Pak Moon dam in the Ubon Ratchathani Province of North-East Thailand has been strongly resisted by local villagers, who are suffering its negative effects of drinking water shortage, reduction in the number of available fish, health hazards, flooding of their lands and compulsory relocation (see WRM Bulletin 22).
In spite of the powerful adversaries they have to face, and that already ten years have passed since the year when the dam was set up, their struggle continues. Now the Pak Moon dam villagers are employing local traditions and customs to make their voices heard.
Bulletin articles
Honduras has the obligation both under international and national law to protect 75,000 hectares of wetlands in the Gulf of Fonseca. On May 1999, The Honduran Government, through the Natural Resources and Environment Secretariat (SERNA), during the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands, obtained the designation of the Coastal Wetlands of the Gulf of Fonseca as "RAMSAR Site 1000".
Five hundred years ago, Portuguese conquistadores in shining armour used their modern weapons against indigenous peoples armed with bows and arrows. Now, police in shining riot gear used their modern weapons against unarmed civilians including indigenous, black and white people protesting against the official celebration of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500. The photographs are self explanatory (see photos at http://www.wrm.org.uy/english/tropical_forests/photospataxo2.html ). The reason? Again the "indians".
In Southern Chile, near Osorno, lies the Huitrapulli estate -a 20,000 hectare forest, inhabited since time immemorial by Mapuche-Huilliche indigenous peoples. The area is part of the extensive forests of Valdivia, which constitute one of the world's last non-fragmented reserves of temperate rainforests. The area is characterized by its biological diversity and by high levels of endemism.
From March 15-21, 2000, an International Mission, summoned by the major authorities of the Embera-Katio and U'wa indigenous peoples, visited Colombia to observe in the field their situation concerning the long conflict in which they are involved to defend their territorial and cultural rights. The mission was conformed by representatives of indigenous peoples of Ecuador and Panama, the World Rainforest Movement, Oilwatch, Friends of the Earth, International Rivers Network, Rios Vivos, and other human rights and environmental organizations.
The comercial cultivation of "palmito" palms (from which heart of palm is extracted) began in Ecuador in 1987 and since then its expansion has been constant, having become a new export crop. The heart of palm is obtained from the interior of the trunk of several species of palm trees. The "chontaduro" (Bactris gasipaes), a palm native to Ecuador, is the most cultivated in the country to this aim.
Smurfit Carton, subsidiary of Jefferson Smurfit, owns 34,000 hectares of monocultures of gmelina, eucalyptus and pine in the Venezuelan states of Portuguesa, Lara and Cojedes. 27,000 hectares are located in Portuguesa, where the company confronted the local communities of Morador and Tierra Buena, which resisted the invasion of tree plantations in their agricultural lands (see WRM Bulletins 18, 20, 22 and 23).
The new Government of Aotearoa -a coalition supported by the Greens- has banned the cutting of indigenous beech trees (and soon probably Rimu and other species), because of the enormous pressure on the country's remaining areas of natural forest, which include temperate rainforest and temperate dryforest.
The prevailing development model is to a large extent based on oil, which has been imposed as one of the main energy sources for most human activities (industry, transportation, heating, cooking, etc.). However destructive its extraction and use may be, the main reason for its success is its cheapness. Because it is cheap, its continued use is enhanced and because its use increases, so does its extraction. In theory, oil companies should be extracting less oil to achieve a higher price and hence more profits.
The U$S 3.5 million loan that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group is about to award to the Liberian Agricultural Company (LAC) to develop a rubber plantation of 120,000 hectares in the Grand Bassa county is provoking growing concern in Liberia (see WRM Bulletin 29). The project is aimed at restarting operations and initiating a rehabilitation program of the plantation, which had been abandoned because of the civil war that affected the country between 1989 and 1997.
There is ample proof that oil prospection and extraction constitutes a major cause of forest degradation and destruction, which brings with it also the loss of forest dwellers' livelihoods and territories. In tropical countries oil companies generally act with strong support from local governments. Nigeria, and especially its Niger Delta region, is a paradigmatic case of this situation, that we have addressed in previous WRM Bulletin issues (see nrs. 22, 23, 27 and 28).
Due to a decline in log supply in their own country -as a consequence of years of depredatory practices- Malaysian logging companies have recently and rapidly expanded abroad. Some of them, together with oil palm plantation companies, are well known to the indigenous peoples of Sarawak for having negatively affected their livelihoods and promoted the destruction of the native forests. The Malaysian government has publically expressed the need for its country's companies to operate responsibly abroad, but reality seems far away from such concern.