Local conversations about the classification of the Mount Merapi forest area into a national park often end up questioning why it was established as a park at all.
Mount Merapi forest ecosystem is located at 600 to 2968 meter above sea level, in Yogyakarta Province, Republic of Indonesia. With an area of 8,655 hectares, it is mostly covered by mountain tropical forest which is the source of living of a million people in four districts.
Bulletin articles
A massive restructuring of Lao society is currently taking place. Over the last decade, the Lao government has moved tens of thousands of Indigenous Peoples from their remote upland homes to lowland areas and near roads. While the government's programmes are aimed at "poverty alleviation" and "development", the impacts on the resettled communities' livelihoods, food security and environment have often been devastating.
In an ironic twist, Thailand’s Community Forest Bill intended as a formal framework to define rights of communities to co-manage forest areas now threatens to resettle rural communities especially ethnic peoples living in the uplands and conservation forest areas.
Six months ago, indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani people reclaimed just over 11,000 hectares of their land from the Brazilian pulp giant Aracruz Celulose. They chopped down thousands of eucalyptus trees to demarcate their territory and built two indigenous villages with a large meeting house and several other houses on the land. Several indigenous families are living in the houses.
Celulosas Arauco and Constitución pulp mill, better known as Celco, located in Valdivia, belong to the Chilean Angelini group. It recently re-launched their operations after having been closed for 64 days following the scandal arising from the mass death of black-necked swans in the Rio Cruces sanctuary where it discharged its effluents.
Of the 3,500 million hectares of forests existing in the world, close on 63 million are to be found in Colombia and half of these are located in territories enriched by the cultures of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendent communities. These forests are also host to the richest forms of biological diversity in the world and support the numerous cultures that inhabit them. They are also the location for climatic and water regulation and the habitat of complex and irreplaceable life forms.
Logging is highly selective in the Peruvian Amazon. That is to say, out of the great diversity of species only a few are used, causing reductions in the existence of some species. The consumption of certain woods – such as mahogany – does not forgive even reserve zones.
Japan’s biggest paper manufacturer, Nippon Paper (NP) is known as an industry leader in environmental reform, but how real is this?
South East Fibre Exports at Eden, about 500 kms south of Sydney, is a NP subsidiary.
It is Australia’s oldest chipmill and was the first overseas operation of the former Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Company (taken over by NP a couple of years ago).
Companies and governments involved in the international tropical timber trade have a well deserved bad image. Most of their activities have resulted in widespread forest destruction and human rights abuses in numerous countries, while corruption has been at the core of many of their practices. Some of those same actors now appear to be willing –after having been targeted by strong NGO campaigns- to improve their performance in both logging and international timber trade.
Is the dichotomy legal logging – illegal logging the one that should prevail in a forest conservation policy? It is understood that illegal logging takes places when timber – converted into a profitable business to be exploited – is harvested, transported, purchased or sold in violation of national laws. However, laws can vary widely from one country to another, so there is no way of distinguishing between legal and illegal logging on a world scale insofar as there are no international standards in this respect. Perhaps in each case the questions to be asked are: What is legal?
Illegal logging has possibly been the most debated issue in the forestry sector at international level recently and has been attracting increasing attention in the last ten years. Governments, timber industries, donor agencies and NGOs seem to agree that it is one of the most important issues to be addressed. It also has been discussed in some high profile meetings.
European NGOs estimate that more than 50% of all tropical timber imports into the EU are illegally sourced, as are over 20% of all imports from boreal forests. Furthermore in several European countries, notably in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an estimated 50% of all logging is illegal. As the EU has no mechanisms in place to control the timber imports, the EU currently launders large volumes of illegally sourced timber each year.