Called the “naturalist’s promised land” by French explorer Phillippe de Commerson in 1771, Madagascar is one of the most ecologically rich countries in the world. Twelve thousand species are found on the island the size of Texas; 80 percent are endemic, existing nowhere else. Nine new species of lemur were recently discovered in Madagascar, placing the country only behind Brazil in the number of primates that call it home.
Bulletin articles
A project is in progress to build a number of roads in Kachin State in return for huge logging concessions. While improving and expanding the infrastructure in Kachin State is much needed, the impact of this deal on the environment could prove to be disastrous.
Tapping trees for resins has a long history in Southeast Asia. The traditional tapping practice involves cutting a hole in the base of the trunk and using fire to stimulate a continuing flow. Resin from Cambodia is traded throughout Indochina and to other parts of Southeast Asia and China.
As we had reported in our last bulletin (December 2001), the possibility of a moratorium on logging was looming on Cambodian timber industry’s horizon, which had previously attempted a "voluntary restructuring process" that proved to be a failure.
Last year the Vietnam Paper Corporation (Vinapimex) announced an ambitious plan to expand the pulp and paper industry in Vietnam. With a total cost of more than US$1 billion, the plan involves 15 new pulp and paper production projects. If they were all built, the projects would raise Vinapimex's annual paper production capacity from the current 171,000 tons to 419,000 tons.
The pulp and paper industry in Vietnam presently produces a total of approximately 360,000 tons of paper a year. Vinapimex hopes to increase this figure to more than one million tons by 2010.
The Belize National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC) announced in November 2001 that the government has granted environmental clearance for the construction of a proposed hydro-scheme (see WRM bulletin 44) slated for an undisturbed river valley within the Central Maya Mountains near the Guatemalan border, conditional upon the development of an Environmental Compliance Plan (ECP), which will incorporate the mitigation measures identified in the environmental impact assessment, along with others recommended during the evaluation process.
The Mexican authorities themselves have recognised, through the Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), the seriousness of the Mexican situation in terms of forest loss.
Ted Williams, author of the excellent article on the impacts of monoculture pine tree plantations in Southern US ("False Forests", Mother Jones magazine, http://bsd.mojones.com/mother_jones/MJ00/false_forests.html ), has now published an equally excellent article focused on eucalyptus ("America's Largest Weed"). The following are some excerpts from his recent article:
As a result of successful campaigning efforts in the state of Espirito Santo --where Aracruz Cellulose has its huge pulp mill and most of its eucalyptus plantations-- the state Parliament passed a law banning further eucalyptus planting until an agroecological study is carried out to decide where the tree can and cannot be planted.
On 27 December 2001, the Colombian Inter-Congregational Justice and Peace Commission sent the President of the Republic, Doctor Andrés Pastrana Arango and other national authorities a letter in which, among many other things, it reported that during the first twenty days of December, the “Maderas del Darién” company had been logging in a place known as Mendoza, in the perimeter of San Jose de La Balsa, La Balsa, Bocachica, San Higinio, within the Collective Territory of Cacarica.
Since the 2nd of January, the inhabitants of local communities, students and environmentalists have been carrying out a permanent and peaceful occupation of the most fragile zone of the Los Guarumos forest, at the entry of the Mindo Nambillo cloud forest, to halt the construction of a new oil pipeline which will cross the whole of Ecuador. The 500 km long oil pipeline will transport heavy crude oil for the Oleoductos de Crudos Pesados (OCP) company, (see bulletin 45, April, 2001).
The Department of Rio Negro, located in the western side of Uruguay, presently has 70,510 hectares of plantations (mainly eucalyptus) which makes it one of the Departments having more tree monocultures in the country.