The Urrá Dam megaproject on the Sinú River in the Department of Córdoba, in the Colombian Atlantic region, constitutes a worldwide known environmental catastrophe as well as a complete disaster to the local people. The dam built by the company Urrá and openly supported by the Colombian government --which considers the project vital for the country's economy-- will flood more than 7,000 hectares of forests and directly affect the livelihoods and the very existence of the Embera Katío indigenous people and the fisherfolk communities of the area.
Bulletin articles
There is an increasing and worrying gap --in international processes-- between stated objectives and actual action. This was clearly perceived during the recent Climate Change Convention conference in the Hague, where the actual mandate --to find solutions to climate change-- was mostly absent in the discussions.
The first conference of Central African forestry ministers took place in Yaoundé from 4-7 December, within the framework of the follow-up of the implementation of the decisions of the Heads of States Summit held in Yaoundé in March 1999. The ministerial meeting had been preceded in September by a meeting of experts from the forestry departments of the Central African countries. The aims of the organizers of the event --as could be perceived clearly from the agenda-- were the following:
By mid 2000 the World Bank approved a polemic 650-mile oil pipeline project to link the Doba oil fields in southern Chad with the Cameroon's Atlantic coast. The project, led by Exxon-Mobil, and sponsored by Chevron and the Malaysian state-owned company Petronas, is the largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa.
In many tropical areas mining is a major cause of deforestation and forest degradation, generating a large number of social and environmental impacts. A recent study published by Third World Network-Africa provides a detailed picture of those impacts in the Wassa West District of Ghana. What follows has been extracted from that publication.
Malaysia is the world's top producer and exporter of palm oil, generating fifty percent of the global output, of which 85% is exported. Within the African continent, Nigeria is the country having the more extensive oil palm plantations, with at least 350,000 hectares planted to this crop. According to recent news, a Malaysian corporation will begin to invest in Nigeria's palm oil sector, with government support from both countries.
A recent study, sponsored by CIFOR and WWF International’s Macroeconomics Program Office, provides an in-depth analysis of the features and consequences of the rapid expansion of the pulp and paper sector in Indonesia during the last decade.
The Government of Laos (GoL) has halted the Forest Management and Conservation Programme (FOMACOP) after the first five-year phase because of difficulties between the GoL and external actors including the World Bank over the management of logging revenues from the programme.
Nowadays only about 10,000 Penans remain in Sarawak and very few of them are still able to carry out their nomadic lifestyles. As well as other Dayak people, they have been and still are the victims of all kinds of abuses by the State police and the timber companies themselves. That of the Penans indigenous people in Sarawak is a paradigmatic example of a long and unsolved conflict involving territorial rights.
Bruno Manser is still missing. The Swiss Ambassador to Malaysia officially requested now the Government of Malaysia to assist in the search and rescue of Bruno Manser, the indigenous peoples rights activist and special envoy in the struggle of the Penan People, who went missing in Sarawak over six months ago and whose presence in Sarawak was denied earlier by the Malaysian authorities.
The traditional Penan people of Sarawak, whom Bruno Manser supported for so many years, have now written a letter to the international community. Please read it and distribute their message widely.
Thailand’s main logging agency, the state-owned Forestry Industry Organisation (FIO), is looking to certification of its tree plantations and ecotourism as a way out of its financial troubles as well as to cover-up its infamous past.
The Vietnamese government is currently negotiating with a range of bilateral and multilateral "aid" agencies to raise funds for its five million hectare reforestation programme. So far, little of the estimated US$4.5 billion needed has been formally committed, but in December, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced a US$287,000 project "to promote the programme in Vietnam". On 7 December, Nguyen Van Dang, Vietnam's Rural Development Minister and Fernanda Guerrieri, FAO's representative in Vietnam, signed the agreement for the FAO project.