Melanesia, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kanaky (New Caledonia), Fiji, East Timor and West Papua (Indonesia), is unique in the world in that 95% of land is still under community ownership by the indigenous people. The forests they control are part of the largest remaining rainforest in the Asia Pacific region and the 3rd largest tropical forest on Earth after the Amazon and Congo. Illegal and destructive industrial logging is rampant, mainly by Malaysian companies who have moved from Sarawak and elsewhere in Asia as the forests were exhausted.
Bulletin articles
The Fourth Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF 4) will be held from 3-14 May 2004 in Geneva. The session will consider implementation of the proposals for action of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) and Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) in five areas: social and cultural aspects of forests; traditional forest-related knowledge; scientific forest-related knowledge; monitoring, assessment and reporting, concepts, terminology and definitions; and criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management.
A long way from the tropical rainforests of Amazonia, British Columbia (BC), the western most province in Canada, has been characterized as "Brazil of the North" for its rate of forest liquidation. The British Columbian forests are dominated by large corporate tenures and large scale extraction. But there is a glimmer of change as community forests emerge, and with them, a new way of doing forestry and forest management. One of these community forests belongs to Kaslo, a small town on the shores of Kootenay Lake, in south-east British Columbia.
What are we talking about when we speak of “community-based forest management”?
First, there is the term “management”. According to the VOX dictionary, it refers to the “art or practice of training horses” and also “to conduct, control, take charge of.” The “forest management” which arose in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a corollary of the process of fencing in communal forests and, later, the application of state control over forests. Finally, the term became closely associated with the production of timber for commercial purposes.
Why was it that millenary practices for forest use, now known as “Community Forest Management” arose in traditional communities? Why have these practices been so natural for them?
Perhaps we should start by talking about the ecosystem. Fritjof Capra, in “Ecology, Community and Agriculture,” http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/ecology.pdf , defines it very clearly: “An ecosystem . . . is not just a collection of species but a community, which means that its members all depend on one another. They are all interconnected in a vast network of relationships, the web of life."
In 2002, a number of organizations and individuals working together to influence the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), created the Global Caucus on Community-Based Forest Management, which was successful in influencing government delegates to “recognize and support indigenous and community based forest management systems to ensure their full and effective participation in sustainable forest management.” (article 45h of the WSSD Report)
For years governments have been discussing about forests and making "legally-binding" and "non legally-binding" agreements with the stated aim of protecting the world's forests. It is therefore a useful exercise to look into those agreements in relation with community-based forest management, to see what role –if any– governments have assigned to the communities actually living in or depending on the forests.
The 1992 Earth Summit
April will mark the 60th anniversary of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and activists throughout the world are already organizing activities to expose those institutions' role in the socially and environmentally destructive economic model being imposed on the world to favour Northern-based corporate interests (see http://www.50years.org for more information).
"No Dirty Gold" is the consumer campaign launched on February 11, 2004, by Earthworks/Mineral Policy Center and Oxfam, intended to shake up the gold industry and change the way gold is mined, bought and sold. Right before and a few days after Valentine's Day --a major occasion for gold jewelry sales in the U.S.-- activists distributed Valentine's cards with the message, "Don't tarnish your love with dirty gold" in front of major jewelry and watch stores, including Cartier's and Piaget's on 5th Avenue in midtown New York City.
On February 12, more than 100 environment, development and human rights groups in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have formed a unique alliance to oppose the “development” of the country’s rainforests, which could include a vast increase in industrial logging.
Decades of deforestation and forest degradation have left less than two percent of Ghana's native forest intact. These forests have been the source of livelihood for forest dependent people, providing them with fuel wood, charcoal, building materials, fodder, fruits, nuts, honey, medicines, dyes. They also play an environmental role regarding prevention of soil erosion, watershed protection, soil fertility/shade, shelter from wind, prevention of floods and landslides, water retention and maintenance of water purity.
Swaziland, a landlocked country with a population of 1,161,219 inhabitants in 17,363 sq km almost completely surrounded by South Africa, has timber as its second industrial activity after sugar.
During the Conference “Timber Plantations: Impacts, Future Visions and Global Trends” held in Nelspruit, South Africa, in November 2003, hosted by GeaSphere in association with the TimberWatch Coalition, Nhlanhla Msweli, from SCAPEI, gave a vivid testimony of Swaziland’s situation and grief linked to monoculture tree plantations.