Dr Conor Wilson Boyd --president of Weyerhaeuser Forestlands International, a company owning a total of 28 million acres of forest in North America and established in 32 countries-- made a presentation during a meeting organized by the Iwokrama International Rainforest Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development last October in Georgetown.
Bulletin articles
In 1997 the Australian federal government issued a regulation for Tasmanian forests, abolishing export woodchip quotas. Consequently North Limited --the biggest woodchip exporter in the country-- announced plans to raise woodchip production from Tasmanian native forests, that currently reaches around 3,4 million tonnes annually. Tasmanian environmental NGOs expressed their concern that this measure would open the gate for the destruction of old-growth eucalyptus forests in the island, which constitute part of the Australian National Heritage (see WRM Bulletin 7).
The recent publication in the USA of a book, detailing a conspiracy between government, industry, and various public relations firms to discredit environmentalists in New Zealand, has produced surprise among environmental and official circles in that country.
The sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change will take place in November in The Hague, The Netherlands. The public at large, increasingly concerned over the present and future effects of climate change, may well expect as a matter of course that their governments will have the good sense to take constructive action to solve the problem. Among those of us who have been participating in this international process, however, expectations are somewhat different.
Our intrinsic relation with Mother Earth obliges us to oppose the inclusion of sinks in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) because it reduces our sacred land and territories to mere carbon sequestration which is contrary to our cosmovision and philosophy of life. Sinks in the CDM would constitute a worldwide strategy for expropriating our lands and territories and violating our fundamental rights that would culminate in a new form of colonialism.
Foreign investment in mining, gas exploitation and dam megaprojects --identified with "development"-- in fact constitute a direct cause for human rights abuses and a threat to environmental sustainability in Burma. The country is governed by a military dictatorship since 1962, which has imposed a regime characterised by state terrorism.
In early 1999, the Phnom Penh Municipal Authority moved 99 families from a squat behind the Russian embassy in Phnom Penh to Monorom 1, a newly constructed village 150 kilometres away. With the promise of work on an oil palm plantation, new houses and two hectares of palm plantation each many of the squatters were willing to move. A billboard put up by the Phnom Penh authorities announcing that part of the squatters' area was to be made into a park further encouraged people to move.
Some of the so called "natural disasters" --for example those related to floods-- actually result from the combination of natural and human-induced factors. Deforestation is one of the aspects more related to the vulnerability of affected areas in this respect. Lacking the natural coverage provided by the forest, hillsides become prone to landslides, thus increasing the effect of heavy rains associated to floods and their destructive potential (see WRM Bulletins 17 and 27).
Nicaragua is still considered the country having the largest forest cover in Central America, and that with the most extensive primary forests. During the decade of 1980 forest destruction was temporarily halted by the war which was taking place up in the mountains, which forced many indigenous and peasant communities to abandon the region.
The tropical rainforests of the departament of Beni in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia are suffering deforestation caused by the unscrupulous awarding of concessions to private companies by the government. While large landowners occupy more and more lands, indigenous property rights are not recognized. Now a new threat is pending on them: oil exploitation.
In response to the information published by Taiga Rescue Network in Taiga News Summer 2000 edition, issue 32, regarding the social and environmental impacts of Veracel's eucalyptus plantations in the state of Bahia, Antonio Alberto Prado --Public Affairs Manager of the company-- addressed the publishers to explain them that " . . . since its inception, in 1991, Veracel's land management and plantation development has been based on sustainable, ecologically sound principles".
Since late August, Chilean forestry companies are carrying out an aggressive publicity campaign under the slogan of "Forests for Chile." Many of us Chilean people feel that we are being attacked by this campaign, which is being very strongly promoted through the mass media.