In the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo lies the large, dense, mountainous Ituri rainforest, which spans approximately 70,000 square kilometers. It is an area rich in natural resources. Tropical timber is harvested (legally and illegally) on a large scale. Minerals such as gold and coltan (used in mobile phones) are exploited intensively after the trees have been cut down.
Bulletin articles
After 12 years, powerful multinational mining companies have been unable to bend peasant resolve in the zone of Intag, Canton Cotacachi, Imbabara Province in the northwest of Ecuador.
This nightmare began in 1991, when an anonymous Japanese man started to travel around the area in his vehicle. Nobody knew exactly what he was doing. Towards 1995, it became known that he was “prospecting for mines” that is to say, he was looking for minerals in the subsoil.
Late last year, Norconsult, a Norwegian consulting firm, won a US$1.5 million contract to supervise construction work of the Xeset 2 dam in the south of Laos. Norconsult won the contract, which is funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), without any competitive bidding.
Uganda has witnessed growing protests in recent weeks over government plans to give over 7,100 hectares of Mabira Forest, a nature reserve since 1932, to SCOUL for sugarcane growing. Razing the forest could devastate a fragile environment, sparking soil erosion, drying up the climate and removing a buffer against pollution for Lake Victoria. Technical, professional and expert advice against the project as well as public protests culminated in the resignation of the Board and senior technical staff of the National Forestry Authority (NFA).
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has the task of carrying out periodic assessments on the state of the world’s forests. In order to do this, it has developed a number of definitions one of which –obviously- is about what can be considered to be a forest. This should have been a relatively easy mission … were it not for the fact that the FAO decided to define plantations –included those of alien species- as “planted forests”.
As it does every two years, FAO has published its report “State of the World’s Forests 2007” (http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0773e/a0773e00.htm), where “progress towards sustainable forest management” is examined. Although it admits, “Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million hectares a year,” the report’s overall conclusion is that “progress is being made” and it adds: “but it is very uneven.”
The huge Aracruz Celulose high-tech pulp and paper complex located in Barra do Riacho in the Southeast region of Brazil has led to major conflicts since the company’s encroachment upon land belonging to the Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous peoples. However, not only land but also water is being taken over by the company’s mill and large-scale monoculture tree plantations which spread along more than 175,000 hectares in the north of the State of Espirito Santo and the Southernmost part of the Bahia State.
Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands has claimed to be the first airport in Europe where passengers as of May 2007 can compensate emissions from their flight by donating for tree plantation projects. Last week however, activist groups in London have criticized this kind of carbon offsetting. So how credible is carbon compensation?
On last April 9, the Galician organization APDR (Asociación pola defensa da Ría) issued an official statement regarding the FSC certification of the NORFOR company, a subsidiary branch of the Spanish pulp and paper company ENCE, which had been certified in April 2005.
The case study “Swaziland: The myth of sustainable timber plantations” carried out by Wally Menne and Ricardo Carrere and published in March 2007, aims at unveiling the myth of sustainable plantations in Swaziland and showing that large-scale monoculture tree plantations in this country have similar negative impacts as elsewhere and are no exception to the rule.
No one in their right mind can accuse President George W. Bush of overly concerning himself with climate change. In this respect, his curriculum is spotless and both his unreserved support to the oil industry and his oil wars have implied significant inputs to global warming. And if any doubts were left, his persistent refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol has made him the undisputed leader of those making the largest contribution to the destruction of Planet Earth’s climate.
The problem of the loss of territories by peasants and indigenous peoples in favour of industrial projects has several aspects in Brazil and the Landless Peasant’s Movement (MST) has been struggling to counteract this process.
We have reported on the successive occupations of land covered with vast monoculture eucalyptus plantations for pulp production – one of such occupations recently involved the women of Via Campesina/MST on the occasion of International Woman’s Day.