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.
Bulletin articles
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.
According to the official viewpoint, India holds favourable climatic and social conditions for the set up of tree plantations. Forestry officials state that more than 60 million hectares of "non-forest wastelands and open scrub forest lands" can be considered available for undertaking tree plantation activities. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is promoting the use of clonal disease-resistant plants of fast-growing eucalyptus. Clones of acacia, poplars, gmelina and teak are also being included in the menu.
More than 150 Indonesian and international NGOs -among them the WRM- have endorsed a sign-on letter addressed to the authorities of that country denouncing the situation of two national parks and proposing solutions. The initiative was launched by Telapak Indonesia and the Environmental Investigation Agency. The letter reads:
Two weeks ago, nineteen persons, including a 17-year old, all Iban, from two long-houses in the Niah area, were provisionally charged with murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code. The charge carries a mandatory death sentence if convicted.