Bulletin Issue 68 - March 2003

In spite of what its title might suggest, this editorial is not about the war declared by the government of the United States against the people of Irak; it's about the never ending war declared by oil interests against the planet and its peoples. Many wars have been carried out and are still being waged throughout the world to ensure corporate control over oil. Oil is power and power needs to control oil. Behind the names of presidents and dictators are the names of much more powerful actors: Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Shell, British Petroleum, Elf. These --and their close relatives-- are the ones that throw out elected presidents and dictators to replace them with more friendly dictators or presidents.

In last month's issue of the WRM bulletin we quoted activist Karl Ammann's open letter to World Bank's President Wolfensohn --wrongly attributed to Jane Dewar-- in which he denounces that World Bank assistance to massive reactivation of the forestry sector would imply new logging concessions in primary rainforests with the subsequent detrimental impact on the environment and the people. (the ammended article is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/67/AF.html#Congo )

Two million acres of forest land is lost annually to mining in Ghana, with mining concessions taking over 70% of the total land area, consequently decreasing considerably food production. The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) --the private lending arm of the World Bank-- have provided start-up capital and cajoled African countries to deregulate, liberalize and privatise their extractive sectors to attract foreign direct investment.

Bonny Island, situated at the southern edge of Rivers State in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, has known no peace since the early 90s, when the Federal Government of Nigeria, in collaboration with its international partners started the multi-billion dollar project Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas Limited (NLNG). Due to its strategic position, the island hosts various oil companies world-wide famous for the social and environmental destruction they cause such as Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Agip, Elf, among others.

Zambia has almost 46 million hectares of forests, of which 7.4 million hectares are reserves, 6.3 million hectares national parks and 32 million hectares are woodlands. It has an estimated area of tree plantations of some 63,000 hectares. It is within that context that the following recent news needs to be analysed. The news is that the Zambian government is exploring the possibility of getting US$30 million to revamp the timber industry which, according to Public relations officer in the ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry Conrad Simuchile, has been abandoned for a long time.

The purpose of British colonial forestry in the nineteenth century was to ensure that the colonial state maintained control over the forests in order to ensure a steady supply of timber. The imprint of colonial forestry in the Mekong Region is still felt today, as states continue to wrest control of forests from local communities. During the late eighteenth century, Britain's oak forests were increasingly exhausted by the demands of the Royal Navy for shipbuilding. In 1805, the British launched the first battleship constructed completely of teak from Bombay. By the mid-nineteenth century there were well over one hundred British teak ships and the British appetite for teak appeared insatiable.

The "Revised Forest Strategy of the World Bank Group" approved on October 31, 2002 makes some very significant admissions like: "There is a close link between the livelihoods of the poor and forests, and '(it is a) largely false notion that the poor are the cause of deforestation in developing countries'." "The reality is that the flow of funds into forests ... will continue to be dwarfed by investment in activities that may have damaging impacts upon forests". And: "The Bank must have an appreciation of how its action and investments in other sectors, or at the macroeconomic level, will impact on forests and forest peoples".

The planned Nam Theun 2 (NT2) dam on the Nakai Plateau in central Lao People's Democratic Republic would be 48 m high and 320 m long, with a capacity of about 1000 megawatts. It would create a 450 km2 reservoir with volume of 3 billion cubic meters. Water from the reservoir would be driven through 40 km long tunnels to a powerhouse located at the base of the Nakai plateau on the Xe Ban Fai River. The size of the project and its location will have a substantial impact on regional biodiversity and people. This short paper summarizes some of these likely impacts and explains the position of WWF-Thailand on the dam.

Later this year, the Board of the Asian Development Bank will decide whether to fund a project titled "Tree Plantation for Livelihood Improvement" in Laos. A consortium of consultants is currently preparing the project. However, the preparations are taking place without the benefit of an open public discussion. According to Akmal Siddiq, Senior Project Economist at the ADB, "The draft reports produced so far are not ready for public distribution and will only be available after Board approval."

On 11 March, the Plenary Commission of the Costa Rican National Environmental Technical Secretariat (Secretaría Técnica Nacional Ambiental - SETENA) flatly rejected the Environmental Impact Assessment submitted by the Industrias Infinito S.A. (IISA) Company on the Crucitas Mining Project, located in the area of the Mining Exploitation Concession granted by the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) during the previous government.

An emergency delegation sponsored by Global Exchange has returned from the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico, and has prepared the following statement: We denounce the imminent forced relocation of indigenous communities settled in Montes Azules. Further, we concur with most nongovernmental organizations that the dislocations are being carried out as a pretext for further commercial exploitation of the region, such as oil exploration, bioprospecting, and the construction of hydroelectric dams.

In a letter sent to President Lula on 20 March, numerous institutions warn on possible socio-environmental risks involved in increasing the area of tree plantations recently demanded by the sector, unless appropriate planning is established. The Working Group on Forests of the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for the Environment and Development sent a letter to President Lula on 20 March, stating their concern over the proposal to extend the area of tree plantations in the country, recently submitted to the government by companies in this sector. The document was sent with copy to the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva and to the Minister of Agriculture, Roberto Rodrigues.

The Mapuche held off European incursions onto their land for centuries. Now, relegated to reservations --called "reductions"-- most Mapuche work as impoverished farmers or field hands or live as a marginalized minority in Chilean cities. However, they are fighting back. "Our objective is the recuperation of the territory of the Mapuche people," Ancalaf, 40, said in a jailhouse interview with journalist Héctor Tobar of the Los Angeles Times. "We want to control our destiny and shape our future according to the cosmology of our people."

Imagine an oil spill twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. It happened indeed in the Amazon region of Ecuador between 1971 and 1991, when Texaco routinely dumped toxic wastes from its operations into the pristine rivers, forest streams and wetlands. As a result, 2.5 million acres of rainforest were lost (see www.amazonwatch.org/megaprojects/ec_chevtox/). Indigenous peoples of the region continue to suffer an exploding health crisis, recording cancer rates 30 times higher than in non-oil producing areas of Ecuador. Between 1999 and 2001, the level of petroleum in the rivers, on which local residents depend for daily use, was 200 to 300 times higher than the limits set for human consumption (See www.imagenlatinoamericana.com/salud/salud_en.asp?articleid=225).

The forestry plan launched in 1988 by the government --based on the promotion of large-scale tree monocultures-- promised the generation of jobs and the entry of foreign currency from increased exports. To achieve these objectives, the Uruguayan State made considerable investments, including direct subsidies, tax breaks, soft loans and investments in infrastructure. By the year 2000, the State had allocated 69.4 million dollars to the sector under the form of direct subsidies. The total tax breaks (on the planted area and on imported goods) amounted to 55.8 million dollars, while soft loans were estimated at 55 million dollars. Finally, investments in infrastructure totalled 234.1 million dollars.

Last year I attended a conference in Capetown on the above subject, where the push appeared to be for the involvement of the Private Sector in the ownership and management of Plantations. As an Indigenous person from a country with huge areas of monocultural exotic plantations, I had never thought much about the ownership of these plantations. In my country they had a history of state ownership, although recent times had seen the sale of some of these plantations. Ethically, I am opposed to the privatization of state assets by any government and regard it as a false economic measure.

Several PNG and Pacific Groups, Australian Groups and International Groups have published a sign-on letter addressed to the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Sir Michael Somare, raising their "deep concern and increasing frustration over the current state of governance in Papua New Guinea's forests sector and its debilitating impact on the economy and security of the Nation", presenting evidence that uphold their concern, and calling on the government to act.

The imagination of technocrats seems to have no limits. On the other hand, their common sense appears to be extremely and increasingly impaired. Their bright ideas surprise us --backward people-- constantly and at times we even doubt --unscientifically-- about their mental sanity. Such is the case of a Dr Klaus Lackner, a Columbia University physicist, who has invented an artificial tree which according to him is much better than the obviously limited real one.

    To governments and civil society committed to halting climate change and reducing fossil fuel emissions at source, the latest developments at the BioCarbon Fund must be worrying. The fund's 'two-window' approach aims at re-opening the door for carbon sink credits from conservation projects even though governments clearly excluded credits from this project type to be used by industrialised countries to achieve their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.