Bulletin Issue 74 - September 2003

The month of September has certainly been rich in important events, warranting the active participation of relevant social actors. The ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, was doubtlessly the most resounding one, both because of the presence of thousands of people and organizations from all over the world, demonstrating in the streets against the WTO, and because of the firm attitude of some countries from the South, in facing the domineering attitude of certain governments from the North. The world will never be the same after Cancun.

From October 13th to 16th the Africa Forest Law Enforcement and Governance ministerial meeting will take place in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Whether this initiative will result in any concrete actions to tackle the immense problem of illegal and unsustainable logging operations in Africa remains to be seen. In the meantime, illegal logging in Cameroon’s forests continues to wreak havoc on the environment, economy and local peoples’ livelihoods.

Kenya is a semi-arid country and is classified among countries affected by chronic water scarcity in both its urban and rural areas. Within such context, the planting of eucalyptus trees appears to be suicidal. And it certainly is. Less than 2 percent of Kenya’s total land surface is now under forest cover. However, its significance is enormous, since forests in mountainous areas shelter the headwaters of Kenya’s major rivers and exercise a natural regulatory control over the river flow. Without them, siltation and flooding will increase, affecting millions of Kenyans. The severe drought from 1998 to 2000 has been partially attributed to the country's disappearing forest cover.

The term "sustainability", which also means "maintainability" is readily and loosely used nowadays and is often quoted as the "magic buzzword" whenever politicians and entrepreneurs alike wish to gain easy acceptance for a proposed development or programme. However, when one takes a closer look at the notion of sustainable development ("economic activity that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs") and at our track record in terms of natural resource use, the truth is that we are still very far off from achieving "sustainability".

The acting commissioner for forestry, Deo Byarugaba, said a recent study by the forestry department revealed that indiscriminate logging and charcoal burning had destroyed hundreds of square miles of forest land.

Tadao Chino, the President of the Asian Development Bank knows what civil society wants from his Bank. During the ADB’s 2001 Annual General Meeting in Hawai’i, President Chino accepted a statement, "People’s Challenge to the ADB", signed by 68 NGOs. The statement included the demand that "Directions for future policies and practices must emerge from public debates and discussions, and not through closed-door negotiations among elite groups of ADB management, national and government elites and technical ‘experts’." President Chino promised that the views of the NGOs "would be taken into account". Unfortunately, in its preparation of its proposed new forest policy, the Bank seems to have forgotten the President’s promise.

Since the 1960s, Cambodia has been promoting the rehabilitation of rubber plantations as well as the development of new ones. As long as rubber plantations involve using large areas of land, many people have been evicted from their traditional lands and many more have lost their livelihoods, to make way for the plantations (See WRM Bulletin Nº 59). The Chhup Rubber Plantation Company at Tumring Commune, Sandan District, Kompong Thom Province, launched on August 2001, will cover 6,200 hectares of rich red soil, "courtesy of the Colexim and Mieng Ly Heng logging companies", said In Horn, vice chief of the company.

In July, the Vietnam Laos Investment and Development Company signed a $232 million deal with the Lao Government to build and operate the 210 MW Sekaman 3 dam. This month the Lao Government announced its approval for the consortium to build five more dams: Se Kong 4 (310 MW), Se Kong 5 (200 MW), Se Pian-Se Nam Noi (340 MW), the Sekaman 1 (300 MW) and Sekaman 4 (55 MW). The consortium consists of six state-run power and construction firms including Electricity of Vietnam, Vietnam’s state-run electricity utility and the Song Da Construction Corporation. Last year Hanoi signed an agreement with the Lao government to import 1,000 MW each year between 2006 and 2010.

Samnao Srisongkhram (1965-2003), who was shot in the head and killed by a hired gunman on 25 May, was a village leader praised for his work defending the interests of fellow farmers in an area of Thailand’s Northeast affected by pollution from a large pulp mill. He was 38. Samnao, of Khambongpattana village in Khon Kaen province, was President of the local Phong River Conservation Club. He had played a part in monitoring and ensuring compensation for the effects of pollution from the Phoenix Pulp and Paper Company since 1996.

During the month of July 2003, measures of intimidation and threats towards members of the Environmental Movement of Olancho (Movimiento Ambientalista de Olancho –MAO) culminating in the murder of Carlos Arturo Reyes from the El Rosario community, Salama Municipality, Olancho on 18 July 2002 (see WRM Bulletin 72) were denounced before Honduran and international public opinion.

The municipality of Bonanza belongs to the North Atlantic Autonomous Region. Since 1880, when gold deposits were discovered, the region has suffered from the "gold rush." It also gave rise to strong migratory currents from many parts of the world in the search for this metal. Presently, the main economic activities of the region continue to be the exploitation together with industrial and artisan processing of gold, and subsistence agriculture.

Chiapas is a zone that is very rich in natural resources, where water and forests are abundant, and who says forests, says diversity, fruit, seeds, flowers, wild animals, fish, medicinal plants, materials for various uses --for firewood, building, crafts, implements, etc. Who benefits from all of this? The region is now suffering from the brunt of "development" policies, for which development is synonymous with incorporation into the international market. Usually the South has the function of producing raw material or food, providing natural resources --among which, oil, water, minerals-- and is a place for the settlement of industries that use the supply of cheap labour, favoured additionally with exemption from labour and/or environmental protection requisites.

In some cases following a very dubious public participation process and in others, causing strong reaction, the Protected Areas Bill was submitted to consultation. In general, there is rejection of the Bill’s attempt to legalize entry of oil and mining companies into protected areas such as the Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve and Indigenous Territory, and the Amboro and Madidi Parks. Peasant organizations in Cochabamba stated that if protected areas are for the oil or logging companies, they prefer them not to exist.

In many regions of Brazil, woodlands and areas previously used for agriculture are now substituted by large-scale monoculture tree plantations, recruiting their work force among men, women and children. In the case of Minas Gerais, plantation implies a series of activities carried out by women on a par with men, except logging which is a masculine activity par excellence. Hiring of women workers was based on their greater aptitude to carry out certain tasks, such as growing plants in nurseries, which requires greater dexterity. In some cases too, women are entrusted with the application of ant-killers to the land planted with eucalyptus.

In 1980 the Shell Company, logging companies and Evangelical missions forced contact with the Indigenous Yora people, causing the death of approximately 50% of the population due to epidemics. Indigenous organizations requested the government to set up a reserve, which they finally obtained in 1990. In the State Nahua Kugapakori Reserve, in favour of peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact, inhabit peoples such as the Yora and Chitonahua identified in the Pano linguistic family, the Nanti peoples and various Matsigenka subgroups with linguistic varieties classified among the Arawak ethno-linguistic group. There are also Indigenous Peoples in isolation that have not yet been identified in the upper Serjali and Timpia.

Plantation forestry --promoted by the 1987 forestry law and consisting of large-scale monoculture plantations of alien trees-- promised an infinite number of benefits to the country: exports, industry, thousands of new jobs. Subsidies, tax exemptions for the import of machinery and industrial equipment, land rates, net worth tax, credits from the World Bank and the Bank of the Republic and the possibility of corporations becoming owners of the land by means of exceptions to the law, were some of the benefits those entrepreneurs received.

Will it ever be possible to resolve community conflict around natural resource management - particularly the logging of forests - in Australia? I am undertaking a PhD to discover if this is the case, and have been getting some positive results so far, although my project is not yet finished. I am seeking to prove that conflict around logging can be resolved by developing a process to identify areas suitable for logging that is socially just (i.e. everybody who has a stake in the issue has the right to be involved), procedurally sound (in other words is a rigorous system of assessment, monitoring and verification) and is as close to environmentally sustainable as current knowledge allows (if you like, to deliver "ecological justice").

Oil palm is now Papua New Guinea’s largest agricultural foreign exchange earner, ahead of coffee. At present, there are four major oil palm projects, most of them of the Nucleus Estate model with a ‘parent’ palm oil company predominantly foreign owned. Under such scheme, growers are organized into Village Oil Palm (VOP) and Leaseholders. VOP are operated by landowners in their own customary lands. Leaseholders lease land from other landowners for the plantings. But the ‘joint venture’ Smallholders Nucleus Estates is really an ‘out sourcing’ exercise for palm oil companies to increase supply and profitability for their mills whilst sharing the costs and risks associated with this kind of industry with growers.

As members of the global indigenous peoples' health caucus, Committee on Indigenous Health members prepared a number of technical briefing papers for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – most of us who were attending the second session were focussed on the activities of the so-called UN specialised programmes and bodies. To most of the world today, this maze-like array of formidable, monolithic organisations are confusing enough to understand; for indigenous and tribal peoples, communities and their mostly rural or desert/forest-based organisations, they more often than not represent well-armed, determined organs of all hues of institutionalised colonialism – neo-liberal colonialism, bio-colonialism, the "un" free market and globalisation.

Just as the World Bank has named Uganda as one of the African countries to benefit from its three carbon finance funds (Prototype Carbon Fund, Bio Carbon Fund and the Community Development Carbon Fund), information about an unprecedented ‘land grab’, opening Uganda’s public forests to private development, begins to emerge.

Described by carbon market analysts as a ‘PR disaster’, the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund’s Plantar project continues to add to the impression that ‘no carbon credits’ are good ‘carbon credits’. In a ‘Note on the Plantar PCF Project’ the World Bank recently acknowledged that allegations by the Brazilian plantations company Plantar S. A. regarding falsified signatures on the first in a series of Brazilian civil society letters outlining the problems with the companies carbon sinks project were incorrect. Whilst Brazilian groups welcomed the statement, the World Bank note provides no indication that procedures for verifying information provided by project proponents might have changed as a result.