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.
Bulletin articles
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.
Earlier this year, several officials of the Ugandan government received large concessions for land suitable for afforestation and reforestation under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (see WRM Bulletin 74).
The Earth Summit, a melting pot for awareness and hope
In a world dominated by CNN-style news, it is difficult for people to have access to real information. Needless to say that serious analysis on almost anything (except perhaps football) is particularly absent. Train accidents, sports results, wars, Hollywood stars, hunger, biotechnology, human rights abuses or whatever mix of chaotic bits and pieces of news appear to be more an excuse to inflict advertisements on people than to provide them with relevant information to understand the world we are living in.
Three years ago a deal between the authorities of Gabon and a French logging company traded away 10,352 hectares of the Lope Reserve in return for 5,200 hectares of a previously not protected area of remote upland primary forests being added to the reserve (see WRM Bulletin Nº 38). The highly controversial deal was arranged by officials of the US-based organization Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) --which was responsible for the crude oil leaking from June to December 1998 of a pipeline into the Oyara mangrove forests and its dispersion into surrounding water streams, farms and sacred sites of the Otuegwe community-- is now implementing the SPDC-E major oil Trunkline Replacement project. Major operations involved are land take, route clearing, trenching/excavation, stringing, welding, radiograph, back filling, hydro-testing and re-instatement.