The Congo Basin contains the second largest area of tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon Basin. Renowned for its high biodiversity, this forest is also home to culturally diverse peoples who depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. The Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville) is one of the countries situated in the Congo Basin, with approximately 21.5 million hectares of forest.
Bulletin articles
Ghana has created a number of protected areas --managed by the Forestry Commission and the Department of Wildlife-- as a means of ensuring biodiversity conservation. However, the process of creation of some of those areas has generated a number of problems which explains the failure of many protected areas to fulfil the objective for which they were established. Among other problems explaining such situation, mention must be made of issues relating to land tenure, land rights of communities and law enforcement.
Forest restoration has become a necessity in many parts of the world, particularly where local communities are suffering from the social and environmental impacts resulting from deforestation. The success of this activity depends on the involvement of the communities themselves, based on their traditional knowledge regarding resource use and conservation. The following example serves to illustrate this.
On 28 February 2002, the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, approved a US$30 million loan to develop a gold mine at Sepon in Savannakhet province in Laos. The mine, which will be the largest mining operation in Laos, is 80 per cent owned by Oxiana Resources, an Australian mining company, and 20 per cent by Rio Tinto.
Once again the indigenous peoples of Sarawak's rainforests are in the headlines. They have been long suffering and resisting encroachment in their ancestral lands by activities which on behalf of “progress” destroy their livelihoods and culture: logging, mining, oil palm plantations, pulpwood plantations, hydroelectric dams, resorts development (see WRM bulletins 41 and 43).
Thailand’s Upper House of Parliament or Senate recently blocked the passage of the draft Community Forest Bill and proposed amendments that would prevent local people having a greater role in managing Thailand’s forests and ultimately lead to the eviction of thousands of forest-dwelling communities.
The draft bill was approved by a majority of Members of Parliament (MP) in the Lower House earlier last year. But the senate amendments have forced the draft bill back to the Lower House for review by a committee comprising members of both the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament.
Under pressure from Thai civil society groups, the Thai government rejected a "forest conservation" proposal by the United States (US) that would establish tree plantations to meet the US targets for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in return for reducing debt owed by Thailand to the US.
From March 21 to 23, men and women from 98 organizations and communities in 21 countries of the world gathered in Guatemala to express the general concern caused by the plans of construction of dams for various purposes in different regions.
During the meeting, called “Foro Mesoamericano Por la Vida” (Meso-American Forum For Life) the participants shared information and experiences, and analized the negative environmental, cultural and socio-economic impacts already caused by these projects and the potential damages they entail.
The accelerated destruction of forests is one of the most serious environmental problems of Panama, which at present retains only one third of its original forest cover. The best solution found by the State to tackle this problem has been to define protected areas, under the name of “parks”, which are generally inhabited by indigenous peoples. This is what happened, for instance, in the Darien National Park, where approximately 40 communities of the Kuna people (Pucuru and Paya) live, or in the La Amistad International Park, where both Naso-Teribe and Bri-Bri peoples live.
The Zoque forest stretches over the boundaries of the three states of greatest biodiversity in Mexico: Oaxaca, Veracruz and Chiapas. It is the most compact and best conserved continuous forest of North America, with a million hectares that include pine, holm oak and pine-holm oak forests, cloud or mesophile forests, and high, medium and low tropical forests.
Since their arrival in the Amazon, “white men” have had an ever-increasing impact on that region. However, it was not until World War 2 that deforestation became a large-scale process. Today, some 80% of the Amazon forest is still standing, but estimations are that its destruction will be completed in the next decades if nothing is done to stop it. The hope that “something” could be done was closer than ever in 1989, when the first meeting of indigenous peoples was held in Altamira.
It is worth noting that many people are not aware of the great diversity of ecosystems of the South American continent. Its great longitude and altitude variation, ranging from sea level to over 7000 metres, as well as its great variety of climates, enables the presence of diverse and different ecosystems, including the largest tropical rainforest (the Amazon Rainforest) and the planet's driest desert (Atacama desert).