OUR
VIEWPOINT
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World Social Forum: A pause on the way
The
World Social Forum met in Nairobi, Kenya from 20 to 25 January.
Beyond the opinion that each one of us may have about its achievements,
what we would like to highlight is not so much what was said or
what was done there but its message that “another world is possible.”
.
This
message implicitly means that the present world is no longer possible.
In this world, increasingly dominated by large corporations, social
and environmental problems are aggravated year after year. In
spite of the incessant intervention of so-called solutions by
those seeking desperately to keep it alive, the truth is that
in most cases, the remedy is worse than the illness itself. Let
us look at some examples of these so-called “solutions” in WRM’s
scope of action:
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To face the loss of biodiversity, the main “solution” is the establishment
of protected areas, implying among other things eviction of the
communities who live in them
-
To face deforestation, “solutions” are added, such as protected
areas, monoculture tree plantations and certification of plantations
and forests
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To face climate change, some of the “solutions” are carbon sinks
(tree plantations) and biofuels (oil palm, transgenic soybean
and maize, sugarcane).
Each
one of these “solutions” implies a series of serious negative
social and environmental impacts that we have explained in numerous
articles in the WRM Bulletin. Their true value is zero and they
only serve to give the deceitful impression that everything can
be solved without resorting to the sweeping changes urgently required.
Among other things, they enable the following:
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To continue with deforestation so that large companies (timber,
mining, oil, hydroelectric, shrimp) can carry on making profits
with the excuse that there are protected areas to maintain biodiversity,
that plantations lessen the pressure on forests (and that they
are certified), that hydroelectric dams do not cause greenhouse
effect gas emissions, etcetera.
-
To continue promoting agricultural and tree monoculture plantations
and their accompanying package of agrochemicals and transgenic
plants so that the large seed, chemical, biotechnological and
pulp companies can carry on making profits under the false pretence
that they are attempting to mitigate hunger in the world or substitute
oil by biofuels or produce the paper the world needs.
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To continue destroying the climate with the continuous burning
of fossil fuels allowing oil companies to carry on making their
profit, but also to enable other large companies (palm oil, sugar,
biotechnology, etc.) to enter the business.
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To continue destroying the base for subsistence of millions of
peasants and indigenous people through appropriation of land,
water and forests by the large companies (in the water, biotechnology,
pharmaceutical, pulp business, etc.).
In
spite of its apparent strength, that world has already shown itself
to be impossible and that it destroys the very foundations of
the world we all live in.
To
face this, the message of the Forum is “another world is possible.”
What kind of world? A world that is socially supportive and environmentally
respectful. But how would it be? We don’t have an answer but we
do have the conviction that it is possible. How do we reach this?
Perhaps the words of the writer Eduardo Galeano will serve to
make us think:
“Utopia
is on the horizon. I move two steps closer, it moves two steps
further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten
steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it.
So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking”
Along
this walk, the World Social Forum is just a pause on the way,
where an enormous diversity of walkers stops to exchange ideas
among themselves. What matters is not what the Forum does or what
the Forum can do, but that the walkers start finding ways to reach
that “other possible world.”
index
COMMUNITIES
AND FORESTS
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Brazil: Dams would destroy isolated tribe
Enawene Nawe’s livelihood
The
Enawene Nawe -- a small Amazonian tribe (over 420) who live by
fishing and gathering in Mato Grosso state, Brazil -- are a relatively
isolated people who were first contacted in 1974. They grow manioc
and corn in gardens and gather forest products, like honey but
fishing is their main livelihood and fish are a vital part of
their diet, as they are one of the few tribes who eat no red meat.
During the fishing season, the men build large dams across rivers
and spend several months camped in the forest, catching and smoking
the fish which is then transported by canoe to their village.
For
decades the Enawene Nawe have faced invasion of their lands by
rubber tappers, diamond prospectors, cattle ranchers and more
recently soya planters - Maggi, the largest soya company in Brazil,
illegally built a road on their land in 1997 (this was subsequently
closed by a federal prosecutor). Although their territory was
officially recognised and ratified by the government in 1996,
a key area known as the Rio Preto was left out. This area is tremendously
important to the Enawene Nawe both economically and spiritually
- this is where they build their fishing camps and dams, and where
many important spirits live.
Now,
up to 11 dams are planned along the Juruena river, which flows
through the Indians' territory. The dams will be funded by a consortium
of businesses, many of whom are involved in the soya industry.
The
Enawene Nawe are opposing the dams, and have launched an appeal
for support to halt their construction. They spoke out:
“We
are the Enawene Nawe of Halataikiwa village. We have just been
to a meeting. We did not seek this meeting, it was the Brazilians
who invited us. Together with our representatives, there were
representatives from the Nambiquara, Pareci, Myky, and Rikbaktsa
tribes.
At
the meeting we spoke with a Brazilian about the building of dams.
The Brazilian said, 'Come and look at the first dam we have already
built.' He continued, 'The dams are a good thing, not a bad thing.
The fish will not die, the water will not become dirty, the forest
will not die.'
We
communicated clearly to the people who want to build the dams,
'Do not build the dams, we do not want them.' As far as the Enawene
Nawe are concerned, we are completely against the dams. We do
not want a car nor do we want money. We are thinking about fish,
and the water.
The
Rikbaktsa people think the same. As soon as we got back home we,
the Enawene Nawe, spoke together. After this, we spoke in Cuiabá
[the capital of Mato Grosso state], to the public prosecutor.
This person said that the situation was very difficult. So then
we thought like this: OPAN [Brazilian NGO working with indigenous
peoples] and the Federal Ministry of Public Affairs should see
the impact report together; and soon we must go to Brasilia so
that all the Enawene Nawe can speak there.
We
are seeking help from others, as we are very unhappy, very unhappy
indeed.”
Excerpted
and edited from: “Dams threaten fishing tribe”, Survival International,
http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=2193,
http://www.survival-
international.org/tribes.php?tribe_id=194
index
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Burma: The greening of the military junta
by the Wildlife Conservation Society
The
remote and environmentally rich Hugawng valley in Burma’s northern
Kachin State has been internationally recognized as one of the
world’s hotspots of biodiversity. It even remained largely untouched
by Burma’s military regime until the mid-1990s.
After
a ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO)
and the junta in 1994, local residents had high hopes that peace
would foster the economy and improve living conditions. However,
as Valley of Darkness, a new report by undercover local researchers
published in 2007 by the Kachin Development Networking Groups,
says: “Under the junta’s increased control, the rich resources
of the valley turned out to be a curse”.
The
military junta ruling Burma, together with the US-based Wildlife
Conservation Society, is establishing the world largest tiger
reserve: the Hugawng Valley Tiger Reserve. However, the conditions
of the people living there have received no attention. The report
exposes that Burma’s military junta has confiscated farmlands
and homes there to accommodate its military infrastructure, and
is selling off vast tracts as gold-mining concessions -- offering
up 18% of the entire Kachin State for mining concessions in 2002,
with major ones increasing in number from 14 in 1994 to 31 in
2006. The valley’s forests and waterways are now being ravaged
by over 100 hydraulic and pit mines using mechanized pumps and
dredges and dumping mercury-contaminated tailings.
Devastating
impacts are felt not only by the environment but also by local
communities. “Only the junta and a handful of businessmen are
benefiting from the gold while the local people suffer the consequences”,
says the report, while the influx of thousands of desperate migrants
from all over Burma, together with harsh working conditions, a
lack of education opportunities and poverty have led to the expansion
of the drug, sex, and gambling industries in the once pristine
valley. Intravenous drug use and the sex industry have increased
the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Wildlife
Conservation Society is claiming that Burma’s junta has almost
completely closed down the gold-mining industry in the valley.
This report proves otherwise, documenting local people speaking
out about the fundamental lack of local benefit from or participation
in the so called “border area development program”, of which the
military junta continually boasts.
“We
want the world to know that both tigers and people in the Hugawng
valley are being endangered by Burma’s military regime,” stresses
the report.
Excerpted
and edited from: “Valley of Darkness. Gold mining and militarization
in Burma’s Hugawng Valley”, 2007, Kachin Development Networking
Groups (KDNG), e-mail:
kdngroup@gmail.com. The full report is available at: www.aksyu.com
index
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Colombia: The U’wa Indigenous People resist
oil exploration
On
15 December 2006, the Colombian government made public its decision
to reinitiate oil exploration activities in the Siriri and Catleya
Blocks located in the Departments of Arauca, Santander, North
of Santander and Boyacá, in the northwest of the country, in U’wa
territory.
For
over a decade the U’wa have been telling the world what oil means
to them, culturally and spiritually, and have repeatedly denounced
the consequences that oil exploitation would have on their territory
and their culture. They have even offered their lives to defend
themselves from so-called “development.” Their struggle and conviction
have inspired other peoples around the world who have seen how
the oil industry, only benefiting a few people, has destroyed
their lives. With the excuse of development and progress these
projects are imposed on them, only bringing destruction.
Various
research workers and experts on environmental and social conflicts
caused by the oil industry have witnessed the damage done and
that will be done by oil exploration on the land and the lives
of the U’wa. Ferry Lynn Karl, a lecturer at Stanford University
in the United States made a very detailed analysis of the negative
impacts of the Siriri/Catleya project on the ecosystems and on
the social and economic situation of the indigenous people. She
has also announced that this activity could also give rise to
a state of violence in the region.
The
Government decision implies disregard for the U’wa’s right to
their ancestral territories, including the soil and subsoil. The
royal warrant granted by the Crown to the Tuneba Nation (U’wa)
in the year 1802 ratified and delimited their jurisdiction to
the present Departments of Casanare, Arauca, Boyaca, Santander,
North of Santander and a part of Venezuelan territory. In turn,
these rights were reaffirmed in Colombian Law 153 of 1887 and
also by Article 332 of the 1991 Constitution. The decision by
the Ministry of the Interior to continue with the Sirirí/Catleya
oil project also violates ILO Convention 169 and the recommendations
agreed on in 1998 between the National Government and the U’wa
People.
In
the framework of the “Prior Consultation” process launched by
the government for oil exploration and exploitation in U’wa territory,
a consultation was made with the Arauca indigenous organization,
Ascatidar, which gave rise to a negative response. ASOU´WA, the
organization gathering the U’wa indigenous peoples from Santander,
North of Santander and Boyaca replied negatively to the prior
consultation. Even so, the Government has informed that it will
convene the organizations to involve them in carrying out the
Environmental Management Plan.
Over
120 organizations from Colombia and other parts of the world and
some 30 people sent a letter to the Colombian President, Alvaro
Uribe on 22/12/2006 stating their surprise and indignation over
the decision to carry out oil exploration in U’wa territory. They
ask for the decision authorizing seismic exploration on U’wa territory
to be revised and the project to be definitively shelved.
Gubanu,
an elder who is also a werjayu (wise man), went to the Capital
district barefoot to launch a new stage in U’wa diplomacy. Together
with Luis Tegria Sirakubo, president of the Association of Traditional
Authorities and U’wa Councils, ASOU’WA, they held meetings in
Bogotá with representatives of the European Union, the Venezuelan
embassy and innumerable social and non-governmental organizations
supporting this people’s opposition to oil activities on their
territory. Gubanu achieved the objective entrusted to him by this
people: the ratification of the U’wa vision regarding the oil
issue, recently expressed on 12 October 2006, when they answered
with a resounding “no” to the prior consultation process proposed
by the Colombian government.
The
U’wa delegates met with the press and expressed their view that
with oil exploitation, not only is blood being extracted from
Mother Earth, but she is also being left in very poor conditions.
The old man stated that “It is for this reason that there is not
as much fishing as before, it is hotter and the sacred ayu (coca
plant leaf) used by the werjayu for spiritual work, is drying
up.”
For
all these reasons and as affirmed by organizations supporting
the U’wa struggle “the Siriri/Catleya oil project cannot continue.
We want to tell you (President Uribe) that the U’wa are not alone,
that we will continue to support them in their worthwhile struggle,
that we will be by their side until the Colombian Government and
the Ecopetrol and Repsol YPF oil companies understand that this
territory is sacred and that cultures with principles cannot be
bought.”
Article
based on information from: Letter to the President of the Republic
of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Bogotá, 22 December 2006, published
by Boletín Ambientalistas en Acción 55,
http://www.censat.org/Documentos/AmbientalistasAccion/Carta_presidente_uwas.pdf;
“U’was Reactivan Diplomacia a Favor de Su Territorio”, Amazon
Watch,
http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1337
index
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Costa Rica: Business conservationism impacts
on rainforest peasants, women and children
Costa
Rica has been built as an export-oriented economy, with no political
or economic independence. Export pressure on resources by the
world system resulted in great inequality. Since the Kyoto Protocol,
neoliberals have redefined forests as ‘oxygen generators’, a concept
that Costa Rica has embraced. In this framework, local communities,
especially those living in the tropical rainforests and depending
for survival on the bounty provided by the forests, have seen
undermined their basic support system.
The
global environmental crisis has highlighted the fact that forest
vegetation stores carbon that, if released, would contribute to
trapping heat in the atmosphere, driving up temperatures and speeding
up climate change. In the sustainable development framework, forests
have become ‘natural capital’, but in reality they are much more.
The forest is an essential mechanism for flood control. In the
forest, trees are connected directly to each other through the
multitude of creatures that relate to them as food, shelter or
nesting place; through their shared access to water, air and sunlight;
and through an underground system of fungi that links all the
trees as a super-organism. Rainforest people are also members
of this super-organism.
So-called
sustainable development aggravated the unequal access to resources
by intensifying earlier enclosure of the land through the Conservation
Area System created in 1989 by the then Ministry of Natural Resources,
Energy, and Mines (MIRENEM, now MINAE). Through SINAC (National
System of Conservation Areas), the conservation area model was
implemented to manage the country's wildlife and biodiversity.
The country was divided into 11 conservation areas comprising
wildlife, private lands, and human settlements under the current
Ministry of Environment and Energy's (MINAE) supervision, expanding
the enclosure model by enclosing 25.58% of the national territory.
The expropriated land has been organized along the lines of national
parks in North America from which people are excluded and denied
any role in sustaining the ecosystems. These expropriated lands
are linked to transnational and political networks to forge local
and global “stakeholders” through categories of management such
as Human Patrimony, national parks, wetland, biological reserves,
protected zones, forest reserves, and wildlife refuges. At the
same time internal boundaries are built, separating local people
who share volcanoes, waterfalls, rivers, hot springs, congo-monkeys,
and turtle-spawning havens. The enclosed lands become sites for
mining, research, ecotourism and selling oxygen.
The
Kyoto Protocol introduced a new conceptualization of the world’s
rainforests. Now they are valued economically in terms of the
amount of carbon they sequester. Conservation Areas are considered
eligible to receive payments for the “environmental services”
they provide. In the Arenal Conservation Area (ACA), organized
by the World Wildlife Fund-Canada, national parks such as Arenal
Volcano and Tenorio Volcano National Park, and forestry reserves
such as Cerro Chato, sell oxygen. But to put the oxygen on the
market, in 1994, the previous reserve Arenal Volcano had to be
declared Arenal Volcano National Park. From 5 hectares, it was
extended to 12,010 ha. As a result, entire communities were forcibly
evicted. An injunction, brought to Costa Rica's Supreme Court
(Division IV of the judicial system), reported heavy losses by
campesinas/os who lived in the Basin area of the Arenal Conservation
Area (ACA). They lost land, pasture, houses, dairies, and roads.
Former property owners have become hut renters (ranchos) or slum
inhabitants (tugurios). The personal effects of the campesinas/os,
such as cars and small electrical appliances, were taken by the
commercial banks when they could not afford to repay their loans
acquired for economic development. When, in desperation, some
of them returned to their land to plant yucca, beans, maize and
other subsistence foods, they were declared to have broken the
law and some of them were thrown in jail.
The
snatching of forest from local communities who use it to sustain
themselves has become a death sentence for small and medium-size
land holders. As a result, their needs are dismissed, and community
members who used to live off the forest are declared enemies of
the rainforest. In 1996, La Cuenca de Aguas Claras was also declared
a forestry reserve and changes in the area arrived. In 2001, I
attended a public Town Hall meeting in La Cuenca de Aguas Claras
at which more than 200 farmers, men and women, arrived ready to
be interviewed. Since the number was too high, they chose Abel
Fuentes and Luis Guimo to speak on their behalf. They declared
themselves witnesses of the following account. According to Mr.
Fuentes, MINAE says that “our survival way of life is producing
deforestation and pollution, and reducing the water level of La
Cuenca de Aguas Claras. MINAE exaggerated the level of deforestation
to oust almost all the inhabitants because it is reforesting our
land in order to sell the oxygen to other countries and get `donations'”.
Mr Martin Guimo, another small holder, who still lives within
the expropriated land, added “When we ask MINAE officials for
information, they decide when and where we can get it. When we
propose a meeting, they decide when and where we can meet, then
they change the hour, the date, or they cancel the meeting without
telling us. Many of us live far from the meeting place and sometimes
we have to ride a horse for 3 hours to go to a meeting and it
is disappointing to arrive and learn that the meeting has been
cancelled” (Guimo, interview, July 2001).
The
power of the industrial world to re-design the forest as oxygen
producer exacerbates inequalities. As a new structure of accumulation
emerges, the disintegration of the ecosystem that supported the
means of survival of local communities has powerful effects on
the sexual division of labour and women's oppression. When families
are violently disintegrated or displaced and impoverished, rural
women are encouraged to migrate to San Jose and tourist areas
in the hope of earning an income for themselves and their dispossessed
families. Introduced into the cash base economy, impoverished
women earn all or part of their living as prostitutes. Prostitutes
in Costa Rica are women at work supporting children and family
members. They are in the market not by choice but out of necessity.
Along with them, there are astonishing amount of children who
are bought, sold and mistreated by society.
The
creditors' power relations, which encourage the commodification
of nature, are written in the bodies of the forest, the women
and the children of indebted Costa Rica. As dwellers are evicted
from their land, dispossessed and vulnerable women and children
turn into the sexual tourism industry, forcing them into a new
form of slavery in the 21th Century - massive sexual slavery.
First world white males, with the complicity of local governments,
go to exploit the economic hardships of the inequality crisis
created by global capitalism.
This
type of ‘solution’ allows the industrial world to continue polluting
as long as it can purchase carbon credits from rainforest-dense
countries. Meanwhile, emissions produced by an increase in coal
and oil burned – mainly in the industrial world – proceed unimpeded.
The carbon trade is a colonial relationship with marked class
and gender biases that affect the nature of indebted countries,
along with subsistence production, and the lives of rainforest
women and men.
Excerpted
and edited from: “The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-feminist
Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica”,
by Ana Isla, Assistant Professor at Brock University, Canada.
She is also a member of Toronto-Women for a Just and Healthy Planet,
e-mail: aisla@brocku.ca.
The full report is available at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/CostaRica/Eco-feminist_Perspective_Costa_Rica.pdf.
index
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Ecuador: The government faces a challenge
in the Yasuni National Park
When
couple of days ago President Rafael Correa affirmed that the environmentalists
want to return to the Stone Age on requesting an oil moratorium
he was only repeating what has been said for years by those who
have shaped and maintained the dependent country we have… The
problem is that this time he made this statement while the international
press was sounding the alarm over global warming…if we burn more
oil we will end up in the Stone Age!
Beyond
this typically developmental comment, it invites us to remember
Plato’s myth of the cavemen.
According
to the myth, we human beings live in chains inside a cave, sitting
with our backs to the entry and with a light at our backs. The
shadows represent the only reality we can see. We do not notice
the chains and we neither can nor want to act against our perceptions.
However,
Plato said that someone, sometime, became aware that he was chained,
got free, turned round and left the cave. The light was so strong
that he felt blinded and it was only gradually that he got used
to it and could see real things…
The
Ishinpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) project, like a gigantic
shadow in the midst of the darkness, is being announced with the
same enthusiasm as other large projects that have failed.
There is talk of 4,000 jobs and investment of 5 billion dollars,
the opportunity to leave poverty behind…but if someone notices
the environmental impacts, the response is that “they will be
minimized.”
Why
is this project causing so much fuss?
The
ITT project is located in the Yasuni National Park. According
to scientific studies, the Yasuni Park (set up in 1979) is a region
with the greatest biodiversity in the world. It is part
of the Pleistocene Napo refuge. It is also the territory of the
Huaorani people and an area for transiting, fishing and hunting
for the Taromenane and Tagaeri people who live in voluntary isolation
and who need their territory to be free from external intervention
in order to live.
This
is a project confronting two visions of the world, two realities.
From the shadow it projects images of growth. But seen in the
light of Ecuadorian oil experience this would be yet another environmental
and social disaster for the local communities.
With
proven reserves of almost 1 billion barrels of heavy crude oil,
the Government intends to maintain the pace of its oil exploitation
and exportation. It is interested in a consortium involving Petrobras
(Brazil), Enap (Chile), Petroecuador and even Pdvsa (Venezuela),
which seeks to consolidate a partnership in the field based on
integration proposals, whatever the costs, even environmental
costs. SINOPEC, a Chinese corporation is also interested as they
are trying to assert their presence in the region and are submitting
high bids at the cost of their total ignorance of environmental
issues.
However
it cannot be ignored that the project is within the National Park,
environmentally a highly sensitive zone. It is expected that the
project will cause levels of contamination even higher than those
existing in the areas already under intervention as the exploitation
is of heavy crude oil associated to large amounts of toxic water
at a ratio of 80-20 (80 of toxic water to 20 of crude oil).
The
project will undoubtedly cause widespread degradation in the area,
serious negative impacts on the life of local peoples and the
extinction of cultures.
With
this scenario in mind, a proposal has been made to sell the crude
oil in the subsoil to ensure that it is not extracted. It has
been said that each barrel of oil in the subsoil would cost 5
dollars. I have heard many people saying that they would love
to have 20 barrels, or 10 or 1 and to know that it will never
be extracted…
It
is considered that with this proposal a three-pronged objective
can be achieved: to conserve biodiversity, to address global warming
and to protect the rights of peoples in voluntary isolation.
President
Rafael Correa, in an almost challenging tone, entrusted the Minister
of Energy, Alberto Acosta and the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Maria Fernanda Espinosa with “substituting the resources that
the country will stop receiving and that could be invested in
health, education and infrastructure programmes. If this substitution
is achieved there will be no call for bids” he insisted.
Ecuador
has signed international conventions such as the Convention on
Biological Diversity, the Climate Change Convention, ILO Convention
169, the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the American Convention
on Human Rights, the Convention for the Prevention and Sanction
of the Crime of Genocide, that protect the peoples and their territories
and that aim at safeguarding the Planet.
There
are sufficient arguments for the mechanism of selling oil to prevent
it from being extracted to operate but, is there enough political
will not only at national but at international level, to address
the issue?
Will
this be a project dealt with in the shadows of an Ecuador in chains
or, on the contrary, will it be addressed in the light of a new
vision of the country, where the environment is not a requisite
to be overcome but the basis for the nation’s subsistence?
By
Esperanza Martínez, e-mail:
tegantai@oilwatch.org.ec, Oilwatch, www.oilwatch.org.ec
index
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India: The Forest Rights Act, a weapon of
struggle
The
passage of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers
(Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006 is a watershed event
in the hard-fought and prolonged struggle of adivasis and other
forest dwellers of the country. For the first time in the history
of Indian forests the state formally admits that rights have been
denied to forest dwelling people for long, and the new forest
law attempts not only to right that 'historic injustice' but also
give forest communities' role primacy in forest management.
The
Bill, which angered Indian ‘conservationists’, forest bureaucracy
and paper and pulp companies alike took two long years to pass
—and a nationwide political campaign by forest movements in the
country, backed by a joint parliamentary committee recommending
sweeping changes to the original draft. Objections to the Bill,
and especially its Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) Version
ranged from apprehensions (like the law would distribute forest
land to tribal families) to assertive statements (that wildlife
and people can no longer co-exist, and all tigers would perish).
The JPC version of the Bill shifted the earlier 1980 cut-off year
to December 2005; included all non-tribal traditional forest dwellers;
recognized rights of tribal and traditional forest dwellers in
areas declared as protected areas; revised the process for identification
of such protected areas to ensure a more transparent process and
increased the ceiling of 2.5 hectares on land to 4 hectares. Most
importantly, it prescribed that no diversion of forest land would
happen without the consent of the gramsabha (the village assembly).
As
could be expected, the Government refused to place the JPC report
in the parliament, citing serious differences on four major issues:
cut-off date, inclusion of non-tribals, rights of gram sabhas
and the ceiling issue. The Tribal Affairs Ministry did not want
inclusion of non-tribals in the Bill and sections in the Government
backed by wild life lobby did not want any change in the cut-off
year because it would destroy forests. After months of dilly-dallying,
the Government apparently agreed to the JPC report and the bill
was finally placed in the Lok Sabha on 15th December 2006. That
the Government was up to no good was proved when sixteen major
amendments were moved by the tribal minister on the bill he himself
introduced in the house. The Amended Bill was passed by the Lok
Sabha, and even though there were extensive debates in the Rajya
Sabha challenging the last-minute amendments, the Upper House
passed the same truncated bill on 18th December after the Tribal
Minister gave some assurances about the Rules.
Despite
the Government’s treachery and its attempts to undermine the positive
contents of the bill, the act as legislated by the Indian Parliament
marked a radical departure from earlier forest acts in the country,
and the forest dwellers of the country can gain from it.
The
new law recognises the right to homestead, cultivable and grazing
land (occupied, and in use since December 2005), and to non-timber
forest produce (partially, since the rights for the time being
are limited to produces of ‘plant origin’ and fish). It accepts
that there are legitimate non-tribal forest dwellers (though in
a restricted manner), recognises the right to rehabilitation in
case of past forcible displacement and prescribes that all future
notification of ‘inviolate’ conservation zones and curtailment
of rights in Protected Areas shall require people’s consent. Most
importantly, the Act says that recognized rights of forest dwellers
include conservation of forests and biodiversity, and people’s
involvement would strengthen conservation efforts (the bill says
people’s responsibility and authority.)
In
another very significant section, the Act says that all forestlands
—irrespective of location and category— traditionally used by
communities would be henceforth treated as community forest resource,
and forest dwellers can act decisively in conserving those resources.
While
the Forest Rights Act contains these positive elements, enough
ambiguities and ‘loopholes’ clutter it. Also, it has been framed
in a way to keep large section of forest dwellers out of its purview.
For instance, only those residing in forest areas for 75 years
will be qualified as ‘other traditional forest-dwellers’ (other
than scheduled tribes), and only those ‘primarily residing in’
forest areas can claim rights under the Act.
These
are concerns which forest movements of the country now plan to
address by prolonging and intensifying the campaign for the Forest
Rights Bill. Realizing that the Government’s sincerity with the
Act is suspect, the movements have also resolved to ‘implement’
the act on their own.
How
did the Act happen? Why should a state that steadfastly adhered
to the principle of 'eminent domain' (which means that the State
owns all natural resources over which people have no proprietary
rights), and ignored the just demands of forest dwellers now become
sensitive to people's rights? Why should it admit that people
have any rights over forests when all its policies and laws have
so far —since the colonial take over of forests in 1850 onwards--
been directed towards keeping them out , first for making the
forests commercially productive, and then for conservation of
wild life?
These
are questions that we need to discuss over coming months. Not
all of these can be answered, firstly because the law-making process
isn't complete yet (the rules are not ready), and secondly, contours
of the political process that would determine the question of
control over forest are just emerging in India. Time and the course
of struggles will make many things clearer.
One
thing is however clear. The Act —however well-meaning it may be—
by itself solves nothing and just because it is there, the State
is not going to hand over forest rights to people on a silver
platter. The Forest Department and its coercive bureaucratic apparatus
and its cronies like the timber mafia won't just vanish, and neither
will Big Conservation NGOs cease to raise a stink each time people
really get some rights. The development menace would remain, and
both forests and people will be destroyed as usual, for dams,
factories, roads and mines. The Act changes nothing until forest
struggles lend it teeth and turn it into a weapon.
This
is time when forest struggles are seen and defined in the broader
political context. The sabotage the government did to the Act
showed that there was a conscious attempt to undermine community
control over forest resources, which fitted into the larger plan
that becomes manifest in other things being done by the government
—changing existing environmental regulations of the country so
that mines, companies, dams and big industries can be easily built.
The drive to forcibly acquire both fertile agricultural land and
village commons for Special Economic Zones and for big private
companies was on. Grants of mining leases to private companies
in forest areas increased enormously in recent months.
Forest
movements in India now need to oppose this whole agenda of selling
people’s lives and resources to capital. The Forest Rights Act
gives communities a political space in forest governance. For
movements, this is an important weapon to assert themselves and
challenge both the present forest authority and forces of capital,
who move into forests in a big way. Other anti-people forces active
in the forests —‘hard-line’ wild life groups, feudal forces, traders
etc— needed to be challenged.
Movement
groups have been engaged in recapturing land in the forest areas
in some regions. This process has to be strengthened and such
action programmes need to be extended in other areas. So-called
participatory structures created by the Forest Department like
Joint Forest Management need to be smashed, so that neither state
nor private capital aided by International Finance Institutions
find further footholds in forests.
The
passage of this limited bill gives us a promise to build up an
alliance of movements. From now onwards forest peoples' movements
will also be for a truly democratic and pluralistic nation, based
on environmental and social justice. The State-capital nexus has
to be challenged at operational and ideological levels, both nationally
and internationally, and involving all progressive forces active
in other social, cultural and political spheres.
By
Soumitra Ghosh, National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers
(NFFPFW), and Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), India.
e-mail: soumitrag@gmail.com
index
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Mali: Forests within food sovereignty
Mali
is host in February to over 500 women and men from some hundred
countries from all over the world that are meeting at the “Nyeleni
2007: Forum for Food Sovereignty.” The objective of the meeting
is to launch an “international movement to achieve true recognition
of the right to food sovereignty,” to reaffirm this right and
“set out its economic, social, environmental and political implications.”
What
is understood by “food sovereignty”? The concept of food sovereignty
arose in 1996, when Vía Campesina expressed it for the first time
at the World Food Summit held in Rome. In 2002, the NGO/SCO Forum
for Food Sovereignty defined food sovereignty as “the right of
peoples, communities and countries to define their own agricultural,
pastoral, labour, fishing, food and farming policies, which are
ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate
to their unique circumstances.”
Since
then the concept has been strengthened during subsequent meetings
to become an alternative to the productive models imposed by globalizing
policies directed from entities of power (WB, IMF, WTO, etc.)
that have consolidated the control of food by large transnational
corporations, starting from seeds, sowing and inputs and going
on to cover distribution, processing, sale and consumer habits
all over the world.
Food
sovereignty is centred on local autonomy, local markets and community
action and incorporates aspects such as agrarian reform, territorial
control, local markets, biodiversity, autonomy, cooperation, the
debt, health and many other issues related with food production.
Thus,
perhaps, the first point to be underscored is that food sovereignty
is a process of grassroots resistance and its conceptualization
not only is deeply rooted in the social movements fuelling these
struggles but is also an opportunity to bind them together in
a common agreement over objectives and actions.
So,
starting from peasant movements, the concept is widened to include
the landless, traditional fisherfolk, shepherds, indigenous peoples…and
the defence of forests that is also a matter of food sovereignty.
Non-timber
forest products have been and still are a basic input for many
communities either living in the forest or close to the forest
and resorting to it for their livelihood. They find honey, fruit,
seeds, acorns, tubers, insects and wild animals in the forest;
all important additional sources of food. Forests also supply
resins, rattan, bamboo, tannins, dyes, leaves, straw, skins and
leather, useful for either self consumption or to be sold, thus
ensuring income to obtain other foodstuffs. The forest is also
a supplier of plants for forage, particularly important for the
production of cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and camels.
Forests
are also threatened and destroyed by those same processes threatening
peasant farming: the advance of agro-business and large-scale
monoculture plantations for export – ranging from soybeans to
eucalyptus trees –; the destruction of biodiversity with the imposition
of transgenic crops; the oil matrix involving exploitation processes
poisoning and destroying everything around them; the fencing in
of sites showing high biodiversity to use them for the tourist
business or for bioprospecting. In every case these are scenarios
exploiting or displacing entire communities, stripping them of
their way of life and their culture and leaving them to sink into
poverty. The predominant model involves a circle of exploitation,
extermination, exclusion. When the forest is destroyed, food sovereignty
is destroyed.
However,
this is not happening without a reaction. From their grassroots,
peasants, traditional fisherfolk, shepherds and indigenous peoples
who have developed and made possible production systems ensuring
their own livelihood and that of other people not directly involved
in production, are seeking to open a breach against these demolishing
processes. From a local level, building autonomy, taking up again
the principles of cooperation, integration and dialogue with nature
that enabled them to build biodiverse agro-ecological systems
and the dynamic conservation of ecosystems, grassroots movements
are becoming the masters of their fate and teaching the world
that “It is time for food sovereignty”!
index
COMMUNITIES AND TREE
MONOCULTURES
-
Australia: Tasmania shows the way to
ban tree plantations
Last
year, about 170 farmers met in the farming community of South
Riana to air their concerns and see how to stop valuable farmland
being converted to timber plantations. They were concerned for
the future of the area -- built on successful dairy and cropping
enterprises -- and called for the Tasmanian Government to abolish
tree plantation development on prime agricultural land.
The
meeting came within days of the King Island Council becoming the
first in Tasmania to ban plantations on rural land, fearing they
would risk the viability of dairy and beef industries. Gorgeous
cream, cheese, yoghurt and beef are more important to King Islanders
in Bass Strait than woodchips. And in a Tasmanian first, the King
Island Council has removed forestry from its planning scheme as
an acceptable agricultural use, an amendment now approved by the
Resource Planning and Development Commission.
The
local mayor Charles Arnold said tree farms would have a severe
impact on the island's famous dairy and beef industries, and that
“Once they plant it, the number of persons involved in it, is
minimal. And I think that our prime agricultural land shouldn't
be sacrificed for other people's gain out of minimising their
tax”.
There’s
also a moratorium on any further clearing of vegetation on the
island for pasture. “People want to protect what they’ve got on
the island,” said King Island Council general manager Andrew Wardlaw.
Federal
Forestry Minister Eric Abetz is enraged over the decision to ban
tree farms. He said that contrary to farmers’ claims, plantations
create new jobs and revitalise rural communities, and that they
were intended to the domestic market: “We either import
timber … or we grow our own.”
However,
when the Minister planted the 100 millionth tree for Great Southern
Plantations Ltd on a commercial hardwood plantation near Albany
in West Australia, he was then extolling exports : “Once harvested,
100 million trees will result in the production of 10 million
bone dry tonnes of woodchip — all of which is destined to be exported
to south-east Asia.”
Great
Southern Plantations is part of the Great Southern Group, an agribusiness
investment manager. It’s gobbled up land for tree farms in recent
times, stretching from Western Australia to the Tiwi Islands to
King Island. Plantations are big business, not least because investments
are 100% tax deductible in the year in which they are made. Such
scheme gives them an advantage no other person has and, as somebody
said, has “turned Tasmania into a monocultural tree plantation
state. Eucalypt Nitens are now THE defining feature of Tassie’s
[Tasmania] now very boring landscape.”
Banning
of industrial tree farms is a step many rural communities worldwide
expect their governments to take. Few have, and the King Island
Council should be very proud of showing the way.
Article
based on information from: “Tasmanian Cattle Farmers Fear Plantations'
Impact”,
http://www.mycattle.com/news/dsp_international_article.cfm?storyid=19022,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, News Online, 2006; “Tasmanian
farmers protest against tree plantations”, The World Today, 2006,
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1724364.htm;
“Abetz spitting chips over King Island tree farm ban”, Tasmanian
Times,
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/weblog/comments/mr-howard-and-plantations/
index
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Brazil: Veracel’s deceitful
practices
The
Veracel pulp mill is located in the south of the Brazilian state
of Bahia, some 45 kilometres from the coast, on the border between
the municipalities of Eunapolis and Belmonte. Veracel is a corporation
in which the Swedish-Finnish group Stora Enso and the Brazilian
Aracruz group have equal shares, today managing one of the world’s
largest eucalyptus plantation and industrialization projects.
As
from the end of the eighties, gigantic monoculture tree plantations
and pulp mills started to be set up in the Southern Cone of South
America, occupying vast stretches of land in Argentina, Chile,
Uruguay and Brazil. This is the implementation of a strategic
decision taken by the main timber and paper market groups from
Sweden, Finland, Spain, the United States, Brazil and Chile.
While
dozens of factories that had been producing 100, 200 and 300 thousand
tons of pulp per year were being closed down in the North, mills
producing a million tons per year were being set up in the South,
with their corresponding plantations, invading vast areas of native
ecosystems and other land formerly used for traditional farming
in the region and causing the consequent social impacts.
An
example of this model and its negative social and environmental
impacts are the Veracel plantations and pulp mill. The plantations
were started in 1991 and the pulp mill in September 2005. One
hundred and sixty four thousand hectares belonging to Veracel
and another similar area contracted with local farmers are given
over to massive eucalyptus plantations in order to feed a pulp
production amounting to 900,000 tons per year.
On
launching its activities through costly advertising campaigns,
Veracel committed itself to preserve the Mata Atlântica forest,
affirming that its plantations were ecologically sustainable,
that it would provide tens of thousands of jobs and implement
major social works. However, as the project advanced the promises
became fewer and fewer and presently they do not correspond to
the actual situation.
The
scope and speed of the expansion of this monoculture plantation
generated considerable changes in the living conditions in the
area. Between 1991 and 2002 rural migration reached 59.4 per cent
and small farmers disappeared. Some of those evicted decided to
struggle for their right to a plot of land while others moved
to the nearest large city, Eunápolis, which has some 100,000 inhabitants.
In
2005 after serious conflicts with the police and armed bands,
515 families organized by the Movement of the Landless (MST) achieved
their objective but some 1570 other families lodging in camps
set up along the highways in the area continue to demand land.
In the meanwhile those who went to the city were unable to find
employment and are now part of the rising urban social emergency.
"Here
we have the refuse produced by the presence of Veracel. What has
most increased is criminality, child prostitution, poverty, hunger,
the number of people imprisoned, robberies, murders,” affirms
Jodenilton Bastos, a journalist who constantly receives requests
for food and clothing for the unemployed through two daily programmes
on the Eunapolis Rádio Ativa.
The
promises of employment and welfare made by Veracel underwent a
progressive reduction as time went by. They started by announcing
the creation of 40,000 jobs, this figure later dropped to 20,000,
then to 10,000 in the mill and 3,000 in rural tasks. Now the mill
employs some 300 workers, mostly from outside the region as they
cannot find specialized workers in the area.
The
state of social emergency in the region is that of extreme hunger.
The SOS Vida home in Eunapolis, directed by Sister Terezinha Biase
cares for up to 50 children. "They arrive here weighing 50
to 60 percent less than normal. They stay here from three to eight
months, until their lives are no longer at risk”, she explained.
The home relies on voluntary donations as it receives no economic
assistance either from the public sector or from private companies.
The
situation in Eunápolis is becoming more serious because Veracel
is abandoning programmes for direct assistance to the population.
A project for a soup kitchen and educational care for 100 children
from a poor neighbourhood was closed by the company after it had
used it to obtain financial endorsement. The parents of the children
denounced that Veracel dressed them especially to receive visitors
from abroad and take their photos.
Something
similar happened with the preservation of the Mata Atlântica forest,
the sustainability of monoculture eucalyptus plantations and non-contamination
of water courses and air from the pulp mill. The Promoters (Public
Prosecutors) of the Public Ministry of Eunapolis have launched
various court cases against Veracel but Justice is slow and the
public powers act in complicity with the company.
João
Alves Da Silva Neto, Public Prosecutor for Eunápolis told us that
"Our legal system is one of the slowest. They take advantage
of this slowness and implement their action,” referring to Veracel.
"They use corrupt practices. The executive and legislative
are in the hands of economic powers that exert more and more pressure
to increase the plantations.”
In
1993, the Public Prosecutor for the Republic accepted civil action
against Veracruz, a predecessor of Veracel, for felling hundreds
of hectares of Mata Atlântica forest. The company did not halt
its activities and started occupying traditional farming areas,
planting beyond the limits established by local legislation. The
law is simply ignored or changed in agreement with the municipal
or state government.
For
some years now, various civil bodies in the area have been complaining
about the irregular activities of plantation and pulp mill companies.
In 2005, following a public hearing, the Public Prosecutor demanded
that Veracel remove its plantations over a radius of 10 kilometres
in the buffer zones of the National Park Conservation Units, in
accordance with Brazilian legal requirements.
According
to agronomist Mónica Leite, a specialist in fruit-growing, this
region "was very prosperous, it had a good rainfall and a
certain balance, there was a lot of forest. My father was a farmer,
he planted a lot (…) and there were no diseases. Fifteen years
ago fruit growing here was marvellous; there were enormous plantations
of papaya, graviola and guava. But all this is ending with the
arrival of Veracel".
The
small cattle-farmer, José Marinho Damaceno suffers from the consequences
of the discharge of Veracel effluents opposite his house, on the
other side of the Jequitinhonha River. The strong smell of rotten
cabbage gives him headaches and irritated eyes and each time it
happens he has to abandon his farm. Damaceno knows that sooner
or later he will have to leave his land definitively and sell
it as best he can.
The
typical fish of the Jequitinhonha River, the snook, has practically
disappeared. As a remedy, Veracel introduced another fish, the
pintado that further pushed the snook to extinction and is itself
also disappearing. Civil bodies have stated their concern over
the pulp mill’s emissions, which is apparently using ECF bleaching
technology, but no data is available – it is the company itself
that carries out its own monitoring.
Source:
Research carried out in situ by the Uruguayan journalist Victor
L. Bacchetta (vbacchet@internet.com.uy)
with the support of the Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas para o Desenvolvimento
do Extremo Sul da Bahía (CEPEDES) which has been carrying out
activities in the city of Eunápolis since 1991. A full version
of this report -in Spanish- is available
at:
http://www.guayubira.org.uy/celulosa/Veracel.html
index
-
Cameroon: FAO’s rubber “forests”
According
to the FAO definition, rubber plantations are “forests.” Recently
we visited one of these “forests” in Kribi, Cameroon and talked
with the workers and local population. Unlike the FAO “experts,”
nobody, absolutely nobody there perceives these plantations as
forests.
In
fact, if there is anything in the world that looks less like a
forest it is precisely a rubber plantation. To the normal monotony
of plantations comprised of parallel lines of thousands of identical
trees – eucalyptus, pine, acacia – is added the array of small
pots hanging on the tree trunks into which the latex is gathered.
Along the paths there are other, larger pots where the latex is
poured to take it to the processing plant. Added to this is the
penetrating and disagreeable smell of rubber.
The
plantations we visited belong to the Société des Hévéas du Cameroun
(HEVECAM), a company set up in 1975, with plantations covering
a total of 42,000 hectares in a region that was previously covered
by dense tropical forests, hosting some of the most varied biodiversity
in the world. Today one can still see the enormous stumps
of native trees between the rubber trees and even large tree trunks
rotting in the middle of the plantation. That is to say,
this plantation –this “forest” according to FAO– was the direct
cause of the total destruction of the forests previously growing
there.
This
is well-known by the Indigenous Bagyeli People (“pygmies”) who
have been the worst affected. The Bagyeli are nomad hunters
and gatherers who used to find in their ancient forest all they
needed for their welfare. According to the group of Bagyeli
we interviewed, they used to live decently on their territory
that covered what is now the HEVECAM plantation, in addition to
other adjacent areas. The forest no longer exists and the
Bagyeli are considered to be intruders on their own territory,
now controlled by the company. Although they are “allowed
to enter” the plantation, the same cannot be said for the children
as they might “damage the rubber trees”.
The
possibility of obtaining food and income by hunting is very remote.
To the disappearance of fauna due to the effects of the plantation
is added the presence of hunters with fire-arms – usually HEVECAM
workers – who advantageously compete with the traditional arms
of the Bagyeli. The possibility of getting a job on the
plantation is also unlikely. The company hires them sometimes
for weeding, but pays them very badly. The result is that now
here is a demoralized, poor, underfed, exploited and oppressed
human group, cornered by the plantation and with nowhere to go.
However,
the Bagyeli are not the only ones to have been adversely affected.
We also interviewed the inhabitants of the village of Afan Oveng
near the HEVECAM plantation, where two years ago a company truck
had an accident and the contents of latex and ammonia it was transporting
ended up in the river running through the village. As a result
animals died, people were sick and the fish died. They sent letter
after letter to the responsible authorities and to the company
and so far the only “compensation” they have received have been
some tankers with water, not even fit for human consumption.
However
for these people the problem is not limited to an accident, but
goes much further and implies that their traditional rights over
the forest have never been recognized. For example, the
place were the company hospital is located used to be land belonging
to these people. They insist that “the forest belongs to us” and
denounce that the “forest that still is left is being destroyed
by HEVECAM”.
In
fact, the company continues its “savage” felling of the forest,
apparently in connivance with the mayor of Kribi, who owns the
saw-mill where the timber is processed. The local community receives
no benefit, but is left with the damage implied by the disappearance
of the forest and of the products obtained from it.
Company
workers – brought from other regions of the country – would then
seem to be the only ones to benefit from these plantations. However,
this is not the case either. “HEVECAM is
slavery”, affirmed a person who had worked 7 years for the company.
He spoke of very low wages, very hard work, respiratory diseases,
blindness, tuberculosis, death, arbitrary redundancy and the impossibility
of trade union organization.
We
visited one of the villages built by the company and talked with
various workers. There they told us that they had continuous problems
with drinking water; that the latrines were overflowing, that
this led to abundance of mosquitoes and subsequently to diarrhoea,
cholera and malaria. They are crowded in these dwellings
and it is not easy to find a two-roomed house. Consequently, most
of the families must live in a single room. As the houses belong
to the company, if the workers are fired, or even if they retire,
they automatically find themselves homeless.
They
also told us about the transportation system for the company workers,
done in hired vehicles that are obliged to comply with a set timetable
to cover the 40 km from the village to the plantation, resulting
in frequent accidents. They told us about the application of weed-killers
and fertilizers with no gloves or protective equipment. They explained
that there are people who have gone blind because in that climate
the eye protection equipment provided by the company cannot be
used and it has done nothing to find a solution to the problem.
If
the above would seem to confirm that effectively “HEVECAM is slavery”,
this conviction was further strengthened when the workers told
us that when the company was privatized in 1996 (the International
GMC Group of Singapore is the present owner), they learnt about
it when different cars from those used by the previous managers
appeared. “They bought us in the same way as they bought the rubber
trees.” Just like in times of slavery.
Ricardo
Carrere, based on information gathered during a visit carried
out to the region in December 2006 with researchers Sandra Veuthey
and Julien-Francois Gerber. The author thanks the Centre pour
l'Environnement et le Développement (CED) for its support which
made this visit possible.
index
-
India: World Bank forestry project goes
from bad to worse
Indian
NGO Samata and the UK's Forest Peoples Programme have found that
the resettlement action plan (RAP) of the World Bank-funded Andhra
Pradesh Community Forest Management Project (APCFMP) undermines
customary rights and livelihoods and is in multiple breach of
Bank safeguard policies on Indigenous Peoples and Involuntary
Resettlement. The participatory evaluation, which was undertaken
in seven villages in NE Andhra Pradesh in November 2006, has discovered
that many problems identified in an earlier Samata-FPP study (see
end notes) of this Bank forestry project, which started in 2002
and is due to close at the end of 2007, have not been resolved
and in some cases have even worsened.
The
study finds that affected Adivasi communities have not been able
to participate meaningfully in the design of the Resettlement
Action Plan (RAP), which under the APCFMP is supposed to offset
hardships suffered by Adivasi families after losing shifting cultivation
fields in forest land under the previous Bank-assisted Joint Forest
Management Project (1994-2000).
Villagers
have simply been told that the Forest Department has money for
Forest Protection Committee members to do "land improvement"
and "income generation" activities under something called
the "RAP". Many affected communities do not understand
what the RAP is about and why it is part of the so-called “Community
Forest Management” (CFM) project. In two cases, NGOs contracted
to implement the RAP have incorrectly told villagers that the
RAP support is a loan that must be wholly or partly repaid by
the villagers. In Chapariguda Village, Shrikakulam District, for
example, one RAP implementation NGO has allegedly unjustly collected
money from 18 Sávara families promising them that through such
payment they would get benefits under the RAP scheme. The villagers
have not seen the NGO staff person for 11 months and have no information
since then about whether or not their village has been included
in the compensation scheme by the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department
(APFD).
Indigenous
Adivasi villagers have not been properly informed about their
rights and entitlements. In several villages visited by Samata
and the FPP, people advise that NGOs have pressed them to sign
consent letters in order to receive the "sanctioned"
25,000 R per family:
The
NGO man took signatures and thumb prints from all the people.
He said: ‘Sign here to receive the 25,000 R benefit. There are
no wages from the Village Forest Protection Committee (VSS) now,
so you should sign the document to get the RAP benefit’. He told
us that women will get saris and men will receive cloth. He took
200 R from each family which he said was necessary to receive
RAP support. 18 families paid this man this money!
