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.
Bulletin articles
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.
Forests provide for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide and particularly in the tropical areas. Whatever activities are carried out that imply deforestation or forest degradation will therefore impact directly on the means of survival of those people and thus also on their health.
The forest is the cradle of biodiversity, that is to say, the origin of life. When the forest is healthy, water springs from it, the air is purer and more fragrant, we can obtain shelter from its many resources, it gives us food, art is expressed in the myriad of colours and hues that are cyclically unfolded and concealed and in the midst of all this beauty and prodigality, it is possible in some way to feel the love that nature shares with all its beings.
Between 1994 and 2004 the land converted from native forests and farms to monoculture tree plantations in Tasmania has increased almost fourfold – to 207,000 hectares.
Most farms replaced were organic or used relatively few chemicals as compared to the highly chemically-dependent monoculture tree coupes that replaced them.