Bulletin Issue 70 - May 2003

The United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) will be meeting in Geneva from 26 May to 6 June. NGOs and IPOs have expressed some of their concerns to the UNFF secretariat in April this year (see http://www.wrm.org.uy/alerts/april03.html), concluding that "if these points are not addressed soon, the UNFF will lose its credibility with civil society groups and indigenous peoples and subsequently with governments." The UNFF stems from the 1992 Earth Summit process, when governments acknowledged the forest crisis and agreed on the need of initiating a process to address it. As a result, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) was created, followed later by the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) and finally by the current UNFF.

The Dja Faunal Reserve in South Central Cameroon was created in 1950 by the French High Commission for Cameroon. In 1981 it was named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and in 1987 it became a World Heritage Site. Since 1992 the reserve has been managed by the EU-funded ECOFAC programme, which has been supporting the establishment of a network of protected areas across Africa. In the middle of the 20th century the Baka now living in Miatta village, located many tens of kilometres from the Dja reserve, were forced to move from their ancestral village Mabé, located in the heart of the present reserve, to their present location along the Sangmélima-Djoum road.

In 1925 King Albert 1st of Belgium created a Protected Volcano Zone covering present Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and this later became Albert National Park. In 1960 Albert Park was split into the Virunga Park, and the Parc des Volcans in northwest Rwanda. Both are important ecotourism sites due to their populations of endangered mountain gorillas. Nyungwe National Park in the Rwandan South West was established as a Forest Reserve in 1933, and like the area around Volcans is a zone of high biodiversity, especially in relation to the much larger, adjoining areas that have been taken over for cultivation by Rwanda's dense population.

Residents south of the Matsapha Industrial Estate, where the nation's manufacturing sector is based, recently complained of ailments resulting from the consumption of "poison" water from the Lusushwana river. The river is clean when it flows out of Mantenga Nature Reserve, but then it passes through the Matsapha industries where its colour changes, according to residents who depend on the river for their water needs. "It is brown one day, grey the next," said Thab'sile Dlamini, who lives in an informal settlement that has sprung up along the riverbank. The head teacher at Mthonjeni Primary School has reported widespread stomach ailments among students, though no fatalities. Two-thirds of Swazis live below the poverty line and many still source their water from nearby streams.

Recently, a joint venture company between Heritage Oil & Gas --a subsidiary of the Canadian-based Heritage Oil Corp-- and South Africa's Energy Africa have announced the preliminary results from trial drilling. The exploration for oil has been going on for some time now near the country's western border and the results point to billions of barrels' worth of oil deposits along the western arm of the East African Rift Valley in the Semliki. Uganda's Semliki basin, 265 km west of Kampala, is part of a larger prospective oil field that stretches into eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, which Heritage Oil says has reserves estimated at several hundred million barrels.

The Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution had thwarted in China the establishment of high yield timber plantations put forward in the late 1950s by the Chinese Ministry of Forestry. However, since 1980s, along with the implementation of the reform and open-door policy (namely China's entry to the global market arena), the existing imbalance between wood demand and supply was altered. This seems to be not very different from the process undergone by other countries which end up engulfed by the global commerce and its packaging demand. Apparently, the response to the gap has been also very similar to the one implemented in most of the free market economies: large scale monoculture tree plantations of high yielding species (generally alien) which are even mainly the same.

A longstanding land conflict by the Adivasi indigenous people gave rise in January this year to a toll of some 15-20 (unconfirmed) Adivasis killed and some 32 injured by armed police. The attack was allegedly a response to armed action by Adivasis on wildlife officials with traditional weapons such as bows and arrows. The authorities say they have cleared a wildlife sanctuary which was illegally occupied.

Late last year, some 40 ethnic Hmong men from Ban Phou Khao Khouay marched to the Nam Mang 3 dam site armed with sticks and guns, and demanded to speak with project officials. The villagers were infuriated that they might be evicted from their lands for the project and yet had received no information about where they would be relocated, when they would be moved, or what compensation they would receive. They threatened the foreign contractors, telling them "to pack up and go home" if they failed to answer their questions about resettlement. The protest triggered a halt in dam construction that lasted five days.

Advance Agro, one of Thailand's largest pulp and paper companies, markets its "Double A" brand paper as environmentally friendly. The company's advertising explains that the raw material comes from plantations and thus relieves pressure on remaining forest areas. The reality is that Advance Agro's plantations have displaced communities and are the final stage of deforestation in east Thailand. Kasem Petchanee, the Chairperson of the NGO Coordinating Committee, Lower Northern and Upper-Central Thailand, explained how deforestation started when companies like the state-owned Forest Industry Organisation started logging operations. "Fifty years ago this area was covered in fertile forest," he said.

Thousands of hectares of forest were razed by the flames in a series of forest fires, which during March and April swept uncontrollably through the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the north of Guatemala. The fires reached the Tikal National Park, declared World Heritage site by UNESCO although they were controlled before seriously affecting the area. However, the national parks of Sierra del Lacandón and Laguna del Tigre were razed by the flames, while in the central part of the reserve, the uncontrolled flames advanced in the virgin forest.

On 13, 14 and 15 April, coinciding with the celebration of the First Centenary of the Republic of Panama, the Kuna People feel that their ancestral rights have not yet been accepted nor contemplated by a major part of Panamanian society. They gathered and made the following statement: "The Kuna Nation, represented by its highest leaders, the Saila Dummagan of the Kuna Regions of Madungandi, Wargandi, Kuna Yala and Dakarkunyala, comprising a total of 68 communities, gathered in the community of Ibedi, Madungandi region on 13, 14 and 15 April, wish to declare to the Kuna People and to national and international public opinion our happiness over this meeting of brothers and sisters and our determination to walk together in the construction of the Kuna Nation.

Genetically engineered trees represent a global threat to native forests and biodiversity as a whole. Traits such as herbicide resistance, insecticide production, rapid growth and reduced lignin content coupled with the inability to maintain sterility virtually assure devastation of forest ecosystems. The purpose of Action for Social and Ecological Justice (ASEJ)'s campaign against GE trees (see WRM Bulletin Nº 69) is to achieve an international ban on the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment including test sites and commercial applications.

A letter with over 50 signatures from Brazilian NGOs, churches, movements and trade unions was sent to investors of the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) on 26 March 2003, urging them not to buy carbon credits from the controversial Plantar project in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The letter (available at www.sinkswatch.org, also see WRM Bulletin 65) states that Plantar is neither clean nor sustainable development, that the company has continuously violated labour laws, and does not possess an EIA, though required according to the law. In a letter dated 11 April 2003 to the PCF, Plantar refutes all criticism and concerns raised in the NGO letter, accusing WRM and the Brazilian organization FASE-ES of "tremendous lack of knowledge or understanding."

In these times of increasingly fast processes linked to technological development, we are also witnessing an equally vertiginous loss of natural resources due to over-exploitation enabling a way of production, consumption and lifestyle that closes a vicious circle. In this framework, the gradual loss of native forests is not a minor question, above all because it is irreparable. In an urban context, it may be hard for the ordinary citizen --removed from the cycles and pace of nature's processes and their observation and experience-- to notice what is happening, in the case of Chile in the southern region. Perhaps when the ordinary citizen does learn about it, it may be too late.

In nearly all countries, large scale monoculture tree plantations have been imposed and implemented once the laws of each country have been changed in such a way as to enable national and foreign companies to obtain all kinds of benefits, such as direct and indirect subsidies, tax breaks and even soft loans and refunds for large-scale plantations. In this way, the companies have transferred their costs to already impoverished peoples in a business in which they only obtain profits, they freely use resources, good lands, water, cheap labour, and additionally, are protected by the law so no one can complain.

The Choco region (an area of 75,000 km2 on the Colombian Pacific coast) is a strategic ecosystem due to its natural and cultural diversity and shows the greatest concentration of biodiversity in the world as regards the number of species per hectare (see WRM Bulletin 44). Of the original area of heterogeneous forests, only 44% are still standing, mainly because of colonisation, expansion of the agricultural frontier, cattle-raising and commercial logging.

Logging companies are being warned of people presenting documents to them which may appear to have tribal and provincial government approvals. The warning came from former president of West Big NGela Area Council Ray Mano saying this attitude is widespread among NGela Logging Licence Holders. He explains that this has surfaced recently when one or two people were conned into signing documents allowing tribal lands to be logged. Mano explains that tribal lands in Solomon Islands are not owned by individuals but the tribe. He adds that on many occasions, proper logging application requirements were not met by these licence holders. Mano adds that the people of NGela strongly oppose logging and encourage sustainable operations.

Every time the Asian Development Bank lends money on a project it creates a problem for the government receiving the loan. The project must make money in order that the government can pay the Bank back. This sounds like straightforward economics, but when the Bank gives loans for forestry projects, this means that the forests must make a profit. The simplest way of converting forests to profits is to cut down the trees. The social and environmental impacts of doing this are often devastating. On the other hand, projects which guarantee the rights of communities to access, use, protect and live in or near the forests are likely to be less popular with governments as they are unlikely to contribute large sums of money to government coffers.

In February, the World Bank approved a new Water Resources Sector Strategy (WRSS). The strategy says the Bank needs to shrug off its critics and boost spending on big dams and other water megaprojects. This strategy is a reactionary, dishonest and cynical document. If put into effect it will provide rich pickings for the big dam lobby and private water companies, but only worsen poverty, water shortages and the dire condition of the world's rivers. As the world's largest development institution, the World Bank helps set the agenda for other donors and governments. The strategy could thus do great harm not only by setting priorities for World Bank lending, but also by influencing other institutions.