Few people know that the Southern US is currently the largest wood and paper producing region in the world. Successful efforts to protect the last remnants of old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, resulted in the expansion of the industry into the recovering second-growth forests of the South. In the last 10 years, more than 100 industrial-scale wood-chipping facilities have been constructed in this region, while paper production alone has increased by one-third since 1985. Approximately 5 million acres of forests are clearcut every year in the region for paper.
Bulletin articles
The story of the Hoktek T’oi community of the indigenous Wichí people in the Province of Salta (in the north of Argentina) is a story of suffering caused by state policies linked to economic interests. Over the past years, far from finding a solution to end a hundred years of usurpation and injustice, the authorities have only continued to attack the rights and the very existence of the Wichí people, who protected the tropical forest where they have always lived.
What is happening in Espirito Santo --one of the smallest Brazilian states-- is historic. Mighty plantation and pulp company Aracruz Celulose has generated so much opposition stemming from its activities, that the state Parliament recently passed --almost unanimously-- a law banning further planting of eucalyptus until an agro-ecological mapping of the state is put in place, which will define where eucalyptus can and cannot be planted. The law was immediately vetoed --during a "solemn session"-- by the Governor and now Parliament must decide whether to lift or maintain the veto.
The farmers and peasants from the valleys of Tambogrande, San Lorenzo and the Locuto and Nacho Távera communities in the Department of Piura have received a hard blow with the announcement made by Alejandro Toledo’s Prime Minister that the country is to become a leading mining country. This does not consider the decision of the populations settled in the area for hundreds of years.
On 13 August, the presidents of Venezuela and Brazil, Hugo Chávez and Fernando Henrique Cardoso respectively, finalised an agreement made in 1997 and inaugurated an electric transmission line extending from Venezuela to the north of Brazil, in the state of Roraima. The 676 kilometres of high voltage cables which cost 400 million dollars and were the work of Electrificación del Caroní, a branch of the Corporación Venezolana de Guayana, will transmit 65 megawatts per hour. By the year 2020 this could increase to 200.
CDC Capital Partners is a major actor in Papua New Guinea’s oil palm plantations. A former UK foreign aid programme, it later became a public private company and invests in PNG through Pacific Rim Plantations Ltd., holding 76% of its shares.
Pacific Rim Plantations Ltd. owns and manages about 23,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in three locations: Northern Province (Popondetta), Milne Bay Province (Alotau) on PNG’s north coast and at Kavieng on New Ireland island. It operates in joint venture with the PNG government, which has a 20% stake.
The news have reached the entire world: the Kyoto Protocol has been saved! In spite of this information being formally true, it hides the fact that this does not mean that the planet's climate has been saved, which is the real issue at stake. On the contrary, as it now stands, while not solving the problem it was intended to address, the Kyoto Protocol will impose further impacts on local people through the implementation of carbon sink projects.
According to Cameroonian law, both local communities and industrial logging companies have the right to obtain and manage a portion of a forest. However, this apparent "equality" is extremely unequal regarding the extension of forest lands and the legal obligations associated with tenure rights.
Compared to other countries in the Congo region, the Central African Republic (CAR) has a relatively small area of forest --around five million hectares-- corresponding to 8% of the country's territory. Yet in terms of commercially valuable species such as Sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum), Ayous (Triplochiton scleroxylon) and Sipo (Entandrophragma utile), its forests are some of the richest in Africa.
Environmental and human rights organizations have recently sent an open letter to Danish timber trade corporation Dalhoff Larsen & Horneman A/S (DLH Group), calling it to stop dealing with Liberian logging companies which, besides being responsible for the serious process of deforestation that has been occurring during the last decade in Liberia, have been also found involved --according to a United Nations report-- in a number of illegal activities both in Liberia and in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
For many years, fuelwood use and charcoal production have been blamed for deforestation throughout the South, though this has seldom been the truth. In the case of Senegal it is clearly false. Charcoal is a major energy source in this country, where its capital city Dakar consumes 90 per cent of all the charcoal produced from the forest. However, forests are not even close to exhaustion, and regeneration after woodcutting is reported to be quite robust.
Commercial-scale logging has a large number of impacts on local communities, among which the loss of sources of livelihood. One of such cases is the cutting of trees used by local people for collecting liquid resin.