- Ecuador:
Endesa-Botrosa’s certified plantation in Rio Pitzara (*)
In
April 2006, the German certifying firm GFA Consulting Group granted
the FSC seal to Endesa-Botrosa’s timber operations and to its
tree plantations located in the Rio Pitzara plot covering 8,380
hectares on the Ecuadorian coast (GFA-FM/COC-1267). FSC certification
of Endesa Botrosa, belonging to the Durini Timber Group, represents
a severe setback to the hundreds of local peasant, indigenous
and Afro-Ecuadorian communities whose forests and livelihoods
have been devastated for decades by this company.
From
the start, the certifier GFA’s evaluation process of Endesa-Botrosa
has been superficial and GFA has systematically ignored Endesa-Botrosa’s
lack of compliance with FSC Principles and Criteria. The evaluation
was based on the qualification of a questionnaire that GFA sent
at the beginning of 2005 by e-mail to a group of 39 people from
NGOs, institutions and companies in Quito. In this way,
GFA did not receive any important criticism of the timber company.
It should be pointed out that not all the people on the list supplied
by GFA received the questionnaire and that others did not reply.
But
what is even more serious is that GFA did not consult a single
representative of the owners of the natural forests where Endesa-Botrosa
obtains its supply of 73% of the timber used. Most of the natural
forests exploited by SETRAFOR, the Durini Group’s harvesting company
that supplies Endesa-Botrosa, have been irreparably degraded or
totally destroyed by the logging company, with serious negative
impacts on the local population. Furthermore, in June 2005, the
Ecuadorian organization Acción Ecológica sent a detailed and formal
complaint to the certifier (available at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/).
During the weeks that followed, meetings were held with GFA, both
in Ecuador and in Germany, at which the complaints against Endesa-Botrosa
were presented.
According
to the report by the GFA certifier, the Endesa-Botrosa Rio Pitzara
property is located between the provinces of Esmeraldas and Pichincha.
Its natural vegetation is Tropical Humid Forest and Premontane
Humid Forest. The plantation covers 5,406 hectares and some 1,800
hectares are to be added over the coming years.
The
report does not contain concrete and detailed data on when and
under what circumstances the land was acquired and allocated to
Endesa Botrosa, nor about the previous owners nor on its original
use and vegetation. However, precisely in this area, land allocation
to Endesa-Botrosa has led to severe and unresolved conflicts,
complaints by local peasants and by the NGO Accion Ecologica,
in addition to research and verdicts against the company by public
institutions.
A
well documented case is that of a property covering 3,123 hectares
known as El Pambilar, allocated to Botrosa in 1998 by the National
Agrarian Development Institute (INDA). After over two years of
violent confrontations between peasants and company staff, complaints
and official investigations, in 2000 the Ministry of the Environment
confirmed that 90% of the land (2,830 has) was located within
the State Forestry Heritage (PFE) and had been illegally allocated.
The Ministry decided that Endesa-Botrosa must return the land
to the State and the Constitutional Tribunal resolved that the
peasants should be compensated by the company for the prejudice
caused to them.
Furthermore,
the management of tree plantations by Endesa Botrosa is poor.
In 1997, a GTZ study of the Pachaco species (Schizolobium
parahyba)
plantations described that “it was only possible to determine
limited sustainability of timber production” and that “fundamental
elements are missing for a sustainable concept of forest management.”
In particular, shortfalls were detected in the surveys of the
forestry site, the soil and in the nutrient analysis as well as
in adaptation of the machinery to the small dimensions of the
timber and in operator training.” Additionally it was observed
that many trees became sick when reaching the age of seven, finally
dying off and that “an increasing number of trees in the older
surfaces of the plantation are in very poor condition.” As a result,
the company lost some 2,500 hectares of plantations with the Pachaco
species.
Another
study points out that the African species Terminalia
superba
in Río Pitzara was planted in secondary forests and that the natural
vegetation was cleared to establish the plantation. Even worse,
according to the IUCN Red List, the area of Rio Pitzara is the
only habitat of a very rare endangered species of frog: the Rio
Pitzara Robber Frog (Eleutherodactylus helonotus). This
frog is only found in two places close to the Río Pitzara, in
a total area of less than 10 square kilometres. The conversion
of its natural habitat into industrial tree plantations may mean
the extinction of the species.
Outside
its plantation there is another very important FSC requirement
that Endesa-Botrosa is not complying with. All non-certified timber
processed by the company must be “controlled timber,” which means
that it is timber used legally.
In
short, the unlawful actions involving Endesa-Botrosa such as the
unlawful allocation of land belonging to the State Forestry Heritage
to the company, the violent conflict over lands with the local
peasants and the crimes committed against them, the felling of
forest remnants and the fact that the forest zone where the Rio
Pitzara plantation has been established is possibly the only habitat
of an endangered species of fauna should be a deterrent to FSC
certificating the plantation. However, today it bears the FSC
seal.
By
Natalia Bonilla, Acción Ecológica, e-mail:
foresta@accionecologica.org
and
Klaus Schenck, e-mail:
klaus@regenwald.org
(*)
Endesa-Botrosa is well-known for the massive destruction caused
by its activities in Ecuadorian forests. However, in this article
we want to point out the connotations regarding certification
of its plantations, as this is the focus of this bulletin.
