Bulletin Issue 89 - December 2004

The Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Climate Change will be meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina this month. Through the media, the public will receive the good news that the Kyoto Protocol has been approved in spite of the refusal of the world's main polluter -- the US -- to ratify it. Most people will thus feel relieved, thinking that the climate crisis will now be averted.

It seems that the road to the global market is paved with good intentions. And it utters void statements, it should be added. The industrialized world tears its clothes off in the face of corruption, which it attributes to Third World country governments. And the World Bank brings together some of the leading logging companies in Africa –mainly European- with environmental NGOs to discuss issues related to Sustainable Forest Management, in what is called the “CEO Initiative”. However, true meaning should be discovered digging into declarations.

Like many other Third World countries pushed by the global policies of colonialism and later neocolonialism to poverty and indebtedness, Congo has a current debt of $4.9 billion. Like many other southern governments, too, advised by multilateral agencies to commerce their wealth –natural resources-, the government of Congo has been placing greater emphasis on the growth of the timber industry in the Congo Basin, which has the world's second largest stretches of virgin rainforest after the Amazon in South America.

Following decades of despotic rule by Mobutu Sese Seko, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) descended into a ‘civil war’ that claimed the lives of an estimated 3.5 million people. The mass carnage which reigned over the country has receded – though many believe only temporarily. The war has, at least in part, been fuelled by competition for control over natural resources.

Kenya’s ‘shamba’ or Tongya system has been generally defined as a form of agroforestry, where farmers are encouraged to cultivate primary crops (maize, bananas, beans and cassava) on previously clear cut public forest land on the condition that they replant trees. Since the mid 19th century, Kenya adopted this system to establish tree plantations by means of cheap or totally free labour, in order to meet the demand for timber. The shamba system, which in theory seeks to involve landless communities in forest conservation, has been steeped in controversy in Kenya for a long time now. By the early 1980's, many problems associated with the system started emerging –notably about 19% of Shamba systems were encroaching on natural forests.

A project earmarked for the biodiversity rich Sundarbans is being firmly opposed by environmentalists and local population, who fear that it will harm the world’s biggest mangrove forests. The Lucknow-based Sahara group, in partnership with the state, is setting up an enormous and controversial ‘eco-tourism’ project in the Sundarbans, which experts warn would do the ecologically fragile region more harm than good.

In Cambodia, more than 80% of the population lives in rural areas and 36% lives in extreme poverty, earning less than 50 US cents per day. Though many villagers make a living out of the forest products, deforestation is part of the national policy and economy, showing that local and state authorities pay lip-service to the needs of the poor.

The Indian Environment Action Group Kalpavriksh has recently reprinted the report titled: 'Undermining India - Impacts of mining on ecologically sensitive areas', which it had published in March 2003. While a substantial number of the mining threats in India that are destroying some of the country’s most ecologically-sensitive areas are from ongoing mining (both large and small), a major emerging threat is new mining, warns the report, particularly in the light of the liberalization of the mining sector in the past few years. Since economic liberalisation began in the 1990s, the mining sector has opened up thousands of sq km for reconnaissance and prospecting

Malaysia is one of the world’s major producers and exporters of tropical timber. It is the home base for a number of major transnational logging companies, including Rimbunan Hijau, a global conglomerate of companies controlled by the Tiong family from Sarawak in Malaysia.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been one of the main instruments in the advance of economic and power groups that support privatization, globalization and de-regulation of the economy in their eagerness to commercialize the most hidden corners of life. However, since 1995, when the WTO suffered a severe setback in Cancun and when the project for the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) collapsed in Miami, the United States has approached over twenty countries to formally launch bilateral free trade agreements (FTA), in an attempt to accelerate the process through bilateral or sub-regional negotiations, putting pressure on the weaker or more submissive countries.

Deep in the interior of Brazilian Amazon, a logger crosses the border from Peru and invades Ashaninka tribal land, felling another ancient mahogany and dragging it toward the river to be floated down to a truck and headed for international markets. “This week is one of the most crucial in Ashaninka history,” observed curator Celso Carelli Mendes, speaking from his 15 years of experience living and working in the Amazon with various tribes. “This week may decide the future of the way that indigenous people work with the Brazilian nation-state, the future of the forest itself.”

The Nature Sanctuary Carlos Anwandter at Rio Cruces is the Site that Chile incorporated as Wetland of International Importance when it adhered to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat, in 1981. It is home to a wide diversity of species of flora and fauna, particularly black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus), an endangered migratory bird. The Sanctuary and its swans are part of the identity and image of the inhabitants of the nearby city of Valdivia, closely linked to the riparian landscape.

Exactly six years ago we had the opportunity to visit the State of Portuguesa in Venezuela to obtain first hand information on the situation of the local populations in Morador and Tierra Buena regarding the Smurfit Carton de Venezuela’s vast eucalyptus, pine and gmelina (Gmelina arborea) plantations. This company belongs to the transnational company Smurfit Corporation of Irland. During this visit we were able to document the social and environmental impacts resulting from this company’s activities and its plantations, summarized in an article published in the January-February 1999 edition of the Revista del Sur (see complete article in: http://www.redtercermundo.org.uy/revista_del_sur/texto_completo.php?id=859 )