In the run-up to Johannesburg where governments from around the world will debate how to protect the global environment, the World Bank has released its long awaited draft policy on forests.
Bulletin articles
The following statement was issued by a number of African NGOs (see below) present at the African Forest Law Enforcement and Governance Ministerial Planning Meeting held in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo on June 18 - 21, 2002:
"There is little doubt that forest crimes is pervasive and causing enormous damage to the environment and the economy as well as hurting the poor the most. Almost everywhere, forest resources are under the threat of criminal activities by unscrupulous loggers, traders, and corrupt government officials.
The rainforests of the Central African Republic’s Dzanga Sangha national park are inhabited by the Ba’Aka indigenous people, which counts with some 20,000 members. Like many other so-called “Pygmy” groups of neighbouring countries, they have been hunter-gatherers living in the heart of the forest and have developed a whole body of knowledge on the local rainforest resources.
The Democratic Republic of Congo contains over 50 percent of Africa’s remaining tropical forests; of its 2.3 million square kilometres, nearly half is forestland. Only Brazil and Indonesia have larger areas of tropical rainforest. Although natural resource exploitation did not cease during the war, many foreign logging operations halted their activities. The Malaysian company Innovest, for example, has sold assets in DRC due to financial losses incurred.
In July 2001, Ugandan civil society groups had filed a complaint with the World Bank's Inspection Panel, claiming that the Bujagali dam project violated several World Bank policies and that it would cause social, economic, and environmental harm to the local people. As a result, the Panel took up the case and on May 30 submitted a confidential report to the Executive Board, which concludes that the planned Bujagali dam --detailed in WRM bulletin 42-- violates five key World Bank policies. The Panel report suggests a series of corrective measures to rectify the project's problems.
While not related to the pulp and paper industry, rubber plantations and oil palm plantations have similar impacts on local communities to fast-growing tree plantations. Rubber and oil palm plantations also involve using large areas of land, often land which is crucial to local people's livelihoods.
The world has something to celebrate: there is good news for the Jarawa.
This largely uncontacted people who inhabit the Andaman Islands in the Indian ocean and have voluntarily chosen to continue almost completely isolated, have been harassed by encroachment on their lands by British and Indian settlers in the last 150 years.
The loss of access to forest resources does not only occur with deforestation of primary forest, but also where commercial tree plantations replace primary forests. It is a well known fact that tree plantations of introduced species planted for commercial purposes for local and international markets, do not have the non-timber forest products of primary forests, particularly resources used for housing, household items, food, fuel, handicraft and medicines.
Tree plantations are a growing problem worldwide and this is particularly clear to people living near the plantations. For instance, the Chief of Xiang Khai sub-district of Xaibouli district, in Laos, says: “Eucalyptus plantations are causing forest, soil and water resource degradation. I do not want anyone to grow any more eucalyptus trees in my sub-district.”
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.
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.