Since 1998, Bolivian and international environmental and social NGOs, as well as academics, have been opposing the San Miguel-Cuiaba gas pipeline project of Enron-Shell which will cross Bolivia into Brazil, causing a negative environmental impact on the Chiquitano dry forest in eastern Bolivia, which is the world's last significant remnant of intact dry tropical forest. In spite of this opposition, in June 1999 OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) -a descentralized financial institution of the US government- decided to finance the project.
Bulletin articles
Colombian forests are undergoing a severe process of destruction. The civil war that is devastating the country can be considered one of the main causes of deforestation. Due to the prevailing state of violence in Colombia, entire rural communities are obliged to leave their homes and lands. Additionally to their effects from a social and cultural point of view, forced displacements also create conditions for further negative impacts on forests.
The Pemon indigenous people are opposing a project of construction of a high-voltage power line 470-mile long across Conaima National Park in the south-eastern Gran Sabana region. At the beginning of October they carried out a direct action by knocking down an electricity tower and blockading a key highway linking the country to Brazil.
The following letter is being circulated worldwide by a large number of Australian NGOs:
"We the undersigned representatives of Australian conservation NGOs are writing to you to express our opposition to the approach taken by our Federal Minister for Forestry and Conservation, Mr. Wilson Tuckey, to regulate independent forest certification schemes at the international level.
During the "World Shrimp Market 99" recently held in Madrid, members of Greenpeace Spain and several Latin American NGOs expressed their protest against the expansion of this depredatory activity, by unfurling three large banners reading: "No new shrimp farms - Stop the shrimp industry", "Shrimp farming - Mangroves destruction" and "Shrimp Industry Meeting - Mangrove Death". " Fifty per cent of mangrove areas have already disappeared.
The Dutch NGO BothENDS has recently published "Forests for the Future: Local Strategies for Forest Protection, Economic Welfare and Social Justice", edited by Paul Wolvekamp, Ann Danaiya Usher, Vijay Paranjpye, and Madhu Ramnath.
The book addresses the question of how local and indigenous communities can maintain the balance between their societies and their forest environments when faced with increasing external pressures, rising populations and growing demands for basic needs and cash.
"The oil flows, the Earth bleeds" is the title of this Oilwatch publication. Oilwatch is an international network that supports the struggle of local communities and indigenous peoples facing oil industry activities in the tropics.
The book presents a broad variety of examples of oil activities and resistance in Latin America (Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil), Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Ghana), Asia (Bangladesh, India, Thailand), as well as general articles on the issue.
Ricardo Carrere visited in October the states of Espirito Santo and Bahia invited by CIMI (Conselho Indigenista Missionario). During his trip, he participated at a seminar which took place in Vitoria on the impacts of eucalyptus plantations and the FSC. He later had a meeting in Monte Pascoal with Pataxo indigenous peoples' leaders (see article above) and offered them WRM's inconditional support to their struggle. After that, he spent a few days travelling around the plantation area of the three big companies established in the extreme south of Bahia (Aracruz, Bahia Sul and Veracel).
Almost everyone agrees that humanity is facing many threats, among which the greenhouse effect. There is also general agreement on the main causes of the greenhouse effect: use of fossil fuels and deforestation. International agreements to address those two causes have until now proved -to say the least- inadequate. Fossil fuel consumption is still increasing and deforestation continues unabated. The economic interest of the ever more powerful corporations is still more powerful than the survival instinct of humanity.
Four years have passed since the judicial murder of Ken Saro Wiwa together with other eight human rights activists to the hands of the Nigerian military dictatorship on November 10th 1995, that generated condemnation and outrage worldwide. Nevertheless -and in spite of the political changes that occured in the country- environmental destruction and human rights abuses associated to oil exploration and extraction in the Niger Delta region continues.
The Tourism industry has done, and is doing much more for Responsible Environmental Management than the "forestry" industry. Maybe for this one reason only. . . It is rooted in Biodiversity.
Alien tree plantations destroy the indigenous vegetation they replace. The basis of the food chain destroyed, local fauna and flora can not adapt and live in a plantation. When calculating the profit associated with tree farms, is the cost of the destruction to the natural environment ever brought into consideration?
Tanzania's 33.5 million hectares (129,310 square miles) of forests are increasingly at risk, mostly as a result of illegal logging, which is destroying some 500,000 hectares (19,300 square miles) of the country's pristine forests every year.