Papua New Guinea (PNG) possesses one of the planet's largest remaining tropical rainforest biomes. At least seventy-five percent of its original forest cover is still standing, occuping vast, biologically rich tracts over 100,000 square miles in all. Nevertheless, lately the government of PNG has been taking steps to revive the dying timber industry, which favour a small group of companies, weaken forest sector governance and accelerate logging in these precious remaining forests (see WRM Bulletin 22).
Bulletin articles
The Argentinian government is definitely aimed at transforming the country in an investors paradise for forestry projects, adopting the same scheme already operational in the Southern Cone of South America -Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay- based on large scale tree monocultures. This position was made clear at the COP IV on climate Change held in November 1998 in Buenos Aires. Plantations as carbon sinks under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol are regarded as an excellent opportunity for the development of this model.
For centuries, the inhabitants of the Amazon lived in balance with nature. The groups had small areas of land, the idea of property was unknown to them, and they were able to find everything they needed to live well. This style of life was destroyed by the arrival of the first Europeans, and ever since the exploitation of nature and its inhabitants has caused the extinction of species, loss of livelihoods and cultures, and more widespread poverty.
Mapuche Press Release. The national march for the recognition of the Mapuche Nation and its rights is advancing towards Santiago and more than one hundred Mapuche have walked 200 kms in seven days.
After seven days, more than one hundred Mapuche have walked some 200 kms from Temuco, Wallmapuche -Mapuche Territory- heading towards Santiago de Chile with the aim of achieving the recognition of the basic rights and freedoms of the Mapuche People.
A second grade teacher in a Chicago inner-city school says she received six or seven phone calls from an official in the Boise Cascade Corporation who wanted to know why she was teaching "bad things" about his company.
The teacher, Maria Gilfillan, had been teaching her second-graders about rainforests. As a class, they talked about how they could help conserve forests. One way, they decided, was to stop using paper towels. They use the drip-dry method instead!
The recent murders of three activists - Ingrid Washinawatok, a member of the Menominee tribe from New York, Terence Freitas, from Oakland, and Lahe'ena'e Gay, from Hawaii- who were assisting the U'wa indigenous people to protect their land from oil drilling, illustrate the high level of violence in conflicts concerning the use of resources and territorial issues in the South American rainforests and calls into question U.S. foreign policy (see WRM Bulletin 21)
Given that both deforestation and the expansion of tree monocultures are negative processes affecting people and the environment in Paraguay, local NGOs are actively involved in the monitoring of such processes.
Growing opposition to monoculture tree plantations has forced the forestry sector to respond to NGO claims that this type of forestry model is detrimental to the environment and that it does not benefit the country or its people. They chose to use "science" as a weapon to counteract such claims.
The communities of Morador and Tierra Buena in Venezuela's continue struggling against pulp and paper transnational Jefferson Smurfit, responsible for deforestation activities and for the set up of vast tree plantations in Portuguesa State, and questioning the authorities' attitude in relation to this conflict. The WRM has been actively supporting this struggle (see WRM Bulletins 18, 20 and 22).
Placencia Lagoon in southern Belize separates the Placencia Peninsula from the southern Belize mainland. Mangroves in the Lagoon are an essential component of the Placencia Peninsula estuary system, filtering inland water, protecting the coastline and serving as home to large numbers species of the tropical wildlife.
The Tehuantepec Isthmus is home to the most important humid tropical forests in a country considered one of the five most megabiodiverse countries in the world. The area is also the only natural bridge between tropical subhumid and humid forests of the Pacific and the Golf of Mexico coasts. It is also the region with the greatest availability of accessible water.
The community of Ejido Pino Gordo, in the State of Chihuahua, formed by Tarahuamaras (or Raramuris, as they call themselves) indigenous peoples, is struggling against illegal logging that is destroying the 200-year old forests that surround their village in the Sierra Madre, about 850 miles northwest of Mexico City.