As we have already informed in previous bulletins (see WRM bulletins 36, 42), the $550 million Bujagali hydroelectric dam project on the Victoria Nile proposed by the US-based AES Corporation --counting on loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)-- has encountered strong opposition by local groups supported by international action. The detrimental impact of the project has been acknowledged by the Inspection Panel, the World Bank's independent investigative body (see WRM bulletin 59).
Bulletin articles
In late July NGOs wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture to request that Forest Concession Management Plans and Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs), submitted by concessionaires to the Department of Forestry and Wildlife, be released for public comment. Three and half months later, an edited version of these documents is to be released, to allow for just over two weeks of public comment. This, the World Bank has decided, is sufficient a period of time to justify the release of the final tranche of their Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC).
"Nature can never be managed well unless the people closest to it are involved in its management and a healthy relationship is established between nature, society and culture. Common natural resources were earlier regulated through diverse, decentralized, community control systems. But the state's policy of converting common property resources into government property resources has put them under the control of centralized bureaucracies, who in turn have put them at the service of the more powerful."
Until the late 1970s, the approach to community based forest management in Nepal implied community resource relations along the lines of the indigenous system of forest management prevailing in Nepal's hills.
During the 80s and early 90s, community based forest management became a government priority programme and the new policy framework set up implied an interface between communities, natural resources and government bureaucracy.
In June 2001, two teak plantations managed by Thailand's Forest Industry Organisation (FIO) were awarded a certificate as "well managed" under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system. The plantations, at Thong Pha Phum and Khao Krayang, were assessed by SmartWood, a non-profit organisation run by Rainforest Alliance, a US-based NGO.
At daybreak on 7 November, under the leadership of the NGO, CODDEFFAGOLF and of REDMANGLAR (the Mangrove Network), over 2,000 fisherfolk and peasants abandoned their humble dwellings in the coastal wetlands of the Gulf of Fonseca, internationally known as "Ramsar Site 1000," to launch a mobilisation in protest over the destruction of the mangrove forests, lagoons, marshes and other wetlands that host a wide biodiversity, and are their source of food and income.
Bordering with the Republic of Colombia, the Province of Darien is located at the extreme East of the Republic of Panama and is one of the areas in the Central American Isthmus with the greatest biodiversity. However, at present it is undergoing resource destruction at a fast pace.
The region is inhabited by peoples of four ethnic groups: Afro-Colombians, Embera-Wounan indigenous people, Darienite peasants and settlers from other regions of the country --landless peasants seeking to improve their living conditions.
The city of Esquel is located in an enclave on the banks of the Esquel river, between hills with slopes forming an impressive amphitheatre, set off by the marginal forests of the sub-Antarctic forest region and in particular, the Valdiviana forest in the Province of Chubut, to the West of the Argentine Patagonia. Its 31,000 inhabitants live and enjoy surroundings that they describe as a city where nature surprises travellers at all seasons because of the landscapes of unusual beauty, thousand-year old trees, rivers and hundreds of pools and lakes protected by enigmatic forests.
A group of seven researchers assessed the certifications of the V&M Florestal Ltda. Company (Vallourec & Mannesman), which obtained FSC certification in 1999 for its whole area of 235,886 hectares, through the certification firm SGS. They also assessed those of Plantar Reflorestamentos S.A., which obtained SCS certification for an area of 13,287 hectares. With this certification, V&M Florestal became the company with the largest certified area in Brazil.
The Mapuche People in Chile have been struggling against national and transnational forestry companies and against the State to recover their lands for years now. The encroachment of monoculture tree plantations in the VIII, IX and X Regions, where the Mapuche population is over 337,000 inhabitants, has involved Mapuche territorial ethnocide. The scarcity of land and the cultural and environmental destruction in the ecosystem of communities neighbouring the plantations, has made many of them rise up in self-defence.
In Uruguay, all forests are protected by law and their exploitation is forbidden unless expressly authorised by the bodies in charge of ensuring their protection. Therefore, certification in this country is totally unnecessary to ensure forest conservation. However, it is enough to enter the FSC web page's "certified forest list" to discover that there are 75,000 hectares of certified "forests" in this country. Of course, on looking into details, one learns that in all cases these are plantations and not forests.
Preolenna, in NW Tasmania, has dramatically changed from what it used to be just five years ago (see WRM bulletin 36). Under the Federal Government's plan labelled Plantations 2020 Vision ( http://www.plantations2020.com.au ), this former farming community has seen their farms which used to feed people replaced by farms which feed woodchip mills. The pattern of large-scale monoculture tree plantations has swept through more than 35 farming towns in the North West hinterland from Circular Head to Wilmot.