WRM Bulletin 118 - May 2007

Everyone seems to agree on the need to protect the world’s remaining forests … while forests continue to disappear at the same alarming rate as usual. It is therefore important to distinguish between those who are truly committed to forest protection and those whose deeds and words go in opposite directions. For this purpose, most of the articles included in this issue of the WRM bulletin serve as good examples.

Take for instance the case of the article on Ecuador, where local communities are struggling to prevent a Canadian mining company from destroying their environment, which includes an area of primary forest of enormous biological value located in the buffer zone of one of the country’s more important ecological reserves. Men, women, and young people have organized themselves under the common and nonnegotiable position “No to Mining” which today has the unanimous support of all the local governments in the region, in addition to the communities within the limits or adjacent to the mining concessions.

In the case of Congo, the local Efe people have used and protected the Ituri forest for centuries. In the early 1990s, European and Malaysian commercial logging companies began to destroy the forest –and thus the livelihoods of the Efe- while the transnational corporations’ appetite over the region’s minerals –gold and coltan- have brought in war and further forest destruction.

In Laos, the Norwegian consulting firm Norconsult won a US$1.5 million contract to supervise construction work of the Xeset 2 dam, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. China is also heavily involved: the Import-Export Bank of China is funding 80 per cent of the US$135 million project and the main contractor is the China North Industries Corporation. A local person says: "We do not want them to build the dam. It will badly affect our land and the environment. … But we dare not oppose government officials." Government agencies and consultants –in Laos, Norway and China- know that this is true but plans continue ahead.

Everyone knows that oil palm plantations are a major cause of forest destruction. However, the Northern demand for biodiesel is pushing the expansion of this crop throughout the tropics. In the case of Thailand, the government plans to increase plantations from the current 400,000 hectares to 1.2 million hectares by 2009. As the article included in this bulletin states: “If an expansion of the oil palm plantation areas was made according to the government’s plan, Thailand would irreversibly lose its food security, forests and biological diversity. It would mean a catastrophe for the Thai People.”

Several more articles provide further examples about government-corporate doublespeak. Fortunately, the coin has two sides. The other side includes organized local peoples and supporting organizations, pushing forward their own social and environmental agenda.

For instance, at the end of April this year, the Brazilian Landless Peasants Movement and Via Campesina organized an International Meeting on Monoculture Eucalyptus Plantations to strategise on joint actions against the advance of monoculture tree plantations and pulp mills in the South.

Also in April, Uruguayan small farmer organizations, NGOs and other social organizations from the four corners of the country launched a National Initiative for the Suspension of Monoculture Tree Plantations.

In Uganda, the government finally decided in May to drop its intention of giving away the Mabira Central Forest Reserves for commercial sugar cane growing. This decision was the result of strong demonstrations –where five people were killed and many more injured- from local people against forest destruction.

In Costa Rica, several organizations are promoting family-centred forest restoration based on documented experience carried out in the country, in opposition to the monoculture tree plantation model implemented until now.

In sum, governments simply talk about forest conservation, while people take real action to protect their forests and environment. The explanation for the former is profit. This is made clear in the article on the Finnish Botnia pulp mill in Uruguay: Why is EU public money being used? As the author says, “the answer to the question is simple: EU public money is going to Botnia because it benefits European industry.” The explanation for peoples’ struggles to protect their forests is equally simple and exemplified in the Congo article: "You will understand why we are called People of the Forest….When the forest dies, we shall die."

- “Avoided deforestation" policies and indigenous peoples and local communities: urgent debate needed on potential social impacts

More and more Northern and Southern governments, bilateral development agencies, multilateral development banks and big conservation NGOs are arguing that “countries” should be compensated for protecting the “carbon reservoirs” in standing forests. Under some plans, Southern governments’ forest protection plans would generate pollution rights that the governments could then sell to Northern industries to allow them to continue business as usual.

Almost all enthusiasts for such “avoided deforestation” (AD) policies reject the “project-by-project” approach to forest conservation. Under the AD policy option, referred to as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED) under official UNFCCC terminology, they want national or regional schemes that include large areas of forest. This, they say, would reduce the cost of monitoring: it’s much cheaper to measure deforestation from a satellite than visit lots of different project sites on the ground.

AD proponents also say that crediting “countries” as the agent responsible for saving forests would help promote a more comprehensive approach to national forest policies that could help prevent forest protection in one place leading to deforestation elsewhere in the same country.

Yet in all the excitement over AD, relatively little attention has been paid to the social risks and challenges -- or the potential impact on indigenous peoples and local communities whose livelihoods, cultures and well-being depend on forests. Forest movements and activists will need to engage in this debate, because of the big impact it could have on their ancestral forests and their fundamental rights and freedoms.

Some governments, most notably that of Brazil, propose that economic incentives for developing countries to protect forests should come from a specialised international fund created from public money from donor countries. In the UK government’s Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change published in early 2007, ex-World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern recommended that “…international support for action by countries to prevent deforestation should start as soon as possible…” through pilot schemes, which “…could be based on funds with voluntary contributions from developed countries, businesses and NGOs”. Stern suggests that public funds for AD could be targeted where they can provide most benefit at the country level, and could be used to tackle poverty reduction and underlying drivers of deforestation.

On the other hand, big conservation NGOs, so-called “carbon finance” and “carbon forestry” companies, together with some Southern governments like Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea, argue that public funds will never provide enough finance to ensure adequate and sustained finance for avoided deforestation. This group maintains that only a global trade in pollution credits would deliver sufficient funding for effective RED schemes. Advocates of trading in AD include an increasing number of carbon finance companies consultants who are eager to make big money from the forest carbon trade, such as EcoSecurities. These companies and entrepreneurs, together with many forest scientists, large NGOs and the World Bank, are now engaged in intense lobbying of donor governments to persuade them to give legal and institutional support to global forest carbon markets.

The World Bank backs a mix of public and market-based approaches to forest carbon finance. The Bank is now moving fast to try to capture any new global funds for avoided deforestation as a central part of its controversial proposal for a new Global Forest Alliance (GFA) with large conservation NGOs, like the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and WWF. Within the GFA framework, the Bank plans to pilot avoided deforestation schemes in five tropical countries under its proposed Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which it is asking the G8 group of industrialised countries to back at their next summit in Germany in June 2007.

Meanwhile, the Bank is already inviting the governments of Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and Indonesia, and regional bodies in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to fund forest protection through avoided deforestation. In May 2007, the World Bank was seeking to persuade these countries to sign agreements to limit carbon emissions from deforestation by 2009 or 2010, in return for US$250 million in investment.

Yet once again, it seems that World Bank, government and NGO plans to combat deforestation at the national level, as well as their proposals for including conservation in the global carbon economy, are being developed with little or no informed participation of potentially-affected forest peoples. At a recent meeting in Oxford, the Forest Peoples Programme was shocked to hear from forestry consultants that human rights and indigenous peoples’ concerns are a “side issue” and a “distraction” from forest protection policies. They concede that some indigenous peoples might unfortunately get “trashed”, but this may be a price that has to paid to achieve the greater goal of slowing climate change!

Yet any rapid expansion and implementation of AD schemes without the participation of forest peoples and without due regard to rights and social issues risks repeating the past mistakes of failed global initiatives to tackle tropical deforestation (such as the Tropical Forest Action Plan (TFAP) run by the FAO and the World Bank in the 1980s). [i]

Supporters of the new “avoided deforestation” schemes argue that compensation rates must be higher than the returns from other land uses which directly cause deforestation (such as oil palm expansion, industrial tree plantations, conversion to agriculture, hydrocarbon extraction, etc.). According to current estimates, governments could earn hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars a year for not clearing forests.

Such sums, could easily be large enough to create incentives for state forest and protected area authorities to throw people they consider “encroachers” out of forests. In their scramble to receive compensation payments by showing satellites overhead that forest clearance and burning has stopped, over-zealous forest protection agencies may be tempted to evict shifting cultivators and to cordon off forests completely against any use by traditional forest dwellers and other forest-dependent communities.

One result could be increased state control over forests; unjust targeting of indigenous and marginal peoples as the “drivers” of deforestation; violations of customary land and territorial rights; state and NGO zoning of forest lands without informed participation of forest dwellers; unequal imposition of the costs of forest protection on indigenous peoples and local communities through unequal and abusive community contracts; land speculation, land grabbing and land conflicts (made worse by competing claims on AD compensation); corruption and embezzlement of international funds by national elites; and increasing inequality and potential conflict between recipients and non-recipients of AD funds.

Some proponents of the new AD schemes, like the government of India, want afforestation and natural regeneration schemes to be compensated for as well as forest conservation. This idea is called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Others point out that to include reforestation schemes would raise all the same scientific and social problems that are associated with much-criticised carbon offset projects involving tree planting. [ii] It would also raise the question of what counts as “degradation”. Other influential AD supporters, like Brazil, thus maintain that global schemes must be confined to deforestation only (RED).

One problem with AD is that it requires measuring how much forest has been saved above a “baseline” of a “business-as-usual” rate of deforestation. That rate, of course, will be determined by a small circle of technical experts – with all the scope for intellectual corruption that implies.

Another problem afflicts schemes that include carbon trading. Some indigenous peoples’ organisations and social justice campaigners have questioned the ethics, politics and science of trading carbon stocks on the international market. [iii] These critics reject the idea that the climate problem can or should be addressed by allowing Northern industrial and corporate polluters to buy the “right” to continue polluting from the governments of heavily-forested Southern countries. They also dismiss the notion that the value of forests can be reduced to the monetary value of their carbon stocks, and stress that for their people the non-monetary cultural and spiritual values of their forest are of utmost importance and must be respected. They maintain that trade in carbon credits is impractical because it does not tackle the root cause of climate change (continuing and increasing emissions from fossil fuels). [iv]

Then there is the question of property and sovereignty: can foreign buyers “purchase” carbon stocks in standing forests that do not belong to the state or individual private property owners, but are rather held collectively under customary laws and aboriginal title? How would prior consent be obtained in these cases and on what terms?

Some people argue that with a public fund, many of the scientific, legal and ethical problems associated with a global carbon market could be avoided –though not the essential issue of allowing polluters to continue to pollute. Moreover, public and ODA funds for large-scale global and national AD schemes would still imply social risks. To this, proponents of the idea argue that if these risks can be eliminated or reduced, then AD policies and increased funding outside carbon trading may offer important opportunities for indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. However, little mention is made about the full respect of their rights or regarding their priorities and decision-making capacity in the design and implementation of avoided deforestation policies.

In case this type of schemes were to be implemented, AD policies should at least include solid and locally-enforceable guarantees to uphold human rights and address equity, governance and rights issues. Vague promises that all these issues will be dealt with through future certification of RED forests, as advocated by many conservation NGOs and the World Bank, are not good enough. Secure guarantees of respect for forest peoples’ rights must be established before governments and international donors and multilateral development banks plough ahead with RED schemes.

As a first step, it is essential that indigenous peoples and other grassroots movements are fully involved at the international and national levels in the debate about the pros and cons of avoided deforestation in global climate policies.

Who will decide which forest areas will or will not be in national AD schemes? Who will decide land tenure and ownership rights to the forests included in avoided deforestation programmes? Who determines which forests are eligible for REDD payments and how? How should protected forests be used? What activities would be permitted and which ones would be prohibited in protected forests in order to receive AD compensation? Who will receive compensation payments? Will such schemes really benefit local people?

This debate must start without delay if forest peoples are to avoid yet another round of top-down global and national forest policies that fail to take their rights and interests into account. Forest movements must organise to debate the issues, challenges and opportunities as soon as possible so they can engage governments and policy-makers. Without this, their rights are unlikely to be respected in the design and implementation of future avoided deforestation policies.

This article was compiled by Tom Griffiths, Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), e-mail: tom@forestpeoples.org. For more information on some of the social issues raised by global policies on avoided deforestation, see the article Seeing RED: Avoided deforestation and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities available at www.forestpeoples.org

[i] See Colchester, M and Lohmann, L (1990) The Tropical Forestry Action Plan: What Progress? WRM and The Ecologist, Penang and Sturminster Newton.

[ii] WRM (2000) Climate Change Convention: Sinks that stink WRM, Montevideo

[iii] International Forum of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change (2000) “Second International Indigenous Forum on Climate Change - Declaration of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change” The Hague, November 11-12,2000;

[iv] See especially, Lohmann, L (2006) “Carbon Trading: a critical conversation on climate change, privatisation and power” Development Dialogue No.48 (September 2006)

The Association of Ecologist Communities La Ceiba – Friends of the Earth Costa Rica (Asociación Comunidades Ecologistas La Ceiba- Amigos de la Tierra Costa Rica - COECOCEIBA- AT), which includes members from various social sectors (academics, professionals, ecologists and peasants), considers that it is time to creatively develop new models of forest cover restoration. It is time to give the opportunity to autochthonous reforestation models based on some of the basic principles that the country’s main natural ecosystem itself -the tropical forest- is silently teaching us. It is time to give an opportunity to the creativity and experience already existing in the communities and to try out models that are sounder in environmental terms and more participative and fair in social terms.

In this respect, they highlight the experience of the Diaz Alvarado family and its ancient pineapple grove in the Northern Zone of Costa Rica, combining natural regeneration enriched with sowing and/or management of valuable forest species and offering productive opportunities integrated in a complementary manner into peasant economy. This type of experience generates good quality environmental services for the whole of Costa Rican society.

Twenty-two years ago the Diaz Alvarado family (Doña Eduviges, Don Felix, their two daughters and one son) arrived at Castelmare de Saíno de Pital, a small community located in the middle of the warm and humid San Carlos plain, on the banks of the Tres Amigos River, one of the San Carlos River’s main tributaries in the Northern Zone of Costa Rica. The average rainfall in this zone is between three and four metres, distributed regularly throughout the year and in general, the soils are medium to poorly fertile, clayed and red in colour.

At the time of their arrival, their plot of land consisted of some 9 hectares of wooded grazing land, crossed by a small stream along which grew a small protective forest. Some enormous almond trees (Dipteryx panamensis) had survived together with a few older trees, remnants of the primary forest. During the first few years, the family transformed the grazing land into a pineapple grove where laurel trees (Cordia alliodora), coral oaks (Terminalia amazonia), manga larga (Laetia procera) and other species that sprouted naturally were allowed to grow.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring sites, some big companies started acquiring land for vast monoculture tree plantations. First of all, these companies planted laurel and eucalyptus, and later after the tremendous failure of the monoculture plantations of these two species, they went on to plant gmelina (Gmelina arborea), framire (Terminalia ivorensis) and acacia (Acacia mangium). On several occasions, company technicians and the Diaz Alvarado family had clashes, some times because the companies wanted to evict them from their property, other times because the companies filled the streams with strippings or simply because, together with other neighbours, the family protested and lodged complaints about the destruction caused in the forest by sowing monoculture tree plantations.

Some years later the Castelmare community had become smaller, the land was in the hands of a few people and the vast monoculture tree plantations made it impossible for the community to develop in the way peasant settlers had done in other areas of the region. The absence of good roads making it possible to transport products from the plots to sell them and the lack of a school for their children obliged the family to move to Saíno de Pital, a small village but with some better living conditions. It was 1984 and the family decided to keep the plot and launch a forestry project to show the technicians in the area who were planting trees as a monoculture, how to produce timber in a natural way and without so much damage. At the same time, this enabled the family to “save” for the future. Labour was available in the family to complement the forestry project and in spite of the fact that transportation to the plot from their new location was not easy – nine kilometres along a poor road with no public transport – the family kept its project going.

At that time, they started visiting the plot twice a week and maintained the pineapple grove. Between them, they started planting saplings that they took from neighbouring forests and cared for those that germinated naturally at the site. As they maintained the pineapple grove they occasionally did some tilling, always respecting the small trees, particularly the commercial species or those of some value in terms of precious woods or trees that contributed to wildlife.

Furthermore, as part of the maintenance tasks, a pruning programme was started to shape trees for timber. At the end of the nineties, they began a programme planting rare or endangered species and fruit trees in the clearings left by fast-growing, short-living pioneer species (i.e. the Trichospermum sp).

It is now over 20 years since the experiment started and on coming of age, it shows us some very interesting results in terms of diversity protection, support to recreation, self-esteem, education and peasant economy.

The Diaz Alvarado family’s forest shows a structure similar to any 15-20 year old secondary forest in the humid tropics of the Northern zone. Its canopy reaches some 25 metres and has a complete cover. In the unmanaged sectors, the understory is rich in plants of the Rubiaceae, Piperaceae, Heliconiaceae, Zamiaceae, Smilacaceae families and others. Together with the aforementioned plants in the understory, many saplings are developing: some are offspring of the large precious wood trees remnants from the primary forest still present along the banks of the stream. In the north section, the understory has been managed to allow for a combination of ancient pineapple plants, ornamental species, medicinal species, and saplings of slow-growing species.

As in other secondary forests in the same region, tree density is about 500 individuals per hectare, and the composition of their species is also similar.

According to the Diaz Alvarado family and to some of their neighbours, the stream that springs up in their plot has gradually increased its flow, leading us to think that groundwater regulation must have improved as the forest cover and the understory were consolidated in the protection area.

It is important to note that the aim of this forest is not timber production in the fastest way and through clearcutting. On the contrary, the restored forest was proposed as a complement to the family economy and the family intends to remove fallen timber or the trees that have reached maturity following a management plan in which every year some mature trees will be removed during the dry season. In this way, forest conservation over time is guaranteed.

The experience – not unique, there are probably similar cases in different tropical regions – has the merit of responding to the monoculture tree plantation model that has destroyed forests, concentrated vast stretches of land in a few hands, dried out wetlands and been one of the main causes of the loss of biodiversity in the Northern zone of Costa Rica.

Excerpted and adapted from: “La restauración ecologista del bosque tropical. Una alternativa de reforestación ambientalmente sana y socialmente justa y participativa”, COECOCEIBA- Amigos De La Tierra, Costa Rica, e-mail: licania@racsa.co.cr, http://www.coecoceiba.org

In the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo lies the large, dense, mountainous Ituri rainforest, which spans approximately 70,000 square kilometers. It is an area rich in natural resources. Tropical timber is harvested (legally and illegally) on a large scale. Minerals such as gold and coltan (used in mobile phones) are exploited intensively after the trees have been cut down.

The Ituri forest is home to one of the oldest populations of Africa: the Efe, also know as Mbuti Pygmies. The Efe’s habitat originally took up a wider part of Africa but they are now confined to the Ituri forest since they have been pushed back by the unprecedented influx of immigrants caused by the civil war in DRC and the political crises in nearby Rwanda. Refugee camps with tens of thousands of displaced persons are not uncommon in the East of Ituri forest, along the road Beni-Komanda-Bunia.

In the early 1990s, European and Malaysian commercial logging companies moved into the region, causing devastating outbreaks of malaria, engaging in illegal poaching which rendered game scarce, and introducing money, tobacco, and marijuana, all of which left the Efe sick, hungry, and disheartened.

The Efe are hunter-gatherers and live of limited catches of small game since big game such as buffalo and elephant has been prohibited a long time ago. They hunt with flash and arrow (sometimes with poison) and hunting nets. Efe families live in dome-shaped huts made from leaves. Their culture is closely connected to their 'polyphonic’ music and dance, which everybody is involved in. Besides their voices they use musical instruments such as drums, flutes, feet bells, trumpets (molimo), mouth bows, thumb pianos, etc. Their original bark clothes (mulumba) painted with beautiful abstract patterns are still created and used sometimes, but western clothing is increasingly pushing away this tradition.

After the Belgian colonization, the dense tropical rainforest was hardly penetrable by absence of good roads. Huge mud holes blocked all transport occasions. Getting stocked in the mud was guaranteed. This impenetrable situation kept the habitat of the Efe untouched.

In the last decade their traditional way of life has been much disturbed as commercial forestry is cutting deeper and deeper into the diminishing rainforest, restricting and reducing the food supply for the Efe Pygmies. Since mid 2006, rehabilitation and reconstruction of roads has enabled logging contractors to enter more easily the forest --what is equal to the destruction of the natural habitat of the Efe Pygmy People.

With their homeland and livelihood ravaged by war and big corporations in search of business, the Efe are caught in a blind alley that puts their life under siege.

On the new road Komanda – Beni, near Idohu, you can see Efe Pygmies carrying the boards by 2 people, on their heads, with a weight of approximately 70 to 80 kg fresh and wet timber. They get paid some US$ 5 per board per team for 7 km transport. One team can do this once a day. The payment is done direct after reception of the timber transport. Some villagers use their bicycles for transport. Sometimes a single villager carries his load on his own, his useless bow and arrows in his left hand... hunting is impossible: the noise of chainsaws made the game to disappear.

This commercial activity is closing the economic circle: heavy transport labour – low payment - buying food - no money left – next day the same: no profit at all and the forest is disappearing. As the old and wise Efe Moke once said: "You will understand why we are called People of the Forest….When the forest dies, we shall die."

After 12 years, powerful multinational mining companies have been unable to bend peasant resolve in the zone of Intag, Canton Cotacachi, Imbabara Province in the northwest of Ecuador.

This nightmare began in 1991, when an anonymous Japanese man started to travel around the area in his vehicle. Nobody knew exactly what he was doing. Towards 1995, it became known that he was “prospecting for mines” that is to say, he was looking for minerals in the subsoil.

With this exploration, what had been picturesque about this Japanese man became a harmful nuisance. Because of the drilling and the contaminating substances poured into the watercourses, the locals started to feel noxious effects on the health of children who bathed in the rivers, the cattle started getting sick and other mishaps took place. The local population started to organize itself, mainly promoted by the need to obtain information on what was happening behind their backs. This was during the times of Bishi Metals, a Japanese multinational company that remained in the memory of the peasants as child’s play compared to what was to come later.

It was in this context that Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag – (Ecological Defence and Conservation of Intag - DECOIN) was born, a grass-roots organization coordinating educational and environmental protection programmes including a programme to protect water basins and the establishment of the Junin Community Reserve in addition to many other environmental and social initiatives.

Since the entry of the multinational mining companies the inhabitants of the communities of Cerro Pelado, Junín, El Triunfo, Villaflora, Cuaraví, La Armenia, Cazarpamba and Barcelona – those most affected by the mining project – have been ratifying their decision to prevent the companies’ activities on their land. So far, the mining companies have been unable to start mining activities proper, as the concessions are located within the Junin Community Reserve, an area of primary forest of enormous biological value located in the buffer zone of the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, one of the most important reserves in Ecuador. Furthermore, these cloud forests are part of the Choco bioregion and are the Tropical Andes hotspot, the most candescent hotspot of the world’s 34 most important hotspots. This reserve is protected with great zeal by the communities.

The history of resistance against mining in Intag cannot be conceived without other organizational pillars, in addition to a series of positive events. One of these was the election in 1996 of the economist, Auki Tituaña, a charismatic indigenous leader, as Mayor of Cotacachi. The Mayor promoted a really participative political process, which among other things, enabled the promulgation, by initiative of the inhabitants of Intag, of a Municipal Ordinance which declared Cotacachi an Ecological Canton (the text is available at: accionecologica.org/descargas/ areas/otros/documentos/ordenanza.doc). This is a unique regulation in Latin America and perhaps in the world, aimed at protecting natural resources and in this way placing an obstacle to mining.

Many situations arose, but what finally ended Bishi Metals’ days in Intag was the seizure of its camp by the community inhabitants who were going to be affected by the mining project: guards were evicted, the company’s belongings were removed and handed over to the Mayor in custody, the mining camp was lifted and what was left over was burnt. This led to a court case against some of those participating in the action, who were denounced, not by the company which more or less reluctantly seemed to accept the peoples’ will, but by the Ecuadorian State, that is to say the Ministry of Enery and Mines. As they were never able to demonstrate guilt on the part of the peasants over these actions, following a lengthy legal process the case was dismissed in 1999.

At this point it should be noted that in Ecuador, the Mining Law presently in force was funded by the World Bank through a Project for Mining Development and Environmental Control (PRODEMINCA). During the execution of this project, a series of irregularities were committed vis-à-vis the World Bank’s environmental standards, denounced at the time by DECOIN. The result of this complaint was an investigation into the project by the same Bank.

The areas of the mining concession in Intag were known as: Golden 1, Golden 2 and Magdalena 1. These consist of 7,000 hectares of mining concessions which, following the departure of Bishi Metals, were acquired by the Canadian mining company Ascendant. Presently Ascendant has a total of 22,500 hectares in the Intag area.

According to the testimonials of the local inhabitants, with the appearance of this mining company in the Intag area the worst nightmare that had ever occurred in the region began. The worst consequence is the social conflict triggered by the offers made by community relations officers – intermediaries between the company and the communities by means of fictitious development organizations (first the Garcia Moreno Development Council - Consejo de Desarrollo de García Moreno - CODEGAM, followed by the Organization for Intag Development - Organización de Desarrollo de Intag- ODI) – leading to confrontations between relatives, friends and neighbours.

Mayor Tituaña addressed the company in an open letter (15 December 2004), giving details of their lack of compliance with the laws: “Since the initiation of the presence of Ascendant Exploration in our Canton, […] its officials have never informed us about their plans, nor have they requested the corresponding authorization to carry out their activities in our territory. Furthermore, the serious lack of consultation regarding your company’s mining project with communities that may potentially be affected is an inescapable violation of Ecuadorian constitutional rights, a violation that we will never let go unpunished […] the will of the communities has not been respected nor have the local development plans been prepared in a participative way among the canton’s social actors. Furthermore, threats […] that they will be killed have been received by our leaders fighting against mining”. One of the aspects that is strongly questioned is the validity of these mining concessions.

Complaints made by the inhabitants to Human Rights organizations include: the offer of money to the presidents of the communities in exchange for their signature in favour of mining; the presence of bodyguards and para-military troops strongly armed with pistols, tear-gas and bombs, who on various occasions have shot in the air above the community members; payments to attend meetings convened by the mining company; pressure on the participants to sign blanc sheets of paper; hiring of non-authorized outsourcing companies and; repeated invasion of private property.

The mining concession is located in an area inhabited by the settlers of five communities (some 150 families), that should be evicted by the project. Traditionally it has been hard for the communities to obtain title deeds for their possessions. They have difficulty in obtaining the documentation to be submitted and in justifying their rights over the land. A short while after the arrival of the mining companies, well-known land traffickers (people who professionally devote themselves to allocating themselves possessions and showing, with false documentation, their rights over these properties) have repeatedly attempted to take possession illegally and register lands located on or around the mining areas. They have managed to do so on some occasions in a matter of days thanks to the complicity of corrupt officials. They have also made illegal purchases within areas of the State Forestry Heritage or mining protection areas or even of lands that had already been sold to other people at a lower price. All these confusions have led the Anticorruption Commission (CCCC) to make an exhaustive survey that should finalize very shortly.

Since September 2006, the local communities have condemned the repeated and systematic attempts made by the mining companies to discredit and slander people and organizations that have taken up a position against mining. According to the Ecumenical Commission on Human Rights (CEDHU), one of the most aggressive ways in which these attempts have been made is through a campaign of systematic complaints against various leaders and peasants who have intervened following each attempt at entry to the mining concessions by the company staff or their followers.

Due to the sequence of events described above, resistance to mining in the zone has increased and today has the unanimous opposition of all the local governments in the region. Each one of the seven parochial governments in the Intag area and the Provincial government, in addition to the communities within the limits or adjacent to the mining concessions, have publicly expressed their opposition to the mining project.

In addition to resisting mining, the interesting organizational process that has taken place in the Intag area has provided an opportunity to improve organic coffee production, almost totally exported to Japan at an appropriate price, maintained in spite of market fluctuations. Other organized groups make handicrafts using sisal, hand embroidery, soaps made on the basis of Aloe Vera and other natural products. The Junin community, the centre of resistance, has a community tourism initiative, gathering most of the community families, and hosting an average of 650 tourists per year and generating significant benefits. Furthermore, a group of game-wardens has been set up who monitor environmental protection and the integrity of the primary forests, water and biodiversity.

Men, women, and young people have gathered in various organizations, each with definite aims. The process of resistance to mining has also led to a generation of proud women and men leaders, who are aware and prepared and who know their rights. The common position in the area is “No to Mining,” and this position is nonnegotiable. It is for the environment, water, life and future generations. It is for the cloud forest, the Rock Cock, the Spectacled Bear and thousands of other species.

On a political level, the process taking place in Ecuador is a door open to the definitive triumph of this process that has lasted for 12 long years. The dialogue is open. Much hope has been deposited in the Constitutional Assembly, although as Intag has explained “We cannot wait for the Constitutional Assembly, this is a daily struggle.” And neither are the economic interests dormant.

Late last year, Norconsult, a Norwegian consulting firm, won a US$1.5 million contract to supervise construction work of the Xeset 2 dam in the south of Laos. Norconsult won the contract, which is funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), without any competitive bidding.

Norconsult has plenty of experience of working on the Xeset River, having worked on the planning and construction of the 45 MW Xeset 1 dam, which was completed in 1991, with funding from Sweden, Norway, the Asian Development Bank and UNDP. During the dry season, the Xeset 1 dam produces virtually no electricity, because of the low water flow in the Xeset River.

Eight years after Xeset 1 was completed, Norconsult was hired again to carry out a feasibility study for the Xeset 2 and Xeset 3 dams. Norad provided US$1.8 million towards the cost of the study. The Xeset 2 and Xeset 3 dams are upstream of the Xeset 1 dam and by transferring water from nearby rivers into the Xeset River, will increase the amount of water flowing through the turbines of the Xeset 1 dam. As with the Xeset 1 dam, most of the electricity from the 76 MW Xeset 2 dam is to be exported to Thailand.

Building more dams to attempt to solve problems with existing dams is obviously an attractive proposition to a dam building consulting firm such as Norconsult. But more dams means more rivers and fisheries destroyed and more local people's livelihoods destroyed.

Two years ago, Phetsavanh Sayaboulaven carried out a series of interviews with villagers in the area of the Xeset 2 dam. Almost all the people living in the area are indigenous, mainly belonging to the Jru (Laven) and Kouay ethnic groups. One villager told Phetsavanh, "We do not want them to build the dam. It will badly affect our land and the environment. The official compensation will not be adequate, just like in the case of the Houay Ho dam. But we dare not oppose government officials."

China plays a major role in the Xeset 2 dam. The Import-Export Bank of China is funding 80 per cent of the US$135 million project with the remainder coming from Electricité du Lao. The main contractor is the China North Industries Corporation (Norinco), a company better known as a major armaments manufacturer than as a builder of dams. Construction of the Xeset 2 dam is under way and completion is due in 2009.

When Norinco started building the dam, villagers started stealing. Iron bars, roofing tiles and large amounts of petrol disappeared from the construction site. Some villagers became rich very quickly. The theft could be seen as a form of resistance to the dam – or an attempt by villagers to make sure they would at least get some compensation. Lao people working for the Chinese construction firm helped villagers to steal petrol. Firing Lao workers made no difference because the people hired to replace them also helped the thieves. Things turned violent when villagers killed a Chinese worker who tried to stop them from stealing petrol.

Probably in an attempt to cool down the situation at the construction site, the Lao government made sure that villagers received some compensation. Recent research in Laos indicates that villagers in the immediate area of the construction site have received a total of about US$150,000 in compensation for lost land and lost coffee plants.

But villagers so far unaffected by the construction activities have not received anything. More than 12,500 villagers living along the Tapoung River will face seriously reduced water flows when water is diverted to the Xeset 2 reservoir. These villagers do not know whether they will receive any compensation or how it will be calculated if they do.

Villagers use water from the Tapoung River for dry season rice cultivation. They farm the riverbanks and land next to the river, growing a wide range of crops. Many wild plants grow along the Tapoung River, including edible plants and medicinal plants. Fish, shrimp, crabs and snails are an important source of protein for local people. The river also provides the main source of drinking water for many villages during the dry season. “If they build the dam and stop the water from flowing in this river, I will be very sad,” an old woman told Phetsavanh. “The river has been feeding me since childhood and into my old age.”

When Norconsult decided, in 1999, that the Xeset 2 and 3 dams were feasible, its consultants knew that their company stood to benefit through future contracts from this decision. Norconsult's decision was challenged four years later when an Asian Development Bank-funded study determined that the Xeset 2 and 3 dams were “not viable”. Norconsult declined to comment when I asked how come its consultants reached the opposite conclusion.

The perverse situation on the Boloven Plateau is that a Norwegian consulting firm is benefiting from Norwegian “aid”, a Chinese construction firm is benefiting from Chinese “aid”, and Lao villagers are left to pay the costs of destroyed rivers and livelihoods.

Uganda has witnessed growing protests in recent weeks over government plans to give over 7,100 hectares of Mabira Forest, a nature reserve since 1932, to SCOUL for sugarcane growing. Razing the forest could devastate a fragile environment, sparking soil erosion, drying up the climate and removing a buffer against pollution for Lake Victoria. Technical, professional and expert advice against the project as well as public protests culminated in the resignation of the Board and senior technical staff of the National Forestry Authority (NFA). The new Board, appointed in December, 2006, is in the process of approving more forest give-aways for commercial purposes such as Kitubulu in Entebbe, Buyaga (Lyantonde), Mpanga (Fort Portal), Nebbi, Arua, Ntungamo, Kitgum and Bobi, among others.

Ugandans living near the Mabira Forest fear collapse of their way of life. "It is everything: firewood, charcoal, herbal medicine, edible fruits, timber, it catches rain and fills rivers. We cannot live without it," said Haruna Salongo, 48.

“Mabira Forest is part of our heritage and our children's future. Mabira Forest is a tropical hardwood forest which is proposed to be cut down for the production of sugar in Uganda. The forest is one of the most biodiverse forests remaining in Africa. It also has added value for the communities that inhabit it and surround it. The value of the forest to Uganda and her people is beyond the values of the trees, but it is also a frequented tourism site for birdwatching, forest walks, and other activities; it has cultural and historical values; it significantly impacts the environment as a natural water filteration system and a natural regulator of global climate”, expressed members of the Save Mabira Crusade (SMC), a network of several individuals, NGOs, civic leaders, religious, cultural and academic institutions, political organisations and local communities that have come together in a bid to stop the proposed give-away of Mabira and other forest reserves in Uganda.

As opposition to the sugar plantation grew, with the local press saying 80 percent of parliamentarians would vote against it, President Museveni has dug his heels in. “Increased sugar production would boost jobs, export earnings and tax revenue - essential if Uganda is to "have money to police and protect the environment", Mr Museveni says. Mabira residents are sceptical of promises of jobs, alluding to the people of Bugala Island on Lake Victoria, who were persuaded to give part of their pristine rainforest to a private Kenyan palm oil company, Bidco, last year. Bidco planted 4,000 hectares of palm, mostly on land covered in forest that the company bulldozed, locals say. The state agreed to give Bidco 2,000 more hectares of forest land by lifting the protected status of a nature reserve, but this has been held up by public outcry. Residents say they lost vital resources like wood, medicines, fresh water, yet saw no employment or money.

"They promised a lot of things," said Joyce Nakirijja, 70, sitting in her farmyard on Bugala surrounded by banana plants. "Our grandchildren would have jobs and they would build new roads, schools and hospitals. It was a lie; we have dirt roads and the company imports workers from the mainland." Another problem, she said, was that monkeys rendered homeless by deforestation were raiding local crops.

On 12th May 2007 the leaders of SMC organized a demonstration against Mabira Forest Give-away. The demonstration which was supposed to be peaceful turned chaotic and five lives were lost, some property was destroyed, some people were injured and many of the leaders were arrested and detained after the demonstration. They are now facing various charges in the courts of law ranging from murder to participation in an “unlawful demonstration” – though the police had cleared the demonstration and given it a go-ahead. They will appear in court to answer charges against them on the 28th June and 26 July.

However, after so much pain there is good news! The Government of Uganda has announced on May 22 the drop of its intention to giving away the Mabira Central Forest Reserves for commercial sugar cane growing.

The struggle of the Ugandan people has rendered fruits for them and those to come.

Article based on: “Legal Questions Over Plan to Give Away Mabira Forest”, “Save Mabira Forest in Uganda”, “Mabira Forest Crusade – Court”, “Uganda Govt. Gives up Mabira Sale!”, NAPE, http://www.nape.or.ug/

- Brazil: Why landless women are opposed to monoculture eucalyptus plantations

The struggle between two agricultural projects has stepped up in Brazil. On the one hand, the agro-business project based on the concentration of vast stretches of land, on production for export, on large-scale production and on monoculture plantations, mainly of soybean, eucalyptus, and sugar cane. On the other, various Via Campesina social movements in Brazil defending Agrarian Reform, and supporting an agricultural model based on agro-ecology, production to strengthen the domestic market, family and peasant farming, diversified production, cooperation and a change in the technological and productive matrix.

This context gives us a basis on which to understand the struggle of Via Campesina women against the social and environmental impacts of monoculture eucalyptus production.

The action of two thousand women from Rio Grande do Sul on 8 March 2006 [see WRM Bulletin Nº 104] to draw the attention of Brazilian society and of the participants at the Second World Conference on Agrarian Reform placed on the agenda the risks of what we call “Green Deserts.”

From the standpoint of social movements, this broke away from the established model of the role of women in a process of change because it was a collective action, organized and headed by women – peasant women – in a conflict with one of the world’s largest transnational eucalyptus producing companies: the Aracruz Celulose Company. This company has an annual production of 2.4 million tons of bleached pulp.

During this action, over 10 million eucalyptus and pine seedlings were destroyed. From then on for society, the struggle for land took on a different nature: the struggle against transnational capital investing in agriculture.

As a result, women struggles stepped up all over the country in a one-day activity under the slogan of “Landless Women: struggling for food sovereignty and against agro-business.” This action gathered over fifteen thousand MST (Landless Peasant Movement) women and attracted the attention of society because of the nature of the complaints against the green desert, and the funding of transnational corporations by the Brazilian Government, mainly for the installation of new pulp-mills and ethanol factories in Brazil.

Our assessment is that women’s struggles against transnational corporations in agriculture, particularly regarding pulp, tend to be strengthened. Therefore, it is time to answer the question of what are the negative impacts of these corporations and of monoculture on farming and on women’s lives. For us women, the answer to the question is a way of opposing monoculture eucalyptus plantations for various reasons that we want to express and that give strength to our struggles.

1. We consider that the earth, water, seeds, air and forests are the basis of life and can never be commercialized.

2. We are going through a process of globalization of poverty, particularly among women and children and this is because transnational corporations have taken over our natural wealth, our territory, through the policies of international banks and institutions.

3. Monoculture eucalyptus plantations cause environmental destruction. Many of the chemicals used are destroying our biodiversity.

5. Pulp companies have taken over large properties and this contributes to land concentration in Brazil.

6. In Brazil, these same corporations have benefited from environmental legislation negotiated by many Brazilian governments.

8. We are going through a privatization and internationalization process of the Brazilian territory and its natural resources.

9. Human health particularly that of women and children, is endangered by the encroachment of the green desert, that destroys biodiversity, dries up rivers, increases contamination, pollutes the air and water and threatens our life.

Our struggle is to get the vast stretches of land used by these corporations allocated to the Agrarian Reform for the production of healthy food for self-sufficiency and the generation of income; to end latifundium large states and guarantee social justice in Brazilian rural areas; and to build up our country’s food sovereignty.

It is mainly to guarantee the restoration and preservation of biodiversity, forests, medicinal plants, local seeds, water, land, that are the peoples’ heritage at the service of humanity.

To our way of thinking, all public investment in science and technology and research must be for ecological peasant agriculture.

We want respect among the ethnic, religious, cultural diversities, in gender equity and cooperation for the preservation of natural wealth and in production aimed at covering people’s needs, not capital needs.

We demand that the governments concern themselves over negative socio-economic, territorial and environmental impacts caused by agro-business, and in particular by the so-called “Green Desert.”

Motivated by this struggle and sure of victory, we the Landless Women of the MST on the occasion of Mother’s Day have prepared a letter entitled: “Letter From the Landless Mothers” (http://www.mst.org.br/mst/pagina.php?cd=3506), calling on all women around the world “to struggle tirelessely against the neoliberal system that conceives food, water, land, people's knowledge and women's bodies as a commodity.”

We invite you all to raise our hands, our tools and our conscience … to unite against those who exploit land, life, and our labour. We are standing vigilant and carving night and day the fertility and rebelion that is born from the guts of the earth.

By Lourdes Vicente, MST Gender Sector and national coordination, e-mail: genero@mst.org.br

At the end of April this year, the Brazilian Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST) was host at its Florestan Fernandes National School (Guararema, Sao Paulo) to almost 80 members of social movements and organizations from South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe attending the International Meeting on Monoculture Eucalyptus Plantations. The aim of this meeting was to define an agenda for joint action against the advance of monoculture tree plantations and pulp mills at global Southern level.

The meeting was the result of a strategic decision by the network of Via Campesina International movements to identify the monoculture model as one of the main threats to food sovereignty on a local, regional, and world level.

One of the first conclusions arising from the debates and testimonials presented was the need to understand this phenomenon as a combination of financial and corporate policies, policies of United Nations technical bodies such as FAO, and government policies with the common denominator in their concrete application of territorial control for business purposes and the destruction of natural resources.

The enemy is not the eucalyptus tree per se, but the general model imposed. This