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.
Bulletin articles
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.
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.