Bulletin Issue 96 - July 2005

The Commission for Africa was launched by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair in February 2004. The aim of the Commission “was to take a fresh look at Africa’s past and present and the international community’s role in its development path.” It was tasked with producing a report “with clear recommendations for the G8, EU and other wealthy countries as well as African countries.” This last “as well” is already giving a clue to the Commission’s mandate.

The story of the rapid destruction of Cameroon’s forests that has occurred since the 1980s, does not suffer from a lack of attention: many testimonies, analyses and recommendations have been written and many donor-led interventions to halt the deforestation have been simultaneously attempted. Between 1980 and 1995, it is estimated that close to 2 million hectares of forest were cut down in Cameroon. Industrial logging operations, often foreign companies whose raw logs left the port of Douala bound for European markets, were likely the primary source of this deforestation, acting in synergy with the concomitant encroachment of human settlements and agricultural clearing.

As reported in past WRM bulletins, Liberia’s forests have long been exploited to fuel conflict in this small West African country. Liberia houses the last two blocks of the upper Guinea Forest, which is known to be home to over 2,000 flowering plants, some 240 of which are timber species, and 60 of which have been commercially harvested.

While accounts of illegal logging in southeast Asia’s and central Africa’s tropical forests, to supply the booming Chinese economy are increasingly common, this report is one of the first to document the “Chinese takeaway” from the semi-arid forests of Southern Africa. A four-months study of forestry in Zambezia province of Mozambique was conducted between November 2003 and October 2004. It found Chinese traders, local business people, and members of the Government and forest services are colluding to strip precious tropical hardwoods from these slow-growing forests at a rate that will exhaust the resource in 5-10 years.

A recent study carried out in the South African tree plantation sector analyses the impacts of outsourcing on forestry --mostly women-- workers. The report points out that outsourcing in the forestry industry is in line with global business trends and serves to increase flexible employment terms for the benefit of the industry. Outsourcing also saves on cost of capital equipment and fixed costs associated with full-time employees, and avoids having to deal with labour legislation brought in by the Government.

Burma's State Peace and Development Council is one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. The UN's International Labour Organisation describes forced labour in Burma as a "crime against humanity". Around one million people have been forced from their homes and land. The Burmese army, the Tatmadaw, uses rape as a weapon against indigenous women and children. It recruits child soldiers. On 6 July 2005, Burma's junta released more than 240 prisoners, many of them political prisoners, but about 1,400 political prisoners are still imprisoned. Torture of prisoners is routine. Half the national budget goes to the military. Burma is not at war with any other nation. The junta is at war with its own people.

Regarding women's indigenous knowledge, apart from a few ethnographic and anthropological studies, little consideration had been given by early androcentric-biased anthropologists, ecologists and environmentalists to the gender dimension of indigenous knowledge systems. It was not until the mid-seventies, when the myths associated with such stereotypical thinking were unmasked, that feminist scholarship turned its attention to the knowledge systems of women. Now, acknowledgment is increasingly being given to the role played by women in many communities as the primary natural resource managers due to their intimate knowledge of the environment that enables them to maintain livelihoods, cultural continuity and community cohesion.

Wonosobo is a rural district in Central Java, close to the mountainous Dieng plateau. Much of its 18,896 hectares of state forest is designated Protection Forest as the hilly uplands are the watershed for several major rivers. Like all other forest land in Java, the Wonosobo forest was controlled by the state-owned forestry company Perum Perhutani, which according to field reports has severely damaged or destroyed well over half the 'state forest'.

The dark green and yellow Great Tit (Parus major) is a bird species that makes its home in Malaysia's coastal mangrove swamps and both are disappearing as the country redoubles it attempts to boost agriculture. Commercial farmers are turning swamps in Kuala Selangor, 90 km (56 miles) north-west of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, into shrimp farms and threatening a delicate ecosystem that is home to hundreds of species. Wood and marine products from the mangrove forests provide a source of income for villagers. But also, mangroves form a natural protective buffer against rough seas or tsunamis, like the one that struck parts of peninsular Malaysia last December and showed the importance of mangrove swamps for the ecosystem and human lives.

Exuberant and majestic forests span the province of Misiones on a plateau with altitudes of up to 800 metres. Its soil is reddish organic matter forming humus up to 30 cm thick that acts like a sponge, retaining water and minerals. Once the cradle of stories and myths, the forest of Misiones is now disappearing. One of the factors causing its destruction is the large scale plantation of alien pine trees, most of which are intended for making pulp, while the others go to timber industrialization.

What is happening in Brazil is a historic event, not only for Brazil, but for all of us who are struggling against the advance of large scale monoculture tree plantations. In February this year, the Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous peoples decided to put an end to the truce (see WRM Bulletin No. 94) with the Aracruz Celulose Company and take back their lands. Thus, in May approximately 500 Tupinikim and Guarani started the self-demarcation of 11,008 hectares of land belonging to them and encroached on by the company. Self-demarcation of the land ended 4 days later and presently the indigenous peoples are demanding recognition of these lands and are mainly carrying out activities for the reconstruction of their means of survival.

The Yasuni National Park, considered to be a Pleistocene refuge and declared Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1989, covers an area of 982,000 hectares and spreads out to the basins of the Yasuni, Conanoco, Nashiño and Tiputini Rivers. Its forests are host to the greatest number of species of trees per hectare in the world as well as a great diversity of species of fauna. The Huaorani indigenous peoples and some non-contacted groups such as the Tagaeri and Taromenane, live in the Yasuni Park. For this reason it is considered to be one of the most emblematic parks in the country.

The Ayoreo group (self denominated Ayoreode: “the true men or true people” comprising various clans, inhabit a region of the Paraguayan Chaco covering the Departments of Alto Paraguay and Boqueron, The territory traditionally used by the Ayoreo people has always been vast with ecological characteristics of high biological diversity, providing the opportunity for multiple uses in terms of economy and nutrition. This territory, covering an area of 2.8 million hectares, includes practically the whole northern Chaco, except for the regions close to the large rivers and part of the transition zone between the Chaco and the Mojos savannahs in Bolivia.

Between 17 June and 19 July 2005, Nippon Paper Group is asking for comments and suggestions on its draft "Philosophy and Basic Policy" on obtaining raw material for its pulp and paper mills. The company claims to be "engaging in a dialogue with stakeholders" and promises to publish responses to comments in September 2005 at the same time it publishes its "Philosophy and Basic Policy". Formed in 2001 through the merger of Nippon Paper Industry and Daishowa Paper Manufacturing, the Nippon Paper Group is Japan's largest pulp and paper company. It has 22 mills in Japan and operations in Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa and the US. Sales in 2004 amounted to more than US$11 billion.

On 23 June 2005, the Association for the Defence of the Galician river mouth (Asociación pola defensa da Ria de Galicia) sent a letter to the FSC delegation in Spain, requesting “the urgent cancellation of sustainable forest management certification granted to NORFOR, given the serious deficiencies in the certification report and the clear inadequacy of NORFOR’s management system with respect to FSC principles and criteria.” The NORFOR company is a subsidiary branch of the Spanish pulp and paper company Ence, certified in April 2005.