The Cameroonian Center for Environment & Development (CED) has sent out the first issue of "Inside Cameroon", a monthly electronic bulletin in English containing update information on environment, development, economics and Human Rights issues in that country. A French version will be available soon. This first bulletin provides detailed information and clear analysis on a number of crucial environmental and social issues, as detailed in the table of contents:
Bulletin articles
A study, published by IITA and CIFOR in 1997, on the production and consumption of firewood and the relationship between this use of wood and deforestation in southern Cameroon shows interesting results, which question some of the myths related to the responsibility of the rural poor in forest destruction as well as on the alleged benefits of plantations to counteract it.
The book written by Albert Kwokwo Barume recently published by the Forest Peoples Programme and IWGIA --"Heading Towards Extinction? Indigenous Rights in Africa: The Case of the Twa of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo"-- examines the fate of the Twa indigenous people in that country.
The Ogiek people of Kenya constitute an ethnic minority community, which has lived basically from hunting and honey-gathering since time immemorial in the highland Tinet forest area, which are part of the vast Mau Forests in Kenya, about 250 km west of the capital Nairobi. Some of them also practise subsistence farming and livestock breeding.
Oil companies are worldwide known for the negative environmental impact they produce both at the local and the global levels. While in the places where oil prospection and exploitation is performed, environmental destruction and social disruption is the rule, at the global level the burning of fossil fuels is one of the main causes of global warming.
Dam megaprojects worldwide have proved detrimental to the environment and to local communities, who directly bear the brunt of their consequences. Frequently corrupt practices are adopted by governments, consulting firms and companies --all interested in the realization of such projects-- to go ahead with them. This is what happened with the Dandeli dam project in India.
The growth of the pulp and paper sector in Indonesia since the late '80s has been based on the clearcutting of vast area of forests --estimated in at least 800,000 hectares a year-- the spread of tree monocultures, the violation of indigenous peoples' land rights, and the granting of official subsidies to the companies, which often hide corrupt practices (see WRM Bulletin 41).
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.
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.