Bulletin articles

 

The case of Sarawak is probably one of the best ones to show the importance of definitions. Tree plantations have been defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as "planted forests" and the entire forestry profession -the "experts"- is totally unwilling to revisit such definition. The reason is that it serves their purposes -including their image and budgets- very well.

The greenery, wet soil and pure water springs brings you the impression of virginity. Darkness in the forest and sounds of birds and insects create a different world. You can experience this in Sinharaja, which is the most famous virgin forest in Sri Lanka. It houses the highest number of species and the highest endemism rates in Sri Lanka. The National Conservation Review of the country's natural forest carried out from 1991 to 1996 recorded 337 species of woody plants in the sample plots that were inventoried. Of these species, 192 (57%) are endemic and 116 (34%) globally threatened.

The Maya Biosphere Reserve, located in the northern region of Guatemala constitutes the largest protected tropical forest in the country. The Reserve is at the heart of the Maya Forest, which is shared by Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, and is considered the second most important remaining tract of tropical forest in the Americas, second only to the Amazon.

The Pataxó-Hã-Hã-Hãe indigenous peoples of the Southern region of the State of Bahia are fighting to recover their traditional territories, demarcated in 1936, and consisting of an area of 53,000 hectares that are occupied by nearly 400 ranchers who got their titles illegally from the successive governments of Bahia since the decade of 1960. These lands, which house remnants of the once dense atlantic forest ("mata atlántica"), have been mostly converted into pastures and cacao plantations.

Last February deputy Eugenio Tuma denounced that several terrorist attacks against tree plantations in the southern 9th Region, which took place during the last months, could have been carried out by employees of security firms hired by the forestry companies to guard their properties, with the aim of blaming the Mapuche indigenous peoples and thus justifying the need for their presence in the region.

As part of their struggle to prevent the occupation of their lands by Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), a group of about 200 members of the U'wa indigenous peoples established in November 1999 a camp in the area where the company is planning to drill the oil well "Gibraltar 1" with the approval of the Colombian Environment Ministry, which all along this conflict has disregarded the U'wa's rights and defended the interests of Oxy (see WRM Bulletin 30).

In December 1999 ravaging storms, floods and landslides caused the tragic death of more than 30,000 people and the loss of houses, belongings and livelihoods of many other Venezuelans. Such terrible loss of human lives, crops, livestock and infraestructure can be seen as a misfortune provoked by the fury of nature. Nevertheless, as usually happens in the so called "natural disasters", there is a human-induced component, whose importance is in most cases not taken into account.

Genetically modified crops have been hogging the limelight of public opinion due to the controversy arising on their unpredictable consequences on health and the environment. Nevertheless, the genetic engineering of trees has been largely in the shadows. In the meantime, joint ventures of giant corporations were created to carry out research in the tree biotechnology field.

The announcement by Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Mekere Morauta in December 1999 of his intention to impose a moratorium on new logging and extensions, and to review existing logging concessions was enthusiastically received by national and international environmental NGOs, as well as by local small sawmill operators, which consider that any new large-scale logging concessions should be stopped in a country that has already lost more than 10% of its forests because of this depredatory activity (see WRM Bulletin 30).

The current FPIRS process seems to be coming out with a number of ideas for the future Bank's approach to forests, some of which clearly expressed while others underlying though carrying an equally clear message. Most of these ideas are included in the OED report -whose reading we recommend- but we would like to concentrate on a few of them, which we consider to be more important.

What follows are summaries of the OED main report and of the six country studies which the OED carried out as part of the FPIRS process. In the summaries, we have aimed at highlighting those aspects which we believe to be more relevant, trying not to include our own opinions, some of which we add at the end of each summary. We strongly urge, however, all those intending to participate directly or indirectly in the FPIRS process to also read the full studies, given that neither our summary nor the official OED studies' summaries reflect the rich information contained in the full texts.