On 1 December 2003, SmartWood suspended the Forest Stewardship Council certification of two of Forest Industry Organisation’s teak plantations. SmartWood is accredited by FSC to assess whether forestry operations conform to FSC’s principles for well managed forests or plantations.
Bulletin articles
On the night of 26 November 2003, journalist Germán Antonio Rivas was shot and killed. He was the managing director of Corporación Maya Visión television station, which broadcasts from the western city of Santa Rosa de Copán, on the border with Guatemala. He was the director of the news program “CMV-Noticias,” known for its criticism of the installation of a mining operation within the Guisayote National Park in the department of Ocotepeque, questioning the activities of the mining company due to the impact they would have on the environment and the conservation of natural resources.
On 4 December, thousands of people from cities and villages in the Provinces of Chubut and Rio Negro again marched together with the neighbours of Esquel to say “NO to the Mine.” This reaffirmation by the people took place in the midst of a new mining encroachment, as personnel of these corporations are scouring the outskirts of Cholila (in Chubut, a few kilometres from the Los Alerces National Park). If mining activities continue, various lake systems and the Patagonian Andean forest will be endangered.
The Plantar forestry company located in the State of Minas Gerais has large eucalyptus plantations in the zone, established at the expense of evicting the local populations. They were also established at the expense of the typical forest in the zone (the “cerrado”), and the trees were converted into charcoal to supply the iron and steel industry and replaced by eucalyptus, planted for the same objective.
On 12 December, the Matte (CMPC companies), Angelini (Arauco) forestry groups and a number of Chilean and US environmental NGOs signed an agreement (see http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Chile/article2.html ) whereby the companies have agreed to conserve the areas of native forest existing on their properties – representing 2.8% of the total surface of the native forests in the country – and not replace them by tree plantations.
In 1998, the author Joe Broderick finished his research on the Smurfit Carton de Colombia company, publishing his book “El imperio de cartón: impacto de una multinacional papelera en Colombia” (The Cardboard empire: the impact of a multinational paper company in Colombia). In this book he provides details of the serious social and environmental impacts caused by the activities of a branch of the Irish transnational company, Jefferson Smurfit in that country.
The Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be meeting in Milan, Italy, from 1-12 December. Unfortunately, expectations from the meeting are extremely low, given that the whole process has shifted from addressing climate change to marketing carbon emissions. Money-making is what the meeting will be mostly about, unless public pressure forces government delegates to change course.
The climate of our planet is a complex system resulting from the interaction of five factors: the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice and snow regions (criosphere), living organisms (biosphere) and soils, sediments and rocks (geosphere), while in turn, all are directly related to the sun.
It is only in these terms that we can understand atmospheric energy and matter fluxes and cycles, which is essential to investigate the causes and effects of climatic change. However, there is an additional factor to be taken into account: the anthropogenic factor, resulting from human activity.
For most people, the climate change issue may seem too complicated to grasp, its solution entirely in the hands of experts and governments. However, many sectors of organized civil society are making positive contributions, often in confrontation with the very governments that have committed themselves to solve it.
Forest peoples
Many indigenous peoples and traditional forest communities are resisting activities that not only have an impact on their living conditions but also exacerbate climate change.
The World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund’s (PCF) Plantar project has been heavily criticized by NGOs and civil society movements ever since it first emerged as the first industrial eucalyptus tree plantation to claim carbon sink credits from the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. The Plantar project involves 23,100 hectares of monoculture eucalyptus plantations for the production of charcoal, which will be used in pig iron production.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change may be totally useless to address climate change, but it may prove to be good business for some parties. The assumption is that in return for investment in a project that cuts or reduces emissions in a southern country, companies will earn certified emission reductions (CERs) that industrialized countries may use to meet Kyoto Protocol commitments.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has big plans for plantations in Laos. World Rainforest Movement has obtained a leaked report of a recent ADB mission to Laos which describes how the Bank hopes to attract international pulp and paper companies to invest in Laos.
Over the past ten years, the ADB has funded an area of approximately 12,000 hectares in Laos through its $11.2 million “Industrial Tree Plantations Project”. Under its planned “Forest Plantations for Livelihood Sector Project” the Bank intends to finance 30,000 hectares of plantations.