Alan Garcia’s government is promoting a bill (draft law 840) also known as the “Forest Law.” It is a law concerning the promotion of private investment in reforestation and agro-forestry, whereby land with no forest cover in the Peruvian Amazon – erroneously classed as deforested wastelands, meaning there are no acquired rights over them – could be allocated, not as concessions, but as private property. This would open the door to major capital to establish large-scale tree plantations, under the guise of “reforestation.”
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The world is undergoing an acute food crisis with soaring prices for basic food and desperate food-related riots that threaten political stability in many Third World countries. By the end of March, prices of rice and wheat were about double their levels a year earlier, and maize prices were over a third higher. According to FAO, the import bill for cereals for the world’s poorest countries will rise by 56% in 2007/08, after a 37% increase in 2006/07.
Press Release - 17 April 2008, International Day of Peasant's Struggle.
Asunción, Paraguay
FSC announced that its Accreditation Services (ASI) would be "conducting a Forest [sic] Management surveillance audit of SGS at Veracel in Brazil between the 26th-28th of March 2008". Within the framework of the evaulation process, the Social Environmental Forum of the Extreme South of Bahia was invited to take part in the Evaluation process, below their answer:
To Mr. André de Freitas,
Cc.: FSC-Brasil/FSC-Internacional
In a country already suffering severe economic hardship and repression under its military rulers, thousands of people mainly in rural areas face losing their homes and lands to seven large dam projects planned for the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwaddy) River Basin in Northern Burma’s Kachin State.
The dam projects are being built under a joint agreement between the Burma’s military regime and the China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
The Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay is one of the largest uncultivated grasslands in the world. Grasses have dominated the Pampas for at least three thousand years. Starting in the 19th Century eucalyptus trees were planted on small areas, for shade on cattle ranches and for construction materials. Today, the pulp and paper industry and the carbon offsets industry are expanding their operations in South America. Increasingly, they are targeting grasslands for conversion to large-scale industrial tree plantations.
Lake Chini is dying. The beautiful lake in the state of Pahang is one of the only two large natural freshwater bodies in Malaysia --and is dying. It used to teem with fish and other aquatic animals and plants and has been the home of indigenous communities, the Jakuns. Various human activities have contributed to the pollution of Lake Chini especially the establishment of a dam. However one contributing factor has been the pesticides and fertilisers used in the oil palm plantations fringing the lake and in many places next to the water.
Yesterday I could cry and shed watery tears
I could labour and freely shoot watery sweat
But today
Not so, not so
Riverbeds turned dustbowls
Rivers diverted into private throats
Creeks turned into rivers of salt
I sweat blood
And weep dry-eyed
Our fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters from
Streams and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In their days
Were clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In their days
The proposed Phulbari open pit coal mine in Bangladesh would divert a river, suck an aquifer dry for 30 years and evict thousands of people from their homes. Vast machines would dig a series of holes 300 metres deep over a total area of 59 square kilometres. The coal would be largely exported via a railway and port in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.
By Global Justice Ecology Project and Global Forest Coalition - February 2008.
With concerns mounting about the competition between food and fuel due to cropbased agrofuels, the cellulosic ethanol industry is heavily promoting fuel produced from woody sources such as trees as the solution to this conflict.
By Ms Sayamol Kaiyoorawong and Ms Bandita Yangdee - Project for Ecological Awareness Building