A thorough report by Leigh Brownhill and Terisa E. Turner (“Climate Change and Nigerian Women’s Gift to Humanity”) traces Nigerian resistance to massive oil exploitation --which has not rendered any good for the country’s people (see WRM Bulletin Nº 56) -- and highlights women’s leading role in that struggle.
Bulletin articles
The volume of fossil fuels burnt by the “oil” civilization in one year contains an amount of organic matter equivalent to four centuries of plants and animals.
The World Bank has become the main international trader of carbon credits. Its new role gives rise to a series of conflicting interests.
The 9th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change held in Milan in 2003 allowed Northern companies and governments to establish plantations in the South under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), allegedly to absorb carbon dioxide and to store carbon. COP-9 allowed the use of plantations of genetically engineered (GE) trees [also known as genetically modified, GM, or transgenic trees] as carbon sinks, that is to supposedly offset carbon emissions
On 11 September 2006 the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) (the Brazilian environmental authority) approved the Environmental Impact Assessment on the construction of two dams in Brazilian territory on the Madera River, the largest tributary to the Amazon River.
Last month I wrote an article about FSC certification of “village forestry” in Laos. The article was based on a leaked report from a World Bank and Finnish government project, the Sustainable Forestry and Rural Development Project (SUFORD). The SUFORD report documented serious problems with logging under the project, of which 39,000 hectares has been certified by SmartWood under the Forest Stewardship Council system.
Similar to what has happened in several Southern countries harassed by centuries of colonialism, the wealth of Liberia has also been its curse. Tropical forests account for 47 per cent of Liberia’s land. Between 1989 and 2003, revenue from forests was used to fund a brutal conflict fuelled by the pillaging of forests. Timber was a key resource for Liberia's armed factions. Wood flowed out; money and arms flowed in. So many concessions had been corruptly awarded that they totalled more than the land area of Liberia.
In 2004, the Brazilian Network campaigning against the spread of tree plantations came up with the idea of instituting an International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations on 21 September, which is National Tree Day in that country. The idea was supported by organizations from all over the world, who since then carry out a number of special activities on this day.
It is important to stress that this is certainly not a day aimed at opposing tree planting in general, but an activity focusing on one type of plantation in particular: large scale tree monocultures.
A team comprising Alvaro Santos, Emiliano Camacho and the author travelled from Montevideo, Uruguay to the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon in the framework of a national and international campaign on “An end to violence in rural areas!” “Cut out this scourge from the root!” promoted by the Latin American Secretariat of the International Union of Food workers (Rel-UITA) and the Brazilian National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), against rural violence in that country.
The PEFC was set up between 1998 and 1999 by the national forestry interest groups – mainly associations of small-forest owners in several European countries as the Pan European Forest Certification Scheme. It changed to its current name after having endorsed other non-European schemes. The scheme is governed by the PEFC Council, which consists of representatives of national certification schemes and are the PEFC’s members. The PEFC is not a single certification scheme with a single standard, but a programme for the endorsement of national certification schemes.
At its last Conference of the Parties (COP8), the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a very important Decision (VIII/19), “Recommending Parties to take a precautionary approach when addressing the issue of genetically modified trees”.
The Brazilian CERFLOR certification programme, endorsed by the international PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes), was officially launched in 2002 by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade and started to operate in March 2003.