Chiapas means much for many people all over the world. It is a synonym of Zapatistas and of Subcomandante Marcos, and these, in turn, of struggle for liberation and against injustice. However, for national and transnational corporations, Chiapas is still merely a synonym of cheap land, cheap labour, abundant resources and profit opportunities.
Bulletin articles
The history of oil palm in Central America is closely linked to the history of the economic group United Fruit. Preston and Keith, two US businessmen who, for 20 years since 1870 concentrated on planting and exporting bananas to the USA, merged their companies in 1899 to found the United Fruit Company (UFCO), as a means of diversifying their plantations and increasing their profits.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) possesses one of the planet's largest remaining tropical rainforest. At least seventy-five percent of its original forest cover is still standing, occupying vast, biologically rich tracts over 100,000 square miles in all. Its forests provide the habitat for about 200 species of mammals, 20,000 species of plants, 1,500 species of trees and 750 species of birds, half of which are endemic to the island. It has been estimated that between 5 and 7% of the known species in the world live in PNG.
Some corporations are trying to adapt to a more environmentally-conscious public opinion. Others are still unwilling to acknowledge that they cannot continue destroying the environment with impunity. The latter are not necessarily the most dangerous, but they can certainly be the most virulent. The situation being currently faced by a WRM founder organization --the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)-- constitutes an example of such virulence.
The United Nations Forum on Forests will be holding its first meeting in June in New York. The mandate of this body is to ensure the follow up of the process initiated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) in 1995, which was continued under the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) from 1997 to 2000.
A UN mission has recently presented its report on the widespread exploitation of mining and forest resources in Congo (ex-Zaire) by forces of Rwanda and Uganda, in collaboration with Congolese opposition groups in the Eastern region of the country.
Apart from its well-known oil operations, Shell company is also involved in a less known activity: tree plantations. The company has planted --on its own or in joint-ventures-- almost 150,000 hectares of mostly eucalyptus and pine trees in Argentina (10,000), Chile (36,000), Republic of Congo (42,000), New Zealand (23,000), Paraguay (8,000) and Uruguay (28,000).
For its size, Equatorial Guinea holds a remarkable biodiversity both in its continental zone --Mbini-- and in its two main islands, Pigalu and Bioko. Continental Equatorial Guinea is covered by dense tropical rainforest that is exploited by the lumbering industry. It contains more than 140 wood species, of which the most commercially important are okume (Aucoumea klaineana), African walnut, and various mahoganies. This has attracted the logging industry, which has been the main responsible for a severe process of deforestation particularly in the coastal regions of Mbini.
Dams constitute a major direct and indirect cause of nature destruction and disruption of local population's lives worldwide. Even though international concern on this issue is on the rise, national governments, together with transnational consulting and construction firms and with the aid of international financial institutions continue going ahead with this kind of megaprojects. They are usually surrounded by corruption and almost always result in widespread human rights violations against local communities.
A numerous group of Indonesian NGOs that gathered last April 21st issued a letter questioning the certification of forest concessions in that country, because those concessions are based upon the extinction of native customary (“adat”) rights. They reasonably argue that it is not possible to grant a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate to a forest concession holder under those circumstances.
Bruno Manser, a Swiss human rights activist devoted to the defence of the Penan indigenous people of the rainforests of Sarawak, disappeared in May 2000 (see WRM Bulletin 40). Bruno became a friend of the Penan and supported their struggle against logging companies, which, in collusion with the government, have been and still are destroying their forests. A year has already gone by without news about Bruno’s fate. This uncertain situation has provoked concern and pain among the Penan people (see WRM Bulletin 41) and the international environmental community.
Nobody knows exactly how many people have been evicted from their homes and land to make way for China's 22,000 large dams. Official Chinese government statistics give a figure of 10 million people, but Dai Qing, the Chinese hydropower critic, estimates that the true figure is somewhere between 40 and 60 million people. Another 280 dams are currently under construction in China, and state policy is to increase the proportion of electricity generated by hydropower plants from 19 per cent to 40 per cent, by 2015.