Lao government officials, international aid agencies and forestry consultants are almost unanimous in claiming that large-scale reforestation is urgently needed in Laos to address the problems associated with deforestation. Yet, under the Asian Development Bank's US$11.2 million "Industrial Tree Plantation" project, forests are being further destroyed and replaced by monoculture plantations. The beneficiaries are private companies such as BGA Lao Plantation Forestry Ltd, which is currently establishing 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations in Khammouane and Bholikhamsay provinces.
Bulletin articles
The struggle of the Penan and other indigenous peoples of Sarawak to defend their ancestral lands and culture, is a very long and hard one. A way through which the Penan have expressed their resistance is the construction of blockades to prevent logging companies entering the forest.
Much of the Belizean territory is still covered by forests, which host an enormous diversity in plant and animal life. Those forests have however been exploited for centuries in an unsustainable manner. What the forest hides is the fact that the most commercially valuable hardwood species have all but disappeared, particularly mahogany.
Private commercial tree plantations began to be implemented in Colombia in the 1960s. Long-fibre wood commercial plantations --pine and cypress-- are mostly located in the West of the country, in the Departments of Antioquía, Caldas, Quindio, Risaralda, Valle and Cauca, while in the central zone --in the Departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá-- there is a dominance of Eucalyptus globulus.
Industrial shrimp farming is one of the direct causes of the deforestation of mangroves in the tropics. In Ecuador the level of destruction caused by the 1970s and mid 1980s shrimp production boom continues unabated, even though a law for the protection of mangroves was approved in 1995. Nowadays there are in Ecuador 40,000 hectares of ponds which have affected 70% of the country's mangrove area and practically all of its estuaries in the Pacific Ocean shore. Local economies have been disrupted.
Inner land in Guyana consists of a 150 kilometre wide tropical rainforest, mostly untouched. However, the official perception since the ‘70s of mining as essential for “development”, and the opening of the country’s economy --with the subsequent promotion of the exploitation of natural resources, especially timber and minerals-- to face the increasing foreign debt and satisfy the conditions of the 1991 structural adjustment programme imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, have paved the way to transnational companies.
The spill of 5,500 barrels of oil at the Marañón River that occurred on October 3rd 2000 in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, at Urarinas and Parinari Districts in the Province of Loreto, constitutes an ecological disaster, whose consequences are still provoking damages to the environment and to the indigenous population of the area. The spill affected the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, which is the biggest protected area in the country. Responsible for both the accident and the present situation is the transnational Pluspetrol based in Argentina.
What follows are extracts from the findings of an environmental and social impact assessment of logging operations in the west coast of Manus province, carried out in 1997 and during January 2000, which details the impacts of logging.
When asked to name different causes of deforestation, few people will mention hydroelectric dams as being one of them. Even fewer will include them as a cause of human rights violations. However, dams constitute a major direct and indirect cause of forest loss and most of them have resulted in widespread human rights abuses.
The Sondu Miriu River is one of the six major rivers in the Lake Victoria basin, which drains 3,470 square kilometres in the western part of Kenya. The company responsible for managing all public power generation facilities in Kenya --KenGen-- is planning a dam project to be located about 400 kilometres from Nairobi. Water from the river will be diverted through a 7.2 kilometre long tunnel into a one million cubic meter reservoir and a 60 megawatt hydro power station.
For over five years plans have been discussed by the Namibian and Angolan governments to dam the Kunene river, which runs through both countries, and construct a hydroelectric power station somewhere south of the Angolan border. The proposals have been dogged by controversy and delays from the outset and have developed into a saga, which has rumbled on and on without ever seeming to reach closer to a conclusion.
The Ugandan government --backed by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the US agency Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and a number of European export credit agencies (ECAs)-- is promoting the construction of a huge dam which, if implemented, will destroy the living space of thousands of local dwellers together with the scenic beauty and historical sites at the Bujagali falls region on the Upper Nile River. Responsible for the construction of this U$S 530 million hydroelectric dam is US-based AES corporation.