Bulletin Issue 90 - January 2005

Thousands of people around the world are preparing to travel this month to Porto Alegre, Brazil, to attend the Fifth World Social Forum (WSF). Although many may have very specific agendas, all share the common aim of working together on the task of building another possible world. The fact is that another world is not only possible: it is urgently necessary. The very basis of life on Earth is being threatened by a “development” model based on the unsustainable exploitation of nature. The climate is being destroyed, water is being depleted and polluted, biodiversity is being wiped out while simultaneously subjecting part of it to genetic manipulation, soils are being poisoned and eroded.

Local communities generally perceive forest management as a public affair. And yet, in the household, the public domain and investment fall within the competence of men, since women are responsible for “private,” domestic business. Because of their deciding role in household food security, women are most affected by disruptions in the availability of and access to resources. Hence, latest forest policies fuelled by international and national environmental trends that restrict people's activities in parks, affect local communities and mainly women within them.

A broad alliance of environment, development and indigenous human rights organisations organized a “Forest Forum” in Kinshasa on November 13th, 2004, with the aim of strengthening the struggle against the increase in industrial logging in DRC’s rainforests and for the respect of local peoples' rights (see WRM Bulletin 80).

Looking at the statistics for Swaziland is a depressing experience. Unemployment stands at 40 per cent. More than two-thirds of the people in Swaziland live on an income of less than US$1 a day. About one third of the people in Swaziland rely on food aid to survive. Nearly 40 per cent of the population is infected with HIV - one of the highest rates in the world. Life expectancy has fallen to 33 years for men and 35 for women. The country is one of the world's last remaining absolute monarchies. Political parties are illegal. The king, Mswati III, has a luxurious lifestyle which is in stark contrast to that of most people in Swaziland. Last year, the king's 36th birthday party celebrations cost US$600,000 and in December Mswati spent US$500,000 on a sports car.

The extremely powerful tsunamis caused by the 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the coast of Sumatra on last December 26th, created tremendous havoc and the whole world was submerged in sorrow for such a great loss in human life and suffering. Also, quite disturbing is the fact that the severity of this disaster could have been greatly lessened had healthy mangrove forests, coral reefs, sea grass beds and peatlands been conserved in a healthy state along these same now devastated coastlines. These natural buffers protect the landward side, sheltering coastal communities and wildlife from the brunt of storms and waves.

Corruption has been identified as a major obstacle to real change in the forest sector in Cambodia. Not only the government but also the international donors have refused to confront the issue. The costs of weak forest sector governance, in terms of lost revenues, destruction of rural livelihoods and environmental damage, continue to mount, with the result that Cambodia remains completely dependent on foreign aid.

  On 26 November 2004, the Province of Santa Fe legislature adopted an emergency environmental law placing an absolute moratorium on land clearing, logging, deforestation, burning or destruction of woodland and native forests for a period of 180 days, which can be extended a further 180 days by the executive.

In an open letter signed by several social organisations and personalities from Brazil, the Rede Alerta contra o Deserto Verde (Alert Against the Green Desert Network) denounces and rejects the certification of the huge plantation company and one of the biggest producers of bleached eucalyptus pulp in the State of Espirito Santo, Aracruz Celulose, through the Brazilian government programme CERFLOR. The Alert Against the Green Desert Network feels indignation about the CERFLOR process of certification of “forest management” of Aracruz Celulose. Such company owns 146 thousand hectares of land in the State of Espirito Santo, 93 thousand hectares of which are planted with eucalyptus monocultures.

The American based Rainforest Alliance is undermining the efforts of local conservation groups in Papua New Guinea struggling to combat widespread illegal and unsustainable logging. The Alliance’s Smartwood Program has refused to withdraw its certification of the forest operations of a company that is part of a multinational group accused of widespread illegal logging and human rights abuses in PNG and other parts of the world including SE Asia and Africa. The Rainforest Alliance has chosen to maintain its commercial relationship with this company despite 12 months of protests from civil society groups in PNG.

Organizations and representatives from social movements from Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North and South America came together in Buenos Aires, Argentina over the first half of December, 2004 to tell the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s tenth Conference of the Parties (COP 10) to ban GE trees from the Kyoto Protocol —the international global warming treaty. It was at last year’s UN COP 9 where a committee of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) declared that GE trees could be used in plantations created to supposedly offset the carbon emissions from factories in the Industrialized North as a part of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism.

By the time the international negotiations on climate change in Buenos Aires ended on Saturday 18 December 2004, workers had already started dismantling the conference facilities. Yet after two weeks of negotiations, the best that the more than 6,000 participants could achieve was an agreement to hold another meeting. The Buenos Aires meeting was supposed to discuss what the world should do about climate change after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol runs out. "Quite frankly, we don't believe it's time to address the post-2012 time frame", said Harlan L. Watson, the USA's lead climate negotiator, on the second day of the meeting. 2012 would be plenty soon enough, according to Watson.

The hydropower industry has long relied on subsidies to build large dams. Hydropower proponents are now promoting dams as "climate friendly" in a desperate attempt to gain carbon financing for dams. The International Hydropower Association (IHA), together with the World Wind Energy Association and the International Solar Energy Society, has formed the International Renewable Energy Alliance (IREA). IREA held a side event during the international climate change meeting in Buenos Aires in December 2004.

“To prevent the climate change, we have to change” [COP 10 motto] The possibility of observer status to the 10th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change held in Buenos Aires this past December immediately created conflicting expectations in me. Knowledge of the disappointing record of the past nine such conferences to address the gravity of change in global climate due to the actions of industrial civilisation, anticipated the ‘business [sic] as usual’ outcome of the international process –admirable in its inventiveness in propagating inaction. On the contrary, the glimmer of hope in the possibility for change stubbornly refused to comply with reason.