Although miles and miles of pine monoculture can be visually appealing to those of us with a more northern hemisphere way of looking at things, they can also be seriously bad news environmentally. Exotic tree plantations have earned the name ‘green death’ from eco-activists, who point out that they displace native species, very few of which can live in plantations.
Plantations in the eastern parts of South Africa are particularly notorious for consuming grassland, now considered our most threatened biome due to 60% (ACTUALLY 80%) of its area being lost.
Bulletin articles
Burma, with a population over 40 million, is endowed with a great variation of rainfall, temperature, soil and topography, resulting in many different forest types, from temperate to tropical landscapes that range from the Himalayas in the north and east to the lowland forest, mangroves and coral reefs in the south. Part of Burma’s global conservation significance derives from the fact that it contains ecotypes, such as lowland peninsular rainforest, that are already depleted in neighbouring countries. The forests of this region are unusually rich in plants and animals.
At the recent "Seafood Summit" conference event in Seattle organized by Seafood Choice Alliance (January 29-30, 2006), the WWF’s “Aquaculture Specialist”, Aaron A. McNevin, PhD, announced that WWF has formed the Sustainable Aquaculture Alliance, which is itself working towards some sort of farmed shrimp certification based upon Best Management Practices.
It's official. The Asian Development Bank's Industrial Tree Plantations Project in Laos has increased poverty. In a December 2005 report, the Bank's Operations Evaluation Department (OED) concludes that the project "failed to improve the socioeconomic conditions of intended beneficiaries, as people were driven further into poverty by having to repay loans that financed failed plantations."
Can people co-exist with forests? This nagging question will come to the fore once again if the controversial community forest bill makes it to Parliament for a final vote. This is a case of asking the wrong question. If we really want to protect the remaining forests that have survived a series of state plundering, a different question must be asked: Can our forests survive state mismanagement and exploitation if we don't allow people's participation and public monitoring?
We would like to share with our readers an announcement on two documentaries on the disastrous impacts of mining in Guatemala.
The first documentary is called: “Explotación de oro a cielo abierto en Guatemala; Proyecto Marlin” (Open-Cast Gold Mining In Guatemala: The Marlin Project). This documentary addresses the activities of a trans-national mining company that started prospecting for gold in part of the San Marcos territory in 1996.
In November 2005, hundreds of quilombolas marched through the streets of São Mateus in northern Espírito Santo to protest against Aracruz Celulose, the world's largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp. "Aracruz Celulose: you are against the life, return our lands to produce food", "Workers Mutilated by Aracruz Celulose demand their Rights", "President Lula: The future of indigenous people is more important than exporting pulp!" read some of the banners. I took part in the march and walked with the quilombolas, to the sound of drumming, through the town.
Following the violent eviction of the Tupinikim and Guarani villages by tractors of the plantation and pulp company Aracruz Celulose with the support of the Federal Police in January (see WRM Bulletin Nº 102), hundreds and hundreds of international messages of solidarity with the struggle of the indigenous people to recover their legitimate lands were sent to the Brazilian authorities.
A member of the Bretton Woods family since its creation in 1944 together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank continues to be one of the main actors in drawing up and applying macro-economic policies in Southern countries, financing public and private companies in what it qualifies as “development” projects (ranging from the construction of highways to the installation of pulp mills).
Until recently, relatively little was know about the Nordic countries in the South. At the best, Finland, Norway and Sweden were known because of their progressive social legislation, their solidarity against the Southern dictatorships, their composers, such as Sibelius, the Nobel Prize or more popular facts such as famous tennis players and racing car drivers, the Helsinki Olympics or the World Football Cup in Sweden.
In the forests of northern Republic of Congo, the Mbendjele are a hidden people. Living entirely on forest resources, this pygmy tribe has co-existed with their environment for thousands of years. Their impact on the forest is so minimal that from satellite images it is impossible to detect any evidence of these people's hunter-gatherer activities.
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.