Papua New Guinea, widely recognised as a country with a great diversity of forests, is now facing the depletion of its forest resources. An Independent Forestry Review identified that 7 million hectares of forests have been allocated for large-scale commercial logging.
Bulletin articles
The Sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will take place in April in The Hague. Much is expected from this conference regarding forests, because this is the main thematic issue which will be addressed by the meeting.
When described by European officials, the world seems to be divided in two different sets of governments. "Their" world appears to have taken on board environmental --and even social-- concerns, while "corrupt" Southern governments continue destroying the environment. Such simplistic picture does not take into account that the causes of environmental destruction in the South are very frequently rooted in the North. The following example helps to better understand the issue.
The Niger Delta is one of the world’s largest wetlands, and the largest in Africa: it encompasses over 20,000 square kilometers. It is a vast floodplain built up by the accumulation of centuries of silt washed down the Niger and Benue Rivers, composed of four main ecological zones --coastal barrier islands, mangroves, fresh water swamp forests, and lowland rainforests-- whose boundaries vary according to the patterns of seasonal flooding.
Wally Menne, a member of the South African Timberwatch Coalition, sent the following message to Magnus Grylle of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
A country with profuse forests --open hardwood woodlands being the dominant type though there are also closed forests and mangroves--, Tanzania has 33.5 million hectares of forest cover richly endowed with biodiversity, which account for one-third of the total land area.
Imagine the following situation: a company gives money to an environmental organisation. The company plans an enormous, massively environmentally damaging project in the tropics but agrees to provide funding to protect a nearby area of forest. Rather than opposing the project, the environmental organisation conducts studies on managing the protected area and recommends that the project goes ahead.
The Penang Inshore Fishermen Welfare Association (PIFWA) has recently held a workshop on the importance of mangroves. Fisherfolk had there the opportunity to highlight what they already knew: that mangrove forest is an inherent part of their livelihood since it is closely related to fish catch. Without mangroves there will be no fish in the sea since they play a vital role as intermediaries between marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
A research undertaken by the NGO Friends without Borders shows that refugee communities living along Thailand’s border areas and displaced by war and civil strife from neighbour countries, are being unfairly accused of forest destruction in Thailand.
Indonesia has 10% of the world’s remaining tropical forests which are home to over 20,000 plant species --accounting for 10% of the planet’s total--, 12% of the world's mammal species and 17% of bird species, many of which are unique. The magnitude of this lush biodiversity can be pictured by the data that 25 acres of Borneo's rainforest were found to contain 700 tree species, equal to the total number of species for the whole of North America..
The inhabitants of the northern zone of Costa Rica, gathered together in the Northern Front for Opposition to Mining (Frente Norte de Oposición a la Minería) are opposed to the Crucitas Mining project for open-cast gold mining and have organised a march in San Carlos, under the slogan of “Yes to life, No to Mining.” They demand the suspension of mining projects and promotion of a sustainable, eco-touristic and agro-industrial development for the frontier communities that so far have been neglected.
It is sad to see that, while the governments of the world --including the Brazilian government-- are preparing to participate in the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, some representatives of the people of the State of Espiritu Santo, whose very threatened biodiversity is among the richest in the world, do not show the least concern over the matter.