Last February in the village of Rosita, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, representatives of the indigenous peoples Sumus and Miskitos, local and regional authorities, NGOs, community and religious leaders, met to consider the illegal activities of the Korean transnational company Kimyung, which operated through the subsidiary SOLCARSA, responsible for invading communal lands and destroying the forests and livelihoods of local people. The meeting approved a declaration demanding the inmediate suspension of the concession awarded to the company (see WRM Bulletin nr. 11).
Bulletin articles
Greenpeace has launched a virtual boat tour of Canada's endangered temperate rainforest. The site is intended to acquaint web surfers with this remote ancient forest and the impending threats it faces from clearcut logging.
We have received the sad news that a person was killed while trying to protect native forests being cut in Grizzly Creek by the timber company Pacific Lumber.
What follows are quotes from research carried out in the Bolivian Andes by Danish researcher Thor Hjarsen, who is one of our readers.
After a long struggle started in 1995, Brazilian NGOs and peasant organizations, with support from representatives of the Catholic church, succeeded in halting a megaproject of eucalyptus plantation in the state of Amapa in northern Brazil. The plan of Champion Paper and Cellulose. and its subsidiary Chamflora Amapa Agroflorestal Ltda to set up 100,000 hectares of eucalyptus, would have affected the lands and livelihoods of the peasants of the region.
Smurfit Cartons Venezuela --a subsidiary of the US-based transnational Jefferson Smurfit-- has been operating in Venezuela's Portuguesa state since 1986. Its extensive pulpwood plantations for the production of paperboard have resulted in equally extensive social and environmental problems. This situation has been analysed by the Venezuelan Senate's Environment Commission, which has recently produced a 120-page report documenting such impacts.
Mapuche and Pehuenche organizations of Chile are planning a visit to Europe to contact and lobby financial and state agencies involved in the controversial hydroelectric projects that are afecting the Bio Bio watershed (see WRM Bulletin nr. 11). The visit has been programmed for 2 to 20 November and will cover Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Organizations interested in cooperating to make it possible, please contact the Action Group for the Bio Bio (“Grupo de Accion para el Bio Bio”).
Source: Dario Jana. September 1998.
Boreal Forests of the World IV: Integrating Cultural Values into Local and Global Forest Protection. Tartu, Estonia 5-10 October 1998
Every two years (since its founding in 1992), Taiga Rescue Network has organised an international conference on boreal forests. This year it will be held in Estonia and will focus on: Integrating Cultural Values in Local and Global Forest Protection.
For many years the Australian environmental movement has chosen to "lay off" plantations as an issue, as it was seen that in the Australian context, they could be a useful alternative to native forest logging. This situation has now changed with the Tasmanian Greens, for instance, opposing the establishment of any further plantations.
Invited by GTZ, Alvaro González of the International Secretariat of the WRM, participated at the International Expert Consultation on the Six-Country Initiative “Putting the IPF Proposals for Action into Practice”, that took place in Baden Baden, Germany, from June 29 to July 3.
The Steering Committee of the Joint Initiative to Address the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation will meet in Geneva on August 22nd. The meeting will be focused on strategic planning for the Global Workshop which will be held in Costa Rica on 18-22 January. At the same time, there will be presentations on the regional and indigenous peoples' workshops whose findings will form the basis of the discussions in Costa Rica.
As informed in WRM bulletin 11, the second meeting of the Conference on Central African Moist-Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC) took place in Bata, Equatorial Guinea from 8 to 10 June 1998. We include here the Indigenous Peoples' and NGO declarations presented at that conference.
Indigenous Peoples' Declaration
Declaration by the Indigenous Peoples of Central Africa to the 2nd Conference on Central African Moist Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC, or the ‘Brazzaville Process’).