commercial agriculture and mining, which in turn have to do with export-oriented policies widely applied at the national and global levels.

Imagine the following situation: a company gives money to an environmental organisation. The company plans an enormous, massively environmentally damaging project in the tropics but agrees to provide funding to protect a nearby area of forest. Rather than opposing the project, the environmental organisation conducts studies on managing the protected area and recommends that the project goes ahead.

The Penang Inshore Fishermen Welfare Association (PIFWA) has recently held a workshop on the importance of mangroves. Fisherfolk had there the opportunity to highlight what they already knew: that mangrove forest is an inherent part of their livelihood since it is closely related to fish catch. Without mangroves there will be no fish in the sea since they play a vital role as intermediaries between marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

A research undertaken by the NGO Friends without Borders shows that refugee communities living along Thailand’s border areas and displaced by war and civil strife from neighbour countries, are being unfairly accused of forest destruction in Thailand. Since 1984, mass exodus of Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan ethnic peoples fleeing from war and human rights violations by the military dictatorship in Burma, have settled in Thai border areas, totalling 10 border camps with some 115,000 refugees in the year 2000. Additionally, some 100,000 Shan people, who have not been granted refugee status, are living and working as migrant labourers. Most refugee camps are located in national forest reserves, which provide food and shelter to the communities.

Indonesia has 10% of the world’s remaining tropical forests which are home to over 20,000 plant species --accounting for 10% of the planet’s total--, 12% of the world's mammal species and 17% of bird species, many of which are unique. The magnitude of this lush biodiversity can be pictured by the data that 25 acres of Borneo's rainforest were found to contain 700 tree species, equal to the total number of species for the whole of North America..

The inhabitants of the northern zone of Costa Rica, gathered together in the Northern Front for Opposition to Mining (Frente Norte de Oposición a la Minería) are opposed to the Crucitas Mining project for open-cast gold mining and have organised a march in San Carlos, under the slogan of “Yes to life, No to Mining.” They demand the suspension of mining projects and promotion of a sustainable, eco-touristic and agro-industrial development for the frontier communities that so far have been neglected.

It is sad to see that, while the governments of the world --including the Brazilian government-- are preparing to participate in the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, some representatives of the people of the State of Espiritu Santo, whose very threatened biodiversity is among the richest in the world, do not show the least concern over the matter.

The Mapuche Coordination of Arauco-Malleco Communities in Conflict denounced that the large scale fires that burnt down some 53,000 hectares of native forests in the south of Chile last February, creating what was defined as an “environmental tragedy,” were caused intentionally by the sectors and bodies linked to the major forestry companies.

Within the rationale for privatisation in Ecuador, the Ministry of the Environment is intending to delegate its functions and responsibilities to a private law body, CORFORE (Corporación de Promoción y Desarrollo Ferestal del Ecuador – Ecuadorian Corporation for Forestry Promotion and Development). The Board of Directors of CORFORE would comprise representatives from the following institutions: Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, CORPEI (Corporation for export and investment promotion), AIMA (Association of Timber Industrialists), CONIFOR (National College of Foresters), Federation of Chambers of Agriculture and CODEMPE (Council for the Development of the Peoples of Ecuador).

Within the ecological region of the Andean Belt, the Vilcabamba Cordillera in Peru is the only part where the original habitat has not been degraded. Together with the Urubamba Valley, they constitute a region where so far biodiversity has been conserved in an almost pristine state. Furthermore, it is a zone that fulfils important ecological processes --for the water system and climate change, among others-- essential both to the region and to the world in general. The zone is inhabited by numerous indigenous groups, some of them in a situation of initial contact and in voluntary isolation.

The word "modern" is usually understood as meaning progress. In forestry, it clearly means the opposite, particularly --though by no means only-- with respect to biodiversity. Modern industrial forestry aims at the production of ever increasing volumes of wood per hectare, regardless of its impacts on people, soils, water and biological diversity. The initial stages of industrial forestry are now perceived as primitive by modern foresters, because only few hectares of trees of a single genus (frequently several species of eucalyptus in the same plot) were planted in holes dug in the soil. They grew fast, though not fast enough to feed the ever-growing appetite of the pulp and timber industry.

At the end of UNFF1 (first session of United Nations Forum on Forests) in June 2001, NGOs and Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPOs) decided that the real test for the UNFF would be in 2002 when the new Forum would address substantive issues instead of process and operational questions. The time came and UNFF2 was held. However, after two weeks of listening to rhetorical statements by governmental delegates and the usual deadlocks over trade and a Forest Convention, civil society organisations and indigenous peoples are totally disillusioned and have little or no expectations that the Forum will move beyond the stagnated and polarised dialogue that hindered the end of the previous Intergovernmental Forum on Forests' process.