In different countries of the world conflicts have arisen between the protection of national parks and the conservation of wildlife on the one hand, and the defense of the rights of people that live in those areas on the other. The hegemonic official model of conservation has a vision of nature as composed by beautiful –but empty- spaces, ignoring that the sustainable use that most local communities practice in these areas is the best guarantee for conservation. The problem is especially important in countries with a high density of rural population.
Bulletin articles
Mangroves are wetlands rich in biodiversity that are suffering a severe depredation worldwide. In Sri Lanka mangroves are associated with 22 brackish water bodies, locally known as lagoons. Even if mangroves area in that country is limited to 12,000 hectares, it is of much value since it includes very rare species and types of plant associations in different climatological zones. Fishing in these lagoons is the livelihood for over 120,000 coastal people.
In the imperial times Japan invaded China to expand its power in the Far East. Nowadays, when war time in that region is over, a new kind of invasion is up to affect the Chinese territory: that of tree plantations associated to the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol.
While Japanese investors are ocupying the Chinese territory with tree plantations, China is doing business in the paper sector abroad. Kunming Electro-Chemical Plant (KECP), with headquarters in the Chinese province of Yunnan, signed a contract last December with the Myanmar Ministry of Industry to renovate the caustic soda and chlorine plant of the Sittoung Paper Mill No.1 in Mon state. The factory was built in 1992 and production began in 1994.
According to information received from the Costa Rican National Front for the Forest (Frente Nacional por los Bosques) –a coalition of social and environmental NGOs- a peaceful demonstration that took place on February 19 at the crossing of the Puerto Jimenez and Interamericana highways was violently repressed by the rural guard of Osa. The demonstration was organized by the Front together with local communities of Osa to defend the remaining forests of the Pacific region menaced by logging activities.
Considering its high standards in Human Development indicators, Costa Rica is an exceptional country in the Central American region. The country has also assumed a leader’s position in international environmental fora. In January this year, the Government of Costa Rica hosted the Global Workshop on Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Nevertheless -as the above article and this one show- not all that glitters . . .
During the decade of 1970 the destruction of natural forests in El Salvador was accompanied by the set up of coffee plantations under forest cover and some tree plantations. Nowadays coffee plantations under cover, conifers and broad-leaved forest areas are rapidly decreasing as a consequence of urbanization, while mangroves in the south-western coast are being destroyed by shrimp farming and tourism activities.
The opening of Papua New Guinea’s economy has promoted the exploitation of natural resources at an unsustainable level. The dominant vegetation in the country is equatorial rainforest, but it is undergoing a severe process of deforestation due to indiscriminate felling.
The Venezuelan subsidiary of the Dublin-based Jefferson Smurfit pulp, paperboard and packaging transnational has been finally forced to halt its deforestation activities in the State of Portuguesa. Although the company has huge plantations of fast growing tree species (see WRM Bulletin 18), it had been extensively using wood from the few remaining tropical forests, both from its own land holdings and from third party woodlands. The reason for this illegal - in some cases "legalized"- activity is simple: raw material from forests is cheaper than from plantations.
The ex-congressman and vice-governor from Mato Grosso state Marcio Lacerda is the new president of the Brazilian Indian Foundation (FUNAI). He succeeds in this post Sullivan Silvestre, who died on February 1st in an air crash while he was on duty.
Mr Lacerda is one of the chief proponents of the system of waterways, including the Tocantins-Araguaia Hidrovia which would negatively affect the territory occupied by 10,000 indigenous people. During his first public declarations he defended gold mining, and biodiversity and timber exploitation in indigenous lands.
In April 1998, forest activists and scientists from Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Scotland and the U.S. met in Santiago and Pucon, Chile to launch the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign, the goal of which is "to protect, reconnect and restore the life of Gondwana by creating an international sanctuary of Earth's southernmost forests."
On March 9th, the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) will consider providing political risk insurance for a natural gas pipeline that will cut through 200 km of primary tropical forest and 100 km of pristine wetlands in the Bolivian Amazon. The proposed 630-kilometer pipeline starts in Ipias, Bolivia, where it branches from the main Bolivia-Brazil pipeline (already under construction), runs northeast to San Matias, and then to Cuiaba, Brazil. It will bisect the world's largest intact tropical dry forest.