In last month WRM bulletin Nº 125, and linked to the 12th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007, we warned about some decisions of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board that might attract more tree plantation projects to the CDM –such as the removal of restrictions that prevent providing a perverse incentive to cut down forests to replace them with CDM sponsored monocultures, and theincrease of the size of tree planting projects that can apply to the CDM under simplified procedures and
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The Summit of Communities Criminalized for Defending Nature was held last November in Quito, Ecuador. Criminalization is part of a strategy aimed at silencing any protest against the extractive activities of transnational corporations within Ecuadorian frontiers. It would seem that the next accused could be anyone. It is sufficient to raise your voice against the irrationality of global economy.
India's Minister of Tribal Affairs promised on 7.12.2007 to the Indian Parliament that the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Forest Rights) Act 2006 which the parliament approved a year ago, will be notified and implemented from 1.1.2008 onwards.
Old proposals of damming the Lower Mekong River were revived recently. According to press releases from the Thailand-based NGO TERRA, the governments of Lao PDR, Cambodia and Thailand have granted permission to Thai, Malaysian and Chinese companies, to conduct feasibility studies for up to six large hydro dams on the lower Mekong. Ten years ago the projects had been dismissed for their huge cost and potential environmental damage.
The National Legislative Assembly (NLA), set up after the military coup in Thailand last year and due to be disbanded following the general election on 23 December, has, in its dying breaths, approved the long awaited Community Forest Bill. Rather than consolidating the constitutional rights of all communities to manage their forest areas however, the NLA chose instead to exclude the rights of communities who are living outside the “conservation zones” to take part in forest management.
With the ideological discourse of big capital masquerading as sustainable development and as saviours of the poor, the pulp giants advance on the State of Rio Grande do Sul. With their capital they finance electoral campaigns, pay for misleading advertising and twist public power around their little fingers.
The Government of the State of Bahia, through the Centre for Environmental Resources, (CRA) held a seminar on 7 and 8 November with the purpose of “initiating a process of discussion and reflection on the environmental, social and economic prospects of eucalyptus plantations in the South and Extreme South of the State, taking a territorial approach as a basis, centring on the construction and consolidation of public policies for the region.” This event represented the continuity of a process of discussion launched in June this year by the CRA, seeking participative and negotiated solutions
In order for vast extensions of industrial plantations to be viable in Brasil direct interactions where established between the government, companies, banks, universities, media, as well as with international and financial institutions, producers and buyers. A broad political orchestration resulted in the creation of a number of mechanisms related to legal, taxation, financial, technical, scientific, agrarian and logistic support. In the same manner articulations opposing those policies increased as monocultures expanded.
The invasion of local peoples’ territories by Aracruz Celulose S.A.’s agro-industrial project, established in the sixties and seventies in Espirito Santo, caused enormous material and symbolic losses to the indigenous and quilombola peoples. Some are irrecoverable.
Between 2001 and 2005, plywood panels manufactured by Pizano S.A., one of the largest timber companies in Colombia, could be purchased in the U.S. The panel was manufactured in part using timber from one of the plantations certified by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and in part from the natural forests in northeast Colombia, forests in which guerrilla organizations, paramilitary groups and the army fight for control of the territory and its natural resources. Consequently, these plywood panels were stained with blood.
Earlier this year, in an attempt to discourage the use of plastic bags, the Kenyan government slapped a 120 per cent tax on plastic. While the tax may look like an environmentally friendly decision, it could result in severe impacts on the environment. One of the beneficiaries of the decision will be the partly government-owned Pan African Paper Mills.
For years now WRM has been documenting the social and environmental impacts of monoculture tree plantations. However, so far we had no information on the starting point in this chain: the nurseries where millions of plants intended for plantation are produced. Recently research has just been concluded on the labour conditions and use of agrochemicals in the nurseries of the two main forestry companies in Uruguay certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC): Eufores (Ence-Spain) and FOSA (Metsa Botnia-Finland). (1)