LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS

Ethiopia: Dutch conservation organization involved in eviction of thousands of tribal people

The Omo National Park in Southern Ethiopia is being taken over by the Dutch conservation organization, African Parks Foundation (APF) and 50,000 tribal people are in danger of being displaced and/or of losing access to their vital subsistence resources.

The 1570 square mile Omo National Park is home to the Suri, Dizi, Mursi, Me'en and Nyangatom tribal peoples. These tribal peoples live in or use nearly the entire park for cultivation and cattle grazing. They have made this land their home for centuries.

The boundaries of the Omo National Park were recently legalized (gazetted) to pave the way for a management contract between African Parks Foundation and the Ethiopian Federal and Regional Governments. This gazettement was accomplished by Ethiopian Park officials persuading tribal people to sign away their land, without compensation, on documents they could not read.

One Mursi tribal member reported that he "saw the police grab three Mursi people and force them to sign the paper with their thumbprints."

The gazettement of the Omo Park will make the Omo peoples illegal squatters on their own land. African Parks Foundation was aware of the way the 'agreement' of local people to the park boundaries was obtained, and was asked repeatedly to include a 'no evictions' clause in its contract with the government. They went ahead, however, and signed a contract, which makes no mention of the tribal peoples, in November 2005.

Several Ethiopian government officials have said they plan to move the tribal people and African Parks Foundation says it cannot interfere with the plans of a 'sovereign government'.

People have been evicted from a park African Parks Foundation has taken over, before. In February 2004, APF signed an agreement to manage Nech Sar National Park, near Arba Minch. In November 2004, 463 houses of the Guji people were burned down by Ethiopian park officials and local police, to coerce the Guji to leave their land, inside Nech Sar.

"We usually hear news on the radio even when a single house is burned down by criminals. We hear all different kinds of crimes reported. In our case we lost 463 houses, but it was not reported at all," said one Guji tribal member.

In 2004, ten thousand people of the Guji and Kore tribes were resettled from within Nech Sar to fulfill a contractual agreement between the government and APF that all people would be removed before APF took over management.

"We didn't want to be involved in the resettlement, so I put a clause in the contract that said we wouldn't take over the park until the resettlement was completed," said Paul van Vlissingen.

African Parks Foundation was founded by Paul van Vlissingen, Chairman of the global retail giant Makro Retail and Calor Gas, a liquid petroleum gas distribution company. Rob Walton, Chairman of the board of Wal-Mart, is on the board of African Parks Foundation. The Walton Foundation has donated large sums of money to APF and is listed as one of two major funders to African Parks, along with the US Department of State.

African Parks Foundation manages parks in Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Ethiopia and is reportedly looking at managing more. The revenue from these Parks accrues to their projects, and put towards opening more parks. "National Parks must become virtual companies," Paul van Vlissingen has said and this corporate philosophy for his conservation organization makes sense, with the business tycoon Rob Walton on board.

The environmental impact of this plan could be disastrous, if people, who have managed this land and its wildlife for centuries, are removed. Tribal people have formed this landscape over thousands of years of agriculture and grazing. The most radical change to the ecosystem would be the removal of humans, whom the wild animals have evolved behavior patterns with over millennia. Hungry, angry peoples surrounding the park would be detrimental to the success of the park and to the biodiversity.

If the tribal peoples of the area are removed, there is great risk of both violent conflict with the government and with any tribes whose land they are moved onto. There is no unused land in the area; fights would ensue over too little land for too many people.

"The Ethiopian government should be very worried about the prospects of even more violence if they go ahead with their apparent policy of removal in the Omo area" said David Turton, a British anthropologist with over 30 years experience working among the Mursi, one of the tribes living in the boundaries of the Omo National Park. "Any attempt to encroach on Mursi territory will ratchet up the existing pressure on resources in the lower Omo area."

If you wish to support the struggle against this happening, please visit http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Ethiopia/actionalert2006.html

Article based on information provided by Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees, a fiscally sponsored project of Global Justice Ecology Project. For further information on Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees, contact Will Hurd hurd@hailmail.net. Sent by Global Justice Ecology Project, info@globalecology.org, http://www.globaljusticeecology.

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Nigeria: Tree plantations at the expense of forests and forest people’s livelihoods

The Omo Forest Reserve –located in the South west of Nigeria- was legally constituted as a forest reserve by Order No. 10 of 1925 and the Order was amended in 1952. The forest was practically unexplored by then. The forest was ceded to Government for reservation on the 8th of October, 1918. The agreement was made between the District Officer, Ijebu Ode on behalf of the British Colonial government and the Awujale of Ijebu Ode on behalf of the Ijebu Native administration. The Omo Forest Reserve, which is 1305.5km2, is divided into Area J1 –J3 (519.3km2), Area J4 (565.8km2), Area J6 (220.4km2), and enclaves (65km2) (Ola-Adams, 1999).

A survey conducted in the reserve between 1916 and 1918 reported the existence of 5 villages, a total of 30 settlements and a human population of 610 (300 males, 190 females and 120 children). Settlements have continued to increase in number and sizes, and the present population of the reserve cannot be less than 25,000; and the number of people deriving benefit from it estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000 (Karimu, 1999).

The reserve lies within a tropical lowland rainforest (otherwise known as high forest). The forest in its undisturbed form had the most complex and productive vegetation type in the country. The high forest is part of the Guinea-Congolean tropical moist forest zone and it is estimated that the system supports about 8,000 species of plants. Part of the southern portion of the reserve falls within the original mahogany belt in the system.

As a result of continuous human activities especially logging and establishment of monoculture tree plantations by the Ogun State Forestry Plantation Project, the vegetation pattern in Omo has changed remarkably. The original vegetation of the reserve now occupies about 0.3 % of the total area, with the disturbed (logged) forests, monoculture plantations and farming areas occupying about 60%, 30% and 10% respectively. Not less than 35,775 logs of sixty-five tree species are removed annually from Omo Forest Reserve (NFWSG, 1994 cited by Ola-Adams, 1999).

The precursor of the Ogun State Forestry Plantation Project started in 1966 as Gmelina Pulpwood Plantation Project. The purpose of the Project was to raise Gmelina arborea plantations for pulpwood that would feed Iwopin Pulp and Paper Mill.

The Western State Government funded the project up to 1972 when a total of 2,000 hectares of Gmelina arborea plantation was established in Area J6 of the reserve. Between 1973 and 1979, the Federal Government of Nigeria sustained the project with grants for additional 6,000 hectares of plantations of Gmelina.

Ogun State through the Federal Government of Nigeria then took a loan from World Bank and utilized it to raise a further 10,000 hectares of Gmelina arborea from 1980 to 1987.

At the approach of the termination of the World Bank loan in 1987, African Development Bank (ADB) was contacted for a continuation loan to proceed with the project. The loan was granted and became effective as from 1989. By the end of the ADB assisted portion of the project around 1995/96, the project had established 23,130 hectares of plantation. The ugly trend still continues till date with funds from Ogun State Government.

The resultant effect of these unsustainable practices is increased hardship on the forest communities. In a recent study conducted by the Indigenous Peoples Rights Crusaders (IPRC), forest dwellers interviewed in most of the enclaves reported a fall in the quality and quantity of forest resources with continuous forest degradation through over exploitation. The resources mentioned include bush meat (which constituted their major source of animal protein), timber and non- timber forest products.

Even with the presence of World Bank and ADB in the reserve, the Ogun State Government has not made concerted effort to ameliorate the sufferings of the forest dwellers either through the provision of infrastructural facilities and social amenities like accessible roads, electricity, good water supply, or the provision of alternative means of livelihood for them.

Due to the very poor state of roads in the reserve, movement of goods and people within the reserve and the nearby towns is always very difficult and expensive. This has culminated in a very high cost of living in a community dominated by very indigent people.

In the enclaves visited by the IPRC, there was no good source of drinking water. The enclaves depend on contaminated perennial streams which are becoming seasonal because of the deleterious effect of vegetation modification on watersheds. With respect to electricity, the only place that is electrified is the Grace Camp, where the Project has its offices and residential quarters.

The unacceptability of the unsustainable and non-participatory approach of Ogun State Forestry Department to forest resources management was made clear in an ugly incident that took place on the 23rd and 24th of February, 2006, when the State Government Squad led by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Forestry, Mr. Dele Odulaja went to destroy Cocoa, Plantain and Cola nut farms owned by the indigenous farmers at Ebulende enclave (along Iho area) of the reserve, claiming that the farmers destroyed their monoculture plantations to establish their farms. The farmers who came out to fight the government officials, were overpowered, their farms destroyed and some of them arrested.

It is high time Ogun State Forestry Department stopped this act of brutality and injustice. It is also high time they recognized the importance of the involvement and the integration of the indigenous people in the management of their forest resources as being preached the world over. There is an urgent need for the government to review her activities in the reserve with a view to ameliorating the sufferings of the forest dwellers and improving their standard of living.

By: Chima, Uzoma Darlington, Indigenous Peoples Rights Crusaders, e mail: punditzum@yahoo.ca

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As part of a two-year process to review FSC policy on the certification of timber plantations, members of the policy review working-group (PWG) recently visited South Africa for their final meeting. What follows are some quotes from the report on the field trip to visit plantation areas, produced by Wally Menne (member of the local Timberwatch Coalition).

In keeping with FSC policies, local environmental organisations, as represented in the Timberwatch Coalition, were invited to participate during the field trip, and even to make suggestions for items to be included in the field trip programme. Before very long it became clear to Timberwatch that there were some problems with this situation, the most important one being that the organisation of the field-trip programme was in the hands of a member of the PWG who also happened to be employed by the timber industry association ‘Forestry South Africa’.

This issue was not easily resolved, and it soon became apparent that the request by Timberwatch for an equal allocation of time (one day for Industry and one day for NGOs) would not be agreed to. The PWG FSA representative seemed to be pushing for a programme that was strongly biased in favour of industry interests, and it would be up to the NGO participants to find ways to level the playing-field.

The first opportunity came on the day the PWG members arrived in Durban, and there was some time available before they would need to leave by bus for the meeting venue. Timberwatch arranged for those that were interested to meet with members of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, that operates in an area where local communities are negatively affected by industrial pollution, including that from a large pulp mill situated in the midst of a residential area. The object of this exercise was to demonstrate to PWG members that industrial timber plantations have far wider impacts on people and the environment than just in the areas where they are grown.

The field trip included a Eucalyptus plantation where an industry–funded organisation ‘The Institute for Commercial Forestry Research’ (ICFR) was conducting research to demonstrate ‘sustainability’ in timber production. It soon became obvious that the outcomes of this project, which is run as part of an international programme together with CIFOR, had been pretty much pre-determined using a very narrow set of criteria that hardly considered any issues other than crude wood production. The presenter from ICFR made the amazing claim that natural grassland would recover fully within ten years (with appropriate management) if the Eucalyptus plantations were to be removed. He also claimed that the plantations would enhance soil quality and fertility!

The next item on the programme was a demonstration of herbicide application within a young pine plantation. There seemed to be no need for weed-control here as the trees had already grown past a height where competition from weeds might have presented a problem, and very little fresh weed growth was evident. It also became obvious that there were some issues around how the spraying could affect the workers involved who were mainly women employed indirectly through a contractor. One of the concerns that there was no health monitoring after people stopped working for the contractor. If they leave due to health problems or allergies, and later fall ill or die, there is no system in place to monitor their situation. One interesting aspect of the use of pesticides is that this provides a way to see how plantations and forests are different. The very thought of using chemical poisons in a biodiverse forest, where all creatures exist in harmony should be rejected outright. Though, in a plantation situation, the unnatural monoculture of usually alien tree species is in conflict with the natural environment, and that is why it is necessary to use chemicals to control Nature.

The trip continued onwards through certified pine plantations that clearly failed to comply with the timber industry’s own guidelines in terms of distances from forest margins, riparian zones and wetlands. In some instances plantation trees could be seen growing right in wetland zones, and evidence of adequate attention to invasive alien plants was very hard to see.

After passing through the sterile and depressingly monotonous pine plantation area, the road led the group to an elevated vantagepoint within an area of grassland that had mercifully escaped destruction by plantation. The tour stopped at this point for lunch. The view from this spot took in a varied landscape in which the dark green timber plantations stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb, but from which something also appeared to be missing. Naturally it was that signs of human habitation were almost completely absent. It appeared for a moment that the grasslands, farmlands and plantations before us were miraculously able to exist without people. Not so of course, but where were all the people hidden away?

Those who continued with the tour and were able to visit the tribal area known as Ozwatini were able to see where some of the people now live. In isolation and poverty, communities displaced under apartheid remain displaced and are very unlikely to ever recover their social status or self-respect. Not even FSC certified woodlots purporting to give formerly disadvantaged people a share of the timber industry cake could ever change that. There is more than enough evidence that industrial timber plantations, large or small, do little if anything to uplift rural communities and if anything undermine their livelihoods and traditional culture.

Back at the hotel, John (Blessing) Karumbidza treated the group to a stirring slide-show and presentation on a recently completed research project. Blessing had truly ventured where none had dared go before in documenting the way industrial timber plantations in South Africa have impacted and still continue to impact on rural communities in timber growing areas. Copies of his research report were distributed to all the PWG members, who mostly responded appreciatively. Blessing’s presentation was able to explain where some of those missing communities had gone. It also showed how timber plantations continue to exploit, terrorise and displace rural people even in the present time. During his talk he had emphasised the point “Plantations are not Forests”, and hopefully those listening were able to internalise this fundamental truth!

Excerpts from: “Did the FSC Plantations Policy Working Group get it right?” By Wally Menne, Timberwatch Coalition, e-mail: plantnet@iafrica.com

The full report is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/SouthAfrica/filedtrip.pdf