Bulletin articles

Two different natural ecosystems go to make up the Popenguine-Guéréo natural reserve, located 45 km to the south of Dakar, capital of Senegal: a continental part with rugged hills covered by a primary forest and a maritime part, mainly consisting of a rocky habitat where fish come to spawn. The zone was classified in 1986 as a natural reserve with a view to reversing degradation from deforestation, depletion of meadows and successive droughts that had led to a considerable loss of biodiversity.

For the global pulp and paper group Sappi, money does grow on trees. Indeed, the company's latest annual report suggests that it grows most efficiently in South Africa. The report noted that Sappi's southern Africa division, Sappi Forest Products, represented 15% of group sales, but contributed 36% to the group's operating profits in the year to September 2002. "We have an extraordinarily low cost base in South Africa, which has unique competitive advantages in fibre production because of the speed at which trees grow and low inherent energy costs," the report noted.

First commissioned in 1964, the World-Bank funded Bhumiphol dam in Tak province, north west Thailand, has never operated to its full capacity. In March 1994, the reservoirs behind the Bhumiphol and Sirikit dams (both World Bank-funded) contained only 7 per cent of their total usable volume. The Thai government's answer is to propose yet more dams on the Salween River, on the Thai-Burma border in order to divert water into the Bhumiphol reservoir.

The reopening of the PT Inti Indorayon Utama paper and rayon pulp mill, in Porsea, North Sumatra, has caused strong local opposition to resume. The factory is located at the centre of a densely populated district near to Lake Toba, one of the largest fresh water reservoirs in South East Asia, and releases pollutants, often unfiltered, into the environment, pollutes the water and air in the region and destroys the local Batak population's basis for life.

Last year, presumably in an attempt to clean up its tarnished image, the World Bank produced a glossy brochure: "10 things you never knew about the World Bank". Number seven on the list is the claim, "The World Bank is a leader in the fight against corruption worldwide." The brochure adds, "The World Bank is working to fully integrate governance and anticorruption measures into its planning and operational work. The Bank is also committed to ensuring that the projects it finances are free from corruption."

Even though in 1992 the local government on the island of Palawan cancelled the concessions granted to logging companies (see WRM Bulletin 38) in an attempt to curb the destruction and degradation of the country's forests, it did not halt the threat to the integrity of the indigenous communities in the Philippines. There are also mining companies endeavouring to carry out their business in spite of the opposition of local communities and warnings about the environmental damage their activities will cause.

In the framework of the World Social Forum, representatives of Latin American NGOs got together to discuss the possibility of coordinating efforts with respect to the growing problem of tree monocultures. During this meeting, the factors promoting territorial occupation by monocultures aimed at timber, cellulose fibre and palm oil production were analysed, together with factors limiting this occupation.

By Cabinet decree 123 of 4 December 2002, the government of Panama decided to "excuse the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) from the requisite of selecting contractors and authorise it to hire CUSA (Constructora Urbana S.A) directly for the design, funding and construction of the ecological highway Boquete-Cerro Punta." This is the construction of a highway through Paso del Respingo which would cross the National Baru Volcano and La Amistad International Parks, violating the protected status of the zone.

Mexico has joined a model giving priority to the needs of transnational industrial capital demand, aimed at exportation. The environmental policy and rights of the indigenous and peasant peoples are subordinated to this demand (see WRM Bulletin 14).

The inhabitants of Esquel, a small Argentine town in the Province of Chubut, have been undertaking an important struggle in defence of their forests and their environment. An increasing number of the city's inhabitants, together with inhabitants of the Andean region and regional and national organisations are opposing an open cast mine project and the installation of a cyanide processing plant for gold mining, to be located at eight kilometres from this town, which is surrounded by lakes and millenary larch trees.

In a document prepared in the framework of FOMABO (Forestry Management in the Tropical Lands of Bolivia) --a project arising from an agreement between the KVL University of Denmark and UAGRM-UMSS Universities of Bolivia, with the support of DANIDA-- the main characteristics of community-based forest management related with the multiples uses given to forests by the indigenous peoples have been identified.

Presented as a "clean" source of energy that does not contaminate the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, as in the case of oil or natural gas, obtaining hydroelectric energy by building dams continues to advance along the Xingu river, the last of the great Amazon rivers in good state of conservation.