The certification granted by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or what is now known as the “green label” guarantees that a company’s wood with this qualification, has been obtained on the basis of sustainable forest management practices.
Bulletin articles
Panama has lost 60% of its forests in a deforestation process during which, according to the latest report by the Forestry Service, some 50,000 hectares of forest disappear each year.. The reasons leading to this situation are multiple and complex, ranging from external to internal causes. Although official circles usually accuse the poor peasants for the disaster, in fact it is the last link of a long chain of causalities originating both from unjust national policies and from the impact of the globalisation process and its multiple actors.
Corporate interests in oil palm, (see WRM Bulletin 47) have found in Mexico, and more precisely in Chiapas, an ideal spot for their business, basically due to the climatic diversity of the zone, the availability of cheap labour (more so because of its condition as frontier state with Central America, where undocumented workers abound), and the possibility of easy access to peasant community land. The peasants, pushed and pressed by the powerful market forces expressed in agrarian policies, become salary earners on their own land, which is no longer the base of their food security.
The Argentine forestry sector is weeping. The fat business of planting large-scale monocultures of fast growing alien tree species, aimed at the pulp industry, has foundered.
The semi-intensive production system used in shrimp farms located in the Department of Cordoba, in the Atlantic region of Colombia, has caused great disruption in the surrounding environment. Among other things, this system implies the constant dumping of large volumes of water saturated with organic waste into the estuary of the lower basin of the Sinu river.
The Plywood Ecuatoriana S.A. logging company, belonging to the Alvarez – Barba family will end up by destroying the last primary forests existing in the zone of the Ecuadorian Choco, specifically in the province of Esmeraldas. However, this company that depredates forests has recently decided to dress in green.
Many Latin American governments, in order to obtain income and satisfy the conditions of the IMF structural adjustment programmes, and supported by World Bank loans, have placed the natural resources of their country at the disposal of multinational companies, and grant concessions to those, who at any cost, wish to perpetuate the exploitation model to their own benefit. Many Latin American peoples have also understood that if they get organised they can defend their lands, their forests and their very survival.
The last preparatory conference for the World Summit on Sustainable Development is now taking place in Bali, Indonesia and people around the world are increasingly concerned about the process and asking themselves questions about the relevance of the upcoming Johannesburg Summit to address the problems being faced by humanity.
Six Central African countries --Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), Cameroon and the Central African Republic-- share the rainforest ecosystem of the Congo Basin, which is home to one of the world’s largest contiguous blocks of tropical rainforest, only second to that of the Amazon Basin in South America in terms of not fragmented forest areas.
Liberia is a biodiversity rich country with rocky cliffs and lagoons facing the Atlantic Ocean, with plains covered by forests and savannahs, and rainforests in the highlands, crossed by rapids and waterfalls, all of which are home to the Kpelle, Bassa, Gio, Kru, Grebo, Mano, Krahn, Gola, Gbandi, Loma, Kissi, Vai, and Bella peoples. The evergreen and semi-deciduous rainforests of Liberia also harbour many and even rare and unique plant and animal species.
Biodiversity rich and varied African ecosystems, including tropical rainforests in central and western regions, were disrupted when the European powers landed and encroached on those territories. This disruption extended to customary social structures which were subordinated to a central decision-making organisation to handle regulation and management of natural resources exploitation.
Over the last decade the area of fast-growing tree plantations in the Mekong region has expanded dramatically. Villagers throughout the region have seen their forests, fallows and grazing lands replaced with eucalyptus, acacia and pine monocultures. A new World Rainforest Movement report, "The Pulp Invasion: The international pulp and paper industry in the Mekong Region", written by Chris Lang, gives an overview of the industry, profiles the actors involved and documents the resistance to the spread of plantations.