The isthmus of Panama stretches in Central America, one of the regions of highest natural and cultural diversity in the world. Different forest ecosystems constitute an essential component of such richness. Several indigenous nations have found in the forests their home and source of livelihoods. In Darién, San Blás and Panamá Oriente live the Emberá-Wounan and the Kuna indigenous people, while the Teribe occupy the area of Bocas del Toro, in the border with Costa Rica, together with the Ngobe-Bugle, who also inhabit part of the provinces of Veraguas and Chiriquí Oriente.
Bulletin articles
In mid-March, 2001 concerned Oregon State University (OSU) students and alumni targeted three GE test sites where Poplar and Cottonwood trees were being grown by Steve Strauss, a forestry professor at Oregon State University and the founder of the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative.
According to an open letter sent after the action to professor Straus, the test plots "at these places were independently assessed and found to be a dangerous experiment of unknown genetic consequences".
In May 2000, a parliamentary initiative that would have resulted in the legalization of forest destruction was defeated as a result of a strong national and international campaign to save the forests (see WRM bulletin 35). However --in an apparent electronic "inertia"-- during the following months many people continued receiving calls for action through the internet asking them to send messages to the Brazilian government, ignoring the fact that the proposed legislation had already been shelved.
In the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo there are currently two different production sectors facing completely different situations.
In the last issue of the WRM bulletin we included an article written by Acción Ecológica on an oil pipeline project in Ecuador, which would cross the country from east to west, carrying oil from the Yasuní National Park in Amazonia and affecting indigenous peoples and ecosystems throughout the country.
The FAO is portrayed by many as the expert body on forests. One single example will suffice to question FAO's alleged expertise. The organization's web page includes a "country profile" area containing the basic data on the countries' forest resources and we would recommend everyone to compare what the FAO says with what they know about their own country. In the case of Uruguay, the FAO says:
The Australian SBS Television Dateline programme has produced a documentary concerning fraud, incompetence, corruption and human rights violations by transnational logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea. The documentary exposes widespread cases of loggers raping local women at the barrel of a gun and landowners being forced to sign legal documents, also at gunpoint. The programme states that police are on logging companies' payrolls and that foreign loggers "are a law unto themselves" in their logging concession areas.
The FAO recently presented the results of its Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000, which it characterises as being "the most comprehensive, reliable and authoritative baseline survey of forest reources to date". But the main question is: is it useful?
“This is the world’s most scrutinized and controlled project,” retorted a senior French official in Chad to representatives of Chadian human rights organizations who went to see him in March 2001. “There is absolutely nothing to worry about”, he added. However, many people are very worried and have been fighting against the project for a very long time.
The large-scale monoculture pulpwood plantation model being implemented in the South not only results in negative social and environmental impacts in the forest areas, but has also additional impacts from pollution resulting from the industrial process for the production of pulp as well as deforestation linked to logging for supplying the pulp mill with raw material.
Liberia hosts the last two significant blocks of the remaining closed canopy tropical rainforest within what is known as the upper Guinea Forests of West Africa, which spans Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The original extent of tropical rainforest in the upper Guinea forest is estimated at 727,900km2, but has shrunk to about 92,797km2, which represents only 12.7% of its original size. Liberian forests account for 44.5% of the remaining 92,797km2 followed by Cote d’Ivoire with 29.1%.
Certification of monoculture timber plantations as “sustainably managed forests” by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) makes an absolute mockery of the concept of sustainable environment and ecosystem management.
In recent years vast tracts of industrial tree plantations in South Africa and many other countries, have been given the FSC stamp of approval.