Bulletin Issue 92 - March 2005

The Forest Stewardship Council's Plantations Review is finally under way. The 12 member committee elected to implement the first part of this process (the “policy phase”) held its first meeting from 9-11 March in Stockholm, Sweden. Four members –two northern and two southern- from each of the three chambers (social, environmental and economic), will have the task of leading this process and elaborating clear guidelines for future certification of plantations. A possible second “technical phase” is now being discussed by the committee members.

Oil is a big problem at the global level, where its use is resulting in climate change through the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At the same time oil is an even bigger immediate problem in the areas where it is extracted, particularly in the tropics. In these regions, oil exploration and exploitation impact heavily on local peoples, whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed though deforestation, forest degradation and coastal ecosystem destruction, all accompanied by widespread human rights violations and impoverishment.

With an area of 27,834 sq km, landlocked Burundi is a battleground between the Rwandan army and militia from the Congo, and is plagued by a protracted civil war, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Burundi civilians. The over 5 million Burundi population is unevenly distributed geographically, with large populations displaced by economic crisis and war, forced to change their livelihoods. In a country with a long term legacy of colonial rule by successive Dutch and Belgian colonization --added to pre-colonial divisions and problems between landlords and communal farmers-- lack of access to land has been a major cause of deforestation. The forests, once extensive, today account for some 9% of total land area.

Nigeria holds the largest mangrove forest area in Africa, most of which is found in the Niger Delta, where 11,700 square kilometers of swamp forests host several unique plant and animal species. However, that invaluable wealth is being jeopardized by oil business controlled by transnationals such as Shell, Agip, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron. Those companies have contributed not only to the destruction of the forests but to the exploitation and human rights violations of local communities, spreading conflicts and death (see WRM Bulletin Nº 56).

A meeting of the Mpumalanga Civil Society was held on 5 March, 2005, in a barn at Tim Brewer's trout farm, Katrinasrus , near Machadodorp . This somewhat out-of-the-way venue provided most of the participants with an opportunity to explore roads less travelled . About 50 people attended, some from as far afield as Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal.

The Mro (also Mru) are one of the indigenous peoples inhabiting since long Chittagong Hills. They are totally dependent on the forest, where they not only hunt but also engage in local varieties cultivation, collective farming and gardening. The dimension of their dependency on their forest reflect their ethno-botanical knowledge. According to a study from the Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, University of Chittagong, “conservation of the indigenous knowledge of the Mro tribe can conserve the forests as well, which may be a forest conservation tool” in Bangladesh.

On 31 March 2005, the World Bank's Board of Directors will decide whether to support a series of loans and guarantees for the Nam Theun 2 hydropower dam in Laos. The World Bank has been involved in the Nam Theun 2 dam since 1989 when it funded a feasibility study. Without the World Bank's guarantees to cover investors' risks, commercial banks will not finance the project. At any stage in the last 16 years, the World Bank could have decided not to support this project and the project would have collapsed. The World Bank is therefore at least partially responsible for what has happened on the project during this time.

On 18 October 2004, Samling Plywood, the Malaysian timber corporation, was granted a Certificate for Forest Management under the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) for the alleged sustainable logging of one of Sarawak's last remaining contiguous areas of primary rainforest. About 80 percent of the certified concession area is traditional Penan territory where they traditionally lived as nomads before becoming settled under British influence in the middle of the 20th century. Now there are in the area at least 410 households with a population of an estimated 2000 persons.

Illegal logging is rampant in Vietnam. Vietnamese newspapers frequently report on new logging scandals. A few examples from last year illustrate the point. In January, the People's Army Newspaper ran a story about the arrest of "notorious timber trader" Nguyen Van Hung. In June, Labour Newspaper reported that railway guardsmen had stopped the transportation of illegally logged timber on a train. And November saw the conclusion of the biggest ever illegal logging case in the central highlands. Pioneer reported that Kon Tum People's Court convicted 19 people, including 10 government officials, of illegal logging and giving and receiving bribes.

In the Province of Misiones, located in the northeast of Argentina, the authorities of the ancient Mbya Guarani people (see WRM Bulletin Nº 87), who inhabit what is today the Yaboti Reserve, have resorted to criminal justice to denounce the governor of the Province, Carlos Rovira, for genocide. The Mbya Guarani, the ancient inhabitants of the Misiones forest who lived for centuries as part of it, without feeling they were its owners, have seen their territory threatened when the Mocona Forestal S.A. company, with the endorsement of the Provincial Government, started deforesting what is their means of life and subsistence.

The world's largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp has plans to become even bigger. Last year, Aracruz Cellulose produced 2.5 million tons of pulp. The company is looking at five possible sites to build a new, one million tons a year pulp mill. Over the next two years, Aracruz will spend US$600 million on upgrading its existing pulp mills and expanding its 305,000 hectare plantation area.

On 13 December 2004, the Paraguayan Congress adopted Law No. 2524 “Prohibiting, in the Eastern Region, Activities Transforming and Converting Surfaces with Forest Cover.” This law was subsequently known as Deforestation Zero Law. This Law mentions that its main objective is to “favour the protection, rehabilitation and enhancement of native forests in the Eastern Region, whereby as from the date of promulgation of the present Law and for a two-year period there is “prohibition to issue permits, licences, authorizations and/or any legally valid document authorizing the transformation or conversion of areas with native forest cover to areas assigned for agriculture or livestock use in any of its modalities or to areas assigned for human settlements.”

In Peru, the Departments where mining prevails show the highest levels of poverty in the country. Such is the case of Cajamarca, the location of the Yanacocha Mining Company -with 51.35 per cent of its shares belonging to the US transnational Newmont Mining Corporation; 43.65 per cent to the national group Benavides; and 5 percent to the World Bank's International Finance Corporation. The Minera Yanacocha Company has been operating in Cajamarca since 1993, and is the second largest gold mine in the world. However, while Cajamarca contributes some 10 per cent to the country's exports, it is the fifth poorest Department in the country, with 77.4 per cent of its population living in poverty and 50.8 per cent in extreme poverty.

For the second time, the Clean Development Mechanism's (CDM) Executive Board has rejected the reasons of Vallourec & Mannesmann do Brasil for requesting carbon credit money for industrial tree plantations.

In early March 2005, the first carbon sinks project promoted by the World Bank's BioCarbonFund entered the first stage of registering as a CDM project under the Kyoto Protocol. Around the same time, a template document for BioCarbonFund sinks project developers to estimate sequestration rates was posted on the World Bank carbon finance website. The template used some slightly irreverent examples to illustrate how to fill in certain fields. The highlight was in the section “Contact (preferably email)” which was filled in “ fred@data_fiddling_Inc.jail.com ”.