Last week Marcus Colchester was in Guyana presenting his new work "Guyana: Fragile Frontier. Loggers, Miners and Forest Peoples", jointly published by WRM and the Latin America Bureau. The book is very comprehensive in its scope, summarizing Guyana's history since the arrival of the European colonizers until the present year and describes the situation of the country after a decade of "development" based upon foreign investment in logging and mining.
Bulletin articles
A group of about 20 social activists, wildlife conservationists, researchers, lawyers, and mediapersons met from 10 to 12 April, 1997, at Bhikampura- Kishori in Alwar District, adjacent to the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan (western India). The meeting, called by the Indian Institute of Public Administration and Kalpavriksh, and hosted by Tarun Bharat Sangh, was an attempt to initiate a dialogue between those advocating the cause of wildlife protection and those struggling to uphold the human rights of rural communities living in and around wildlife habitats.
To the oil and mining companies, repressive governments and banks we list among the world's exploiters, we must add another sector -conservationists. Unaccountable, opaque and pursuing a model of protection that is both repressive and outmoded, some of the world's biggest conservation organisations are becoming indistinguishable from other neo-colonial corsairs. Unwilling to contemplate the wider consequences of their actions, they have ensured that conservation is now one of the greatest threats to the global environment.
Malaysian forestry companies could be given a thirty-year concession in South Africa to establish 300.000 hectares of industrial tree plantations in the Transkei in Eastern Cape province. Such project has raised very difficult and delicate questions given that this is probably South Africa's most impoverished area and plantations are being presented as providing development, jobs and money. Malaysian companies would also receive exclusive rights to develop elite and exclusive tourist resorts in the most pristine areas of coastal forest endemism.
The four big pulp and paper projects in the Brazilian Amazon (Companhia Suzano de Papel e Celulose and CELMAR in Maranhao, Jari Celulose in Para, and Champion in Amapa) are facing important problems from the economic, social and environmental points of view. The anarchic character of the pulp and paper industry has resulted in falls in the prices of market pulp. Rural workers denounce illegal work contracts while peasants protest about the expansion of the lands owned by the companies. Champion bought a total of 448.000 hectares in Amapa.
A report on the activities of Asian logging companies in the Brazilian Amazon, prepared by a special committee of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies will be ready by the end of August. According to Deputy Gilney Viana of Matto Grosso (Workers' Party), two dozen transnational logging companies are working in the Amazon. Those financed by Malaysian and Chinese capitals entered the area in 1995. The Malaysian WTK Group bought 1.400.000 hectares at Carauari Municipality, Amazonia State, in association with the Brazilian company Amaplac that exports plywood.
The relatively untouched areas occupied by rainforests in Suriname -source of a rich biodiversity and ancestral homeland for thousands of Indigenous peoples and Maroons, descendants from ancient African slaves- are threatened by the increase of mining concessions that the Government is granting to foreign companies.
After more than two years monitoring and carrying out research visits to Suriname, the Tropical Rainforest Team of IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) and SKEPHI have published an interesting report on N.V. MUSA Indo-Surinam -an Indonesian logging company- operating in that country.
Aotearoa (New Zealand) has planted extensive industrial tree plantations (more than one and a half million hectares), mostly based on one exotic tree species: Pinus radiata. In recent decades planting clonal stock has become standard practice. Currently, more than 95% of new planting (this includes new afforestation and planting after harvest) is based on Pinus radiata clones, selected primarily for rapid growth (and thus reliance on fertilisers), tree form to maximise the amount of `clear' (knot free) wood, and qualities that suit industrial purposes.
Amid strong local opposition, eucalyptus plantations are coming to Hawaii.
Following a move by Bishop Estate, a huge local landowner, to lease 6400 hectares of ex-sugar lands on the Big Island of Hawai'i to a subsidiary of Prudential Insurance company for eucalyptus pulpwood plantations, the state and county of Hawaii are preparing to offer a rental agreement to Oji Paper/Marubeni on an additional 4150 hectares of public land.
Concern for the environmental consequences of the forestry schemes applied in Uruguay is growing all over the country. The planned installation of a pulp and paper mill in the small city of Fray Bentos, on the River Uruguay coast, has raised a wave of protest. This fact is impressive since the unemployment rate in that city is particularly high.
On July 21 the WRM Secretariat addressed a letter to Mr. Tinoco Rubi -Governor of Michoacan, Mexico- to inquire about the odd circumstances in which Alberto Alonso Salmeron, President of Juchari Uinapecua Society of Michoacan and member of the Mexican Network of Forest Organizations, died while in police custody. According to information received from that country, Salmeron had previously received death threats because of his activities.