Registered on last January 22, the “Project 0143 : UTE Barreiro S.A. Renewable Electricity Generation Project” of Vallourec & Mannesmann (V&M), the world's largest manufacturer of seamless hot-rolled steel tubes, is the third try of the company to get funds under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme. The registered project will provide V&M with 67954 carbon credits it can sell to companies in the North who prefer buying such carbon credits to reducing emissions at home.
Bulletin articles
More and more the rush to use biomass as an alternative source of energy allegedly to reduce CO2 emissions is concealing the unsustainable consumption pattern that underlies global warming and climate change.
Reduccionist approaches focus on solutions which create even greater harm. That is the case of a major European project which has enthusiastically identified industrial-scale eucalyptus plantations as an answer for so said less polluting steel manufacturing processes.
The Indigenous hunter-gatherers of the central African forests, so-called Pygmy peoples, consist of at least 15 distinct ethnolinguistic groups including the Gyéli, Kola, Baka, Aka, Bongo, Efe, Mbuti, western Twa, and eastern Twa living in ten central African countries: Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Gabon, Republic of the Congo (Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. Their estimated total number is from 300 000 to 500 000 people.
The Ecuadorian communities affected by mining convened a Mining Uprising to take place on 5 June, World Environmental Day. Different points of resistance were established covering the national geography in Imbabura, Quito, Chimborazo, Cañar, Azuay, El Oro, Zamora and Morona. Although the protest was peaceful, law enforcement agents repressed the communities protesting during the first days, particular in Tarqui, Victoria del Portete, Molleturo and San Carlos-Balao, causing the indignation of the population over the police’s brutal and arbitrary treatment.
Indonesia has the world’s third largest area of tropical forest, after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although only 1.3 per cent of the world’s total forest area, Indonesia’s forests are home to 10 per cent of the world’s flora species, 12 per cent of the world’s mammals, 17 per cent of the world’s reptiles and amphibians, and 17 per cent of the world’s birds. Indonesia is the second country in the world in terms of wildlife richness. Indonesia’s forests are also home to endangered species such as orangutan, tigers, rhinos and Asian elephants.
Over the past decade, tens of millions of dollars have been invested by funding agencies to improve forest management in Laos with the stated aim of aiding rural development and livelihood security. Despite these investments – including multi-million dollar projects backed by the World Bank, the Government of Finland and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), among others – mismanagement of Laos’ production forests remains the norm.
Everyone seems to agree on the need to protect the world’s remaining forests … while forests continue to disappear at the same alarming rate as usual. It is therefore important to distinguish between those who are truly committed to forest protection and those whose deeds and words go in opposite directions. For this purpose, most of the articles included in this issue of the WRM bulletin serve as good examples.
Forest conservation is back on the international climate agenda…big time!
More and more Northern and Southern governments, bilateral development agencies, multilateral development banks and big conservation NGOs are arguing that “countries” should be compensated for protecting the “carbon reservoirs” in standing forests. Under some plans, Southern governments’ forest protection plans would generate pollution rights that the governments could then sell to Northern industries to allow them to continue business as usual.
On April 26, the Swedish Royal Academy of Agriculture and Forestry organized in Stockholm the seminar “Tilting forest industries from North to South”, aimed at discussing the growing tendency of the Swedish tree plantations and pulp industry to invest in Southern Countries such as Brazil, Uruguay and Indonesia.
Botnia is currently building the world's most controversial pulp mill at Fray Bentos in Uruguay. It is doing so with hundreds of millions of tax payers' dollars funnelled through the World Bank, the Finnish export credit agency and the Nordic Investment Bank. The profits produced, along with the pulp, will be exported.
The hegemony of the G8 in international forums such as the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change means that global climate policy is been chosen for its compatibility with the existing economic system rather than its effectiveness in reducing emissions.
The Association of Ecologist Communities La Ceiba – Friends of the Earth Costa Rica (Asociación Comunidades Ecologistas La Ceiba- Amigos de la Tierra Costa Rica - COECOCEIBA- AT), which includes members from various social sectors (academics, professionals, ecologists and peasants), considers that it is time to creatively develop new models of forest cover restoration. It is time to give the opportunity to autochthonous reforestation models based on some of the basic principles that the country’s main natural ecosystem itself -the tropical forest- is silently teaching us.