• Bangladesh: Mangrove forests, far more generous than the shrimp industry
• India: Adivasis shot dead defending their land against takeover to Tata Steel
• Indonesia: Deutsche Bank pulls out of UFS pulp project
• Thailand: Long March for Community Forestry

LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS

 

Bangladesh: Mangrove forests, far more generous than the shrimp industry

Mangroves, the coastal equivalent of tropical forests on land, and also called "salt water forests", have provided livelihood for a lot of local people (see WRM Bulletin Nº 51). The Sundarbans, the world's largest coastal mangrove forest, stretches for almost 6,000 square miles across India and Bangladesh, a natural barrier against tsunamis and frequent cyclones that blow in from the Bay of Bengal. With roots that tolerate salt water, the forest's mangrove trees grow 70 feet or more above islands of layered sand and gray clay, deposited by rivers that flow more than a thousand miles from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal.

Over the last 20 years, shrimp and tiger prawn exporters have taken over thousands of rice paddies and other farms and flooded them with salt water to raise the crustaceans.

Squeezed between the jungle and thousands of expanding shrimp and tiger prawn farms, at least 100,000 villagers in Bangladesh risk Bengal tiger attacks to fish, cut trees and gather honey in the Sundarbans forest. "For thousands of families who refuse to leave, the only choice left is the hazardous work of gathering honey, fishing or cutting trees in the mangrove forest", said Abdul Haque, a teacher at a village in Gabura island, which lies in a region with one of Bangladesh's heaviest concentrations of shrimp and tiger prawn farms, extending almost 50 miles inland.

"By leasing out our land to the rich shrimp businessmen, we have been the worst victims," he said. "They give us a one-shot payment for the land, and we spend it fast." "Now, when everything is said and done, we are not able to grow any vegetables or trees here. There's no doubt that people are scared to go into the jungle. But when they start going hungry, they are forced to."

Many villagers enter the forest to cut trees for fishing boats or to supply factories that make hardboard for furniture and buildings, and additional wood products. Honey hunters often have the most risky job, searching for bees' nests in vegetation so dense that the only way through is on hands and knees. Each spring, the honey hunters go deeply into debt to rent boats for their journey through a vast warren of muddy saltwater rivers and channels that meander around thousands of jungle islands. They have to stock up on food and supplies for trips that last up to three months. And they have to grease the palms of corrupt forestry officials.

Thrust into the deep mangrove forest by shrimp farming, village honey hunters have to struggle for the liquid gold, closely preserved by forest animals like pythons, king cobras, crocodiles and the man-eating Bengal tigers. However, the mangrove forest is far more generous than the shrimp industry…

Article based on information from: "The Lure of Liquid Gold", Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, disseminated by Mangrove Action Project (MAP), http://www.earthisland.org/map/ltfrn_166.htm

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India: Adivasis shot dead defending their land against takeover to Tata Steel

As soon as the year started, a tragedy sparked off in Orissa's Jajpur district in Kalinga Nagar.

For many months, local tribals and other villagers have engaged in a bitter struggle to avoid displacement by the steel project of Tata Industries, a company with a long history of displacing people and exploiting their natural resources. An earlier attempt to start construction in Kalinga Nagar was prevented by local people in May last year.

On January 2, local people gathered at the building site of the proposed steel plant of Tata Steel. When the bulldozers roared into action, the men and women, armed with traditional weapons, closed in on the site. However, there were strict instructions from the State Secretariat to facilitate the construction. Rubber bullets were fired and teargas shells were lobbed at the agitating crowd, to no avail. Twelve adivasis were silenced to death.

As the government tried hard to defuse the crisis, the people continued the roadblock keeping the 12 bodies on the highway. They cremated the bodies late in the afternoon after some social activists persuaded them to do so. The deaths united the tribal people and they vowed at the funeral ground that they would not part with an inch of their ancestral land for any industry.

The government had decided to handover thousands of acres of the Adivasis land for the construction of mines, industry and similar mega projects. If this plan is realised then over 55,000 of the Adivasi people in Jharkhand alone will be displaced. In response to this threat, in the past six months those villages have formed Bhumi Suraksha Sangatans (Organisations for the Protection of Our Lands) that have to date successfully organized “Janata Curfews” preventing any Government or mining company personnel from entering their villages. A new resistance movement was born.

In a letter sent last year by Chakradhara Haibru, President of the Visthapan Virodhi Manch --the organization which leads the resistance to displacement-- to the Orissa State Pollution Control Board, it becames clear the position of the local people: “The core zone [of the Tata Steel plant] is not waste land. [It] consists of green hills with rich forests, tribal settlements of more than ten thousand people spread over two gram panchayats, agricultural lands, ancient tanks, grazing fields, village common lands and roads”. “Twenty per cent of the Project area has quality forest where timber species like Sal, Kuruma, Vandan, Ashan and Piasal, besides Mahula, Kendu are plentily available in these parts.” “The total area of waste land is less than 5 acres on the Northern side. Why the core zone is described as WASTE LAND ignoring the ground reality?” “It will pain us if an impression is created that the tribals in Kalinga Nagar got killed because they demanded more compensation or better rehabilitation package. The issue is quite different from what is presented in media."

Learning from bitter experience, the letter went on saying: “The report [of the State Pollution control Board] tries to impress that, by the coming up TSL (Tata Steel) project, direct and indirect employment would be generated and the impact will be beneficial to human environment. We belief, the report tries to point out that, the people in the buffer zone shall lead a developed and prosperous life – with better food, better health, better housing conditions, education and cultural facilities. This is a false picture for the vast majority of the working people on the area.

The 'Secretive' expansion plan of Kalinga Nagar by the Govt. of Orissa, moving to acquire nearly 200Sq. Km. for the industrial complex, infrastructure and other purposes shall make all the peasants in this zone landless. Most of them will be turned homeless and shall seek shelter in Government colonies. There will be acute shortage of water, widespread air pollution by the effect of industrial complex. In the meanwhile prime agricultural lands are being purchased by some private companies through illegal deals making the peasants landless. The Government officials are conniving with the land dealers for the acquisition of land from poor peasants.

Most of the tribals who face displacements are without lawful rights on their homestead land and agricultural land. So the compensation package of 10 decimal plot in rehabilitation colony with 50,000 Rupees to construct one room “pucca” house does not make them secure even for a day. Because they don't have regular work to make their earnings. Cut off from their traditional life, traditional occupation of agriculture and food gathering, these people cannot by any stretch of imagination be capable to earn enough in the colony to wait for a job in the plants. After all, they are not eligible to get preferential treatment in the job market of Kalinga Nagar. They are not land losers per Government criteria. We have our lessons from the plight of the displaced people living in Gobarghati rehabilitation colony, who earn their living, men women and children, in crusher plants. They weep for their present misfortune and curse the Nilachal Plant Authorities for whom they lost their home and lands.

We the tribals 10,000 in number and the 50,000 other tribals in the buffer zone are against the displacement from our homes and agricultural lands. So also the 50,000 Dalit people are against the projects in Kalinga Nagar. In this connection we don't agree to and accept the 'development' dream put before us by the report. We are not prepared to be homeless, landless, jobless. We don't want to lose our traditional culture life.”

Article based on information from: “We don't accept the 'development dream' put before us!”, Chakradhara Haibru, Bistapan Virodhi Janamancha, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press864.htm; “People's Version Of Kalinganagar Firing On 2nd January, 2006, Independent Media, http://samajwadi.blogspot.com/

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Indonesia: Deutsche Bank pulls out of UFS pulp project

United Fiber System's plans to build a pulp empire in Kalimantan received a blow in January 2006, when Deutsche Bank confirmed that it has pulled out of its role as financial advisor to UFS. Five months ago, UFS announced that it had appointed Deutsche Bank's Singapore Branch as Financial Advisor on a proposed acquisition of the Kiani Kertas pulp mill in East Kalimantan.

Michael Hoelz, Deutsche Bank's managing director, confirmed in a statement to German NGOs that "Deutsche Bank no longer holds a mandate with UFS".

Deutsche Bank pulled out after pressure from urgewald, Robin Wood, Rettet den Regenwald and Global 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria). In November 2005, Robin Wood activists hung a banner from Deutsche Bank's office in Frankfurt. "We are convinced that customers and shareholders of Deutsche Bank would not agree with the Bank's involvement in business that destroys the rainforests," said Robin Wood's Peter Gerhardt.

The 525,000 tons-a-year Kiani Kertas pulp mill was set up by the now-disgraced timber baron Bob Hasan. Hasan was a government minister and close friend of Indonesian dictator Suharto. After Suharto's fall, Hasan was jailed for corruption. Kiani Kertas has never run at full capacity and ran up a debt of more than US$1.1 billion.

Stephanie Fried, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense, spent two years in the early 1990s living with the Bentian Indigenous People in East Kalimantan (1). She has documented how the plantations to feed the Kiani Kertas mill were set up. The first thing that the Bentian people knew about the proposed plantations was from the sound of chainsaws in their family forest. The company destroyed their gardens, fruit trees, and forests. Workers bulldozed and looted Bentian ancestral graves. The company took any good timber and between 70 to 80 per cent of the land was just burnt and abandoned. The company gave no compensation.

One group of Bentian people went to the company nursery asking for a discussion with the company. Instead of company representatives, about 200 military personel turned up. They took the Bentian prisoner, tortured them, forced gun barrels into their mouths and ears, burnt them with cigarettes and threatened to kill them.

In addition to its plans to take over Kiani Kertas, UFS plans to build the Satui pulp mill, a 600,000 tons-a-year mill in South Kalimantan and a 700,000 tons-a-year wood chip mill on Pulau Laut, an island off the southeast coast of South Kalimantan.

In 2002, UFS signed a contract to build the Satui pulp mill with China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation (CMEC), a Chinese state-owned enterprise. Under the contract CMEC will finance 80 per cent of the project while UFS is responsible for the remaining 20 per cent. Two years ago, the chairman of UFS, Sven Edström, told researchers from the Centre for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia, that he knew nothing about CMEC's environmental record. In fact, CMEC has never before built a pulp mill.

In late 2003, UFS applied for political risk insurance from the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). After an NGO campaign UFS withdrew the application to MIGA. In 2002, a subsidiary of the Dutch firm Akzo Nobel pulled out of the Satui pulp mill project shortly after Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) protested outside the company's head office in Arnhem.

Construction of the UFS wood chip mill has started, with financing from CMEC and the Austrian bank Raiffeisen Zentralbank. Austrian pulp and paper machinery company Andritz has signed a contract with UFS to supply the machinery for both the wood chip mill and the Satui pulp mill.

UFS is listed in Singapore and owned by a series of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. One of the companies, Tektronix, is owned by the CEOs and Directors of Swedish based CellMark, the world's largest marketing company for pulp and paper. CellMark has an agreement with UFS to buy 90 per cent of the output from the Satui pulp mill for the first ten years of operation.

At a press conference in Frankfurt in January 2006, NGOs welcomed Deutsche Bank's decision to pull out of all involvement with UFS. Lydia Bartz of German NGO urgewald said, "Deutsche Bank should develop social and environmental standards" so that it can avoid getting involved in projects like UFS.

Longgena Ginting of Friends of the Earth International explained that the problem is the huge overcapacity of the pulp and paper industry in Indonesia. More than three million hectares of forest a year is destructively or illegally logged - much of it to feed the pulp industry. "There is a very strong link between the financiers, consulting firms and machinery suppliers in Europe and the destruction of forests and livelihoods in Indonesia," he said.

Daniel Hausknost of Global 2000 added that Andritz and Raiffeisen Zentralbank are still involved in UFS projects. They should follow Deutsche Bank's example and pull out.

In January 2005, Andreas Ecker, Head of Communications at Raiffeisen Zentralbank told Global 2000 and Environmental Defense that he wished the bank had never got involved with UFS. "We would be glad if we had not invested in this project," he said. "It's a lot of trouble."

(1) After this article was published, Stephanie Fried contacted me with the following additional information and clarifications to this article (her text is in italics):

Stephanie Fried, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense, spent two years in the early 1990s living with the Bentian Indigenous People in East Kalimantan. She disputed claims of the availability of existing "sustainable plantation timber" supplies for the proposed mills. Fried has documented the environmental and social costs of Indonesia's so-called "plantation establishment" program, designed to circumvent Indonesia's ban on the clear-cutting of natural forest and to provide a fiscal bonanza to logging companies making plantation claims. For example, if a company declared that it was "establishing a plantation," it was eligible for access to "reforestation funds" and other fiscal benefits and received official permission to carry out "land clearing" (i.e. clear-cutting) – ostensibly on marginal, "unutilized", or logged-over lands. In fact, however, plantation companies usually target primary forests or rich old growth forests managed and inhabited by indigenous communities, and make a fortune by clear-cutting and selling the old growth logs and harvesting the fiscal packages offered by the government. Most of these "plantations" are never actually planted, or are done so in such a careless manner that little harvestable growth occurs. Fried documented the process of plantation establishment used by Bob Hasan's Kalimanis Group/Kiani Lestari as an example of the way that the country's most powerful, wealthy and technologically advanced company – builder of the Kiani Kertas mill - carried out so-called forest management and plantation establishment.

Hasan's company decided to target the rich indigenous-managed Bentian forests. The first thing that the Bentian people knew about the proposed plantations was from the sound of chainsaws in their family forests. The company destroyed their rattan gardens, fruit trees, and forests. Workers bulldozed and looted Bentian ancestral graves. With military backing, the company clearcut and removed any good timber and burned and abandoned the remaining land. The company gave no meaningful compensation.

Fried also provided documentation of other human rights abuses commonly associated with the establishment of plantations, using the example of Sumalindo company's Surya Hutani Jaya plantation in the Menamang region. Please note that according to Indonesian NGOs, Sumalindo plantations are likely to be supplying the Kiani Kertas mill. After the unauthorized bulldozing and clear-cutting of their ancestral forests, the people of Menamang tried repeatedly to meet with the company to discuss compensation and to limit future damage to their forests. One group of Menamang leaders went to the company nursery asking for a discussion with the company. Instead of company representatives, about 200 military personnel turned up for "war games." They took the leaders prisoner, tortured them, forced gun barrels into their mouths and ears, burnt them with cigarettes and threatened to kill them if they told their story. Sumalindo plantations were "established" and "landclearing" efforts led to massive forest fires which spread to a neighboring national park.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: http://chrislang.org

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