OUR
VIEWPOINT
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The high cost of excessive paper consumption
An
analysis of environmental destruction processes usually leads
to the identification of a series of causes, which can be classified
as either direct or underlying causes. For example, one of the
direct causes of the destruction of forests is their conversion
to monoculture plantations of soybeans (Brazil, Paraguay), oil
palm trees (Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Colombia),
pine trees (Chile) or eucalyptus trees (Brazil, Ecuador). Yet
behind this easily identifiable cause there are others – the underlying
causes – that ultimately determined and enabled this conversion.
There
may be a number of underlying causes, which can also be interrelated:
the building of highways that gave the companies involved access
to the forests; the loans from multilateral financial institutions
that made it possible to build these highways; the pressure exerted
by the International Monetary Fund to increase exports to pay
off external debts; the assistance provided by the FAO and other
“cooperation” agencies to promote these monocultures; and the
promotion of agrofuels by the European Union, among others.
But
almost all environmental destruction processes share a common
underlying cause: excessive consumption. There are countless examples
of this fact. The social and environmental destruction caused
by industries like oil, mining, logging and shrimp farming have
been amply documented. While the products of these industries
are consumed in many countries, the bulk of consumption is concentrated
in a small number of them: the United States, Japan and the member
states of the European Union, to name the most obvious ones. This
consumption thus constitutes the common underlying cause of the
destruction of the lands and livelihoods of a great many communities
around the world.
In
the case of paper and paperboard, worldwide consumption has already
long surpassed the threshold of sustainability. Nevertheless,
the industry that benefits from this consumption plans to increase
it even further. Contrary to the paper companies’ advertising
claims, this rise in consumption is not aimed at satisfying people’s
real paper needs, but rather at increasing the use of paper and
paperboard packaging, which accounts for over 50% of total production.
Therefore, this increase will not involve printing more books
or textbooks, but rather the invention
of new “needs” for disposable products (such as paper cups, tablecloths
and napkins), which will be used only once before they are added
to the mountains of garbage in the wealthy countries.
This
level of paper and paperboard consumption requires a steady supply
of vast quantities of abundant, homogenous and cheap raw material.
This is why the paper industry initially turned to a seemingly
inexhaustible source of raw material: the forests of Europe, Japan,
the United States and Canada. In time, however, this source of
raw material began to run out, due to excessive consumption. The
industry then turned to the establishment of huge monoculture
plantations of fast-growing trees (eucalyptus, acacia, pine),
which resulted in the destruction of forests and grasslands in
countries of the South (and even in some regions in the North).
These plantations, which continue to expand, are now becoming
the main source of raw material for paper production. More recently,
the industry has also begun to move pulp production to the South
– close to the tree plantations – to supply its paper plants located
near the main markets: the high-consumption North.
Moving
pulp production to the South is aimed at several objectives. The
first is lower costs, thanks to access to cheap land (where the
trees also grow ten times faster than in the North), cheap labour,
state support, and lax environmental controls. The second objective,
linked to the first, is increased production of cheap pulp in
order to create new paper consumption “needs”. Achieving these
two objectives makes it possible to achieve the industry’s third
and most important objective: increased profits.
Nevertheless,
these economically “cheap” costs for the industry are extremely
costly in social and environmental terms for those who suffer
the consequences. This is why numerous local communities in Africa,
Asia and Latin America are fighting back against the spread of
monoculture tree plantations and pulp mills, working in coordination
with organizations and processes in the North. To contribute to
these efforts, we are including a special section on the subject
of paper consumption in this edition of the WRM bulletin. We hope
it will be useful for everyone – in both the South and the North
– who is involved in this struggle.
index
WASTEFUL PAPER CONSUMPTION: A POLITICAL
ISSUE
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Appeal from literature and journalism
for socially and environmentally clean paper
“Paper
is a wonderful material, which for centuries has served for a
fertile exchange of ideas among human beings. For us all who use
it as an essential vehicle to share what we think, imagine, dream,
know or believe we know, paper is a wonderful tool that we want
to be able to continue using ... but not at the expense of people
and the environment.
As
people who live in this reality, we are aware of the serious injustices
and inequalities - social and environmental – arising from the
world production and consumption of paper.
In
addition to the destruction of forests for making paper, now forests
and grasslands are being replaced by vast monoculture tree plantations,
destroying communities, water, soil and all life. Both the destruction
of forests and the installation of monoculture tree plantations
– occupying food-producing land – bring about enormous damage
to the local population, who see their rights violated, their
environment destroyed and their way of life irremediably affected.
The
destructive cycle is continued with pulp production, in which
fewer and increasingly larger companies take possession of land
where they plant trees, of water that their trees and mills consume
and contaminate, of political power acquired through their billion
dollar investments, and of the environment that they destroy in
the regions where they are installed.
To
destruction are added inequities. The enormous volume of paper
produced from this pulp feeds a “world market” centred on rich
and powerful peoples’ consumption. The average figures (that
hide enormous inequalities on a national level), show that consumption
per capita is more than ten times higher in the countries of the
North than in those of the South.
To
inequity is added excessive consumption. Only as an example it
is enough to see the mountains of paper and cardboard growing
night after night in the streets of New York to understand that
most of the pulp production does not end up as books, newspapers
or journals, but simply as trash. In general terms, at least
half the pulp produced goes to the production of paper and cardboard
for wrapping and packaging, most of it totally unnecessary.
We
do not want to have anything to do with paper produced in this
way. We do not want to become accomplices to the social and environmental
destruction this implies. We do not trust certifications schemes
that have given their seal of “sustainability” to these same monoculture
plantations whose impacts we know so well.
This
situation has already reached intolerable limits and its solution
requires policies discouraging unnecessary consumption, promoting
a rational and socially appropriate use of paper, ensuring an
equitable use among countries and within countries, facilitating
the development of diversified models on a smaller scale for the
production of pulp, respecting both people and the environment.
The
above is perfectly feasible and no technical limitations of any
kind exist to prevent it from becoming a reality. The only
and real obstacle is the economic interest of large companies,
whose objective is to continue making profits by imposing
an increasingly large and unlimited consumption of paper. The
time has come to tell them that this is enough.
We
are therefore appealing to those, who like us want to be able
to continue communicating through this marvellous material called
paper, to join in this struggle for a socially and environmentally
clean paper.”
Victor Bacchetta, Nnimmo Bassey, Jordi
Bigues, Elizabeth Bravo, Ricardo Carrere, Antonio Franco, Mempo
Giardinelli, François Houtart, John Karumbizda, Kintto Lucas,
George Monbiot, Edgar Morin, Guillemo Núñez, Wale Okediran, Ike
Okonta, Noel Rajesh, Ana Cristina Rossi,
Vandana Shiva
WRM
fully supports this initiative and we invite writers, poets and
journalists who agree with its content, to strengthen this appeal
by signing on to it. By adding your signature you will be joining
in this struggle for a socially and environmentally clean paper
and amplifying the voices of those who say that “this is enough.”
At the same time, we invite everyone who shares these views to
spread this initiative to other writers, poets and journalists
who might be willing to endorse it.
Those
who would like to adhere to the appeal can
do it at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/writers.html
index
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Short video on the impacts of excessive paper
consumption
We have produced a 10 minute video (in English)
on the impacts of the paper industry. We hope that the video will
be a useful tool for campaigning against excessive paper consumption
and for linking those campaigns with the struggles of local communities
confronting the expansion of pulpwood plantations and pulp mills
in the South.
The video can be accessed at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Paper_Consumption.html
index
Paper
is a material many people in industrialised countries take entirely
for granted. Millions of trees are felled,
pulped, made into paper, printed on, then binned without even
being read. Why is it that we treat
cotton, linen and other fabrics made from plant fibres with great
respect – laundering them carefully, even mending them when they
tear – yet we toss barely used sheets of paper into the rubbish
bin that are pulped from trees, the oldest living organisms on
the planet?
Part
of the reason is because so much of the paper we encounter is
given to us for free, often without us asking for it. We consume
paper mostly as a side-effect of buying other commodities that
we really want: magazines, newspapers and books are sources of
information, packaging keeps the goods we desire clean or unsquashed,
and so on. Comparatively little of our paper consumption is the
result of buying paper products directly; notebooks and toilet
rolls are the exception rather than the rule. Junk mail, catalogues
and free newspapers encourage us to perceive paper as a material
with little or no value; you wouldn’t give out 4 million free
newspapers a day in London alone if this stuff was actually worth
anything, would you?
Paper’s
low value is coupled with a sense that it is a natural, safe and
fairly benign product. It is not exactly uranium, but the sheer
scale of this product makes it a serious environmental and social
issue. Paper consumption has quadrupled in the past four decades
and its production uses almost half of the planet’s industrially
logged timber, more water than any other industrial product and
as much energy per tonne as steel. Each tonne of paper requires
98 tonnes of other resources to manufacture and it is the single
biggest contributor to the waste stream of most consumer countries.
To reduce our impacts on the planet, using less paper is a good
place to start.
The
global pulp and paper industry is fuelled by money from those
who buy its products, and most of us are in the high consumption
countries of the global North, so our purchasing power is an important
lever for bringing about systemic change in the industry. Curtailing
demand for its products should reduce some of the money-supply
that is fuelling its expansion in the global South. At least bringing
about a reduction in demand for paper in Europe would help to
offset the growth in demand that is likely in other parts of the
world. If the fifth of the world’s population that currently use
most of the world’s paper were to cut their paper use by half,
that would create a lot of room for people whose current paper
use is very low to increase their consumption without a need for
any global expansion of paper production capacity.
Identifying
ways to cut paper use is easy. The new website
www.shrinkpaper.org invites individuals to make a pledge to
adopt their choice of several suggestions from using a cotton
handkerchief to shifting to an electronic filing system. Organisations
and businesses can easily save paper too. Many
already have already taken some steps in the right direction –
after all, they can save money by cutting their paper costs and
associated expenses (printing, postage, storage etc). Many companies
find they can swiftly reduce paper use by 30% or more by simple
changes to office practices.
So
if it is so easy, why has reducing paper consumption not been
at the heart of every forest campaign agenda for years? There
is a resistance to campaigning about reducing consumption, which
is expressed sometimes in terms of ‘not wanting to give the impression
that paper is worse than other materials like plastics’ or ‘not
wanting to make people feel guilty about their lifestyles’ or
‘worrying about seeming anti-growth’. As a result, many paper
campaigns appear to imply that using paper made from more sustainably
sourced fibres is what really matters, regardless of what quantity
is used. In reality, both fibre sources and quantity matter.
A
key question to ask is why our paper consumption keeps on increasing.
One suggestion is that it is rooted in cultural insecurity: our
lack of trust in each other leads society to red tape, bureaucracy
and ever expanding paper trails; our fear of contamination drives
excessive packaging; our worries about disease cause fetishistic
levels of tissue use for hygiene; our weakening cultural identities
make us susceptible to brand advertising. Perhaps, therefore,
promotion of paper saving could have beneficial cultural effects?
The
debate about global climate change means that for the first time
in my life, possibly since the start of the industrial revolution,
it is possible to talk in polite company about using less of something
– energy – without being considered anti-progress. This creates
a great opportunity to promote an ethos
that is positive about reduction, makes thrift a virtue and treats
‘less’ as a positive concept. I hope promoting paper saving will
contribute in a small way to promoting a cultural change that
values efficiency more than growth and gets people into mental
habits to perceive using less of things as a good thing to do.
By
Mandy Haggith,
hag@worldforests.org Her book Paper Trails: from
trees to trash, the true cost of paper, will be published
by Virgin Books on 3 July 2008.
index
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"Shrink": A new campaign to stop
the madness of paper over-consumption
Since
the early 1960s, world consumption of paper and paperboard has
increased by almost seven times. Every year, each person in the
UK gets through an average of more than 200 kilogrammes of paper.
In the US the figure is almost 300 kilogrammes. Global paper consumption
is massively inequitable. In Laos, for example, people use on
average less than one kilogramme of paper a year. Yet rural communities
in Laos are currently faced with the rapid expansion of eucalyptus
plantations to meet the global paper industry's demands for raw
material.
Much
of the paper consumption in the North is unnecessary. Office workers
in the UK print out 120 billion sheets of paper a year, enough
to create a pile more than 13,000 kilometres high. Two-thirds
of this paper ends in the bin before the end of the day. North
Americans get through 130 billion paper cups a year. The cups
are thrown away after 15 minutes of use.
This
month sees the launch of the "Shrink" campaign, which
targets paper waste. "Paper production causes a wide range
of harmful environmental impacts," explains Mandy Haggith,
the co-ordinater of the Shrink campaign. "By using less of
it we can reduce our pressure on forests, cut energy use and climate
change emissions, limit water, air and other pollution and produce
less waste. There are also negative social impacts and human rights
abuses linked to paper production, particularly in southern countries."
The "Shrink" project, which is backed by more than 50
European environmental NGOs, invites people to pledge to cut their
paper consumption on its website:
www.shrinkpaper.org.
The
website suggests several ways that people can reduce their paper
consumption. "We can stop using paper unnecessarily, like
information we can easily read on screen, or picking up paper
napkins we don't need," says Haggith. "We can find ways
to use less where paper is necessary, like printing double-sided
or re-using envelopes. And we can try to resist paper that is
thrust upon us by signing off junk mail, asking to be taken off
mailing lists and databases, refusing free news or leaflets and
avoiding highly packaged goods."
The
Shrink campaign also aims to persuade corporations and institutions
to reduce their paper use. "Organisations and companies can
try to understand where most paper is wasted, for example in office
systems, communication efforts or short-term packaging, and encourage
and reward staff to come up with ideas for saving paper: changing
the way people work so they make better use of paperfree technology,
finding more efficient designs for packing goods, and so on,"
says Haggith.
In
June 2008, the campaign wrote to the CEOs of 20 UK-based companies:
five catalogue companies; five supermarkets; five magazine publishers;
and five banks and insurance companies. "We chose them because
they represent four of the biggest paper-using sectors and are
a cross-section of those sectors with a diversity of policies
on paper," Haggith explains.
Each
of these sectors is, of course, not only responsible for wasting
paper. Supermarkets undermine farmers' livelihoods, destroy biodiversity
by demanding homogenous products, are responsible for an enormous
increase in food miles, build their massive shopping centres outside
town centers leading to increased car use and the destruction
of the countryside, and they finish off local shops by undercutting
prices. Banks finance all sorts of environmentally and socially
destructive projects. Magazines are financed through advertising,
a major driver of over-consumption. Catalogues exist only to promote
ever more consumption. But as Haggith points out, "The forests
and people who suffer the negative impacts of the paper industry
can't wait for all the other wrongs to be righted before we tackle
over-consumption of paper."
The
campaign aims to support the struggles of movements in the South
against the expansion of the pulp and paper industry there. "When
we ask colleagues in the global South what they think our priorities
should be in our work with the pulp and paper industry their answer
is that we should tackle over-consumption in rich countries and
try to reduce demand for the products of the industry," says
Haggith.
Last
year, Haggith travelled by train and boat from her home in Scotland
to Sumatra, Indonesia, to research her book "Paper Trails:
From Trees to Trash - The True Cost of Paper". "I was
horrified by how destructive our paper footprint is," she
says. "I met Indonesian villagers fighting a land-claim with
a paper company that is growing acacia on their community land
to make copy paper for sale in European and North American markets.
I asked them what I could do to help their fight, and they told
me to ask people in Europe to use less copy paper. To show real
solidarity with people struggling with multinational extractive
industries, it is not enough for us to shift our consumption from
one brand to some other, hopefully slightly less obnoxious, brand.
That only displaces the problem. Consuming differently is not
good enough, we need to consume less AND differently."
Pledge
to reduce your paper use here:
http://www.shrinkpaper.org/take-the-pledge.htm
By
Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
index
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The Confederation of European Paper
Industries' Looking-Glass World
"When
I use a word," said Humpty Dumpty to Alice, "it means
just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Welcome
to the Looking-Glass World. Not that of Lewis Carroll's
"Through the Looking-Glass", but that of the Confederation
of European Paper Industries. CEPI represents 800 pulp and paper
companies in 18 European countries, producing more than one-quarter
of world paper production. CEPI is, in its own words, "the
voice and public face of the pulp and paper industry in Europe,
representing its interests towards the European Institutions."
Based in Brussels, CEPI lobbies at EU level aiming to create industry
friendly legislation.
In
CEPI's Looking-Glass World, plantations are forests, monocultures
improve biodiversity and logging is good for the forests.
In
May 2008, CEPI held a side event during the Convention on Biodiversity
meeting in Bonn. Titled "Biodiversity protection, not just
words on paper but real best practices by the paper industry!"
it promised to show "how through best practices the European
Pulp and Paper industry supports forest biodiversity protection."
The
presentations, of course, had little to do with biodiversity protection.
The first presentation came from Hans Verkerk, of the European
Forest Institute (EFI). Verkerk looked at how much wood might
be removed from Europe's 29.2 million hectares of protected forests
if there were no restrictions on logging. His presentation was
based on an EFI study that he had co-authored. The study found
that forest protection in Europe resulted in a total of 68 million
cubic metres of wood being "unavailable" to the industry.
"Forest protection has a clear impact on the availability
of wood," Verkerk noted. Conversely, if the forest is less
well protected, the industry would have a lot more wood available.
Wisely, given that his study was funded by CEPI, Verkerk did not
tell us what the impact of this might be on the biodiversity of
the forests.
Paula
Guimaraes of Grupo Portucel Soporcel followed with a presentation
about "Intensive Forestry". She explained that her company
creates a mosaic at the landscape level. She illustrated this
with a slide of a scruffy landscape of clearcuts and monocultures.
She told us that eucalyptus do no harm to soils and they do not
damage water supplies. This may be true in the Looking-Glass World,
but has little to do with the reality faced by farmers living
near to the pulp industry's eucalyptus plantations.
Papierholz
Austria's Wolfgang Schopfhauser told us about logging mountain
forests in Austria to produce bioenergy, mainly for the pulp and
paper industry. "Biomass is widely available in the form
of standing wood," Schopfhauser said, presumably referring
to the trees that grow on Austria's mountains.
One
way of reducing the pulp industry's impact on the world's forests
is to reduce the consumption (and therefore the production) of
paper. This is the aim of the Shrink campaign (see the other articles
in this issue of the WRM Bulletin). CEPI responded to the launch
of the Shrink campaign by claiming that the pulp and paper industry
is "a unique example of how an industry can avoid producing
waste and one that recycles at all stages." Obviously, all
that unnecessary packaging and junk mail, all those telephone
books that no one uses any more, the mountains of office paper
and advertising don't exist in CEPI's Looking-Glass World.
"By
targeting the paper industry these NGOs are promoting other materials
that do not have the same environmental credentials," says
Teresa Presas, CEPI's Managing Director, in CEPI's response. But
the Shrink campaign is not promoting any other materials. It is
advocating using less paper in the North, not replacing paper
with something else.
Presas
says that NGOs are "contributing to the relocation of paper
production to other areas of the world where environmental standards
are less of a concern." She seems to have forgotten that
the pulp and paper industry has been expanding in the global South
for many years. Stora Enso is a member of CEPI. "Were it
not for labour unions at home, we would be moving all of production
capacity to countries like Brazil," a Stora Enso official
told the Financial Times in 2005. Last year Stora Enso sold its
North American operations to a private
equity company called NewPage, which is now closing down mills
as fast as it can. Stora Enso is closing two mills in Finland.
Meanwhile, the company is expanding its operations in Brazil,
Uruguay, China and Laos. In March 2008, 900 women from Via Campesina
occupied an area of Stora Enso's eucalyptus plantations in Brazil,
in protest against the expansion of the green desert. The Shrink
campaign aims to support this and many other struggles against
industrial tree plantations in the South.
Presas
says that the Shrink campaign would become "responsible for
the loss of thousands of jobs in Europe in particular in rural
areas." As CEPI's own data shows, the pulp and paper industry
is responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs in Europe. In
1991, CEPI member countries employed 389,300 people in the pulp
and paper sector. By 2006, this figure had shrunk by about a third,
to 259,100 people. During the same period, pulp and paper production
in Europe has increased.
After
talking to Humpty Dumpty for a while, Alice quietly walked away.
When Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, as he inevitably had to,
"a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end."
By
Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
index
COMMUNITIES AND FORESTS
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Africa: Food sovereignty threatened by AGRA
The
Gates and Rockefeller Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
(AGRA) initiative has landed on Africa announcing that it will
help small-scale farmers go commercial. What does this mean?
Behind
the millionaire funding projects lies the promotion of biotechnology
in agriculture. African agriculture will be more dependent on
chemicals, monocultures of hybrid seeds, and genetically modified
crops.
According
to Mariam Mayet, from the African Center for Biosafety,
AGRA is “a very violent package because it puts powerful toxic
chemicals into Africa. It displaces and destroys local knowledge
and seeds. It favors those farmers who will be able to access
the system, the more powerful farmers. This will divide the African
peasantry. AGRA also creates a lot of dependency and debt.” (1)
In
the growing trend toward privatisation of foreign aid and the
merging of the business sector with governments, AGRA becomes
a useful tool for private business interests and Western governments
eager to privatize Africa’s land and water for export crops, agrofuels
and carbon sinks.
Foreign
strategies like AGRA are grabbing forest lands that are also a
space of food sovereignty for forest and forest dependent communities.
Monoculture
crops for agrofuels – either jatropha in Ghana and Zambia, sugar
cane in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, oil palm in Benin, Cameroon,
Ivory Coast – are encroaching on forests, threatening or already
depriving local communities of their livelihoods and triggering
off displacement and misery.
If
the source of Africa’s wealth is privatized, African countries
may loose their chance to determine their own future.
Delegates
of peasants' organizations from different African countries that
share the vision of the international peasant movement, La Via
Campesina, gathered in a regional meeting in Madagascar, in May
2008. They voiced their opposition to the introduction of destructive
policies that are undermining domestic food production by forcing
farmers to produce cash crops for transnational corporations (TNCs)
and to buy their own food on the world market. “Peasant and small
farmers reap no benefits from higher prices. We grow food but
the benefits of the harvest often get taken out of our hands:
all too often it has already [been] promised to the money lender,
to the agricultural inputs' companies, or directly to the trader
or the processing unit.”(2)
The
peasants’ final declaration on “Global Food Crisis" denounces
that “the ongoing land-grabbing by TNCs and other speculators
will expel millions more peasants from rural areas. They will
end up in the mega cities where they will join the growing ranks
of the hungry and the poor in the slums.” It claims that “the
time for Food Sovereignty has come!” and demands the implementation
of “fundamental change in the approach to food production and
agricultural markets”, “long-term political commitments in order
to rebuild national food economies”, absolute priority to “domestic
food production in order to decrease dependency on the international
market”, an intervention mechanism “to stabilize prices at a reasonable
level on the international markets”, as well as “the right to
implement import controls” in order to stop dumping and the respect
and support at international level of “programs to support the
poorest consumers, implement agrarian reform and invest in domestic,
farmer- and peasant-based food production”.
Not
only food systems and forests are at stake; also social systems
and the whole African culture.
Article
based on: (1) “AGRA - green revolution or philanthro-capitalism?”,
Pambazuka News 361,
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/361; (2) “Global
Food Crisis”, Regional Meeting of La Via Campesina Africa, Madagascar,
14th To 17th May 2008,
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Africa/GlobalFoodCrisis.pdf
index
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India: A Story of Non-Participatory Conservation
in the Buxa Tiger Reserve
Buxa
was one of those forests which the British foresters boasted of.
Originally grassland and Sal forests in stony highlands, the area
was irreversibly altered when the colonial foresters moved in
around 1865 and banished the indigenous swidden agriculturists
like the Rava, the Mech, the Dukpa and the Garo. Evergreen trees
colonised the empty spaces rapidly as the forest fires got "controlled",
and the foresters came to realize that they could not have new
Sal plantations unless the fire motif was re-introduced.
Thus
came the famous Taungya system of plantation, and the banished
"fire-setters" were brought back to the forests as forest
villagers. It was they who toiled, cut and burnt forests, and
planted and protected new trees for nearly 150 years, and many
many days without any wage, up to the point the "independent"
foresters of India decided that they need to save the Tigers of
Buxa. Buxa forests were declared as a Tiger Reserve in 1983. The
forests already had 33 recorded forest villages and 4 Fixed Demand
Holdings (leasehold lands under control of the Forest Department).
From
1990 onwards, forestry activities dwindled and came to almost
a halt in many parts of the Reserve. The old dolomite mines inside
the Reserve were closed down. In many areas, Non Timber Forest
Produce collection was banned, and cattle-grazing was declared
an offence. Living inside the forests became a nightmare as foresters
started to plan relocation strategies that implied that thousands
and thousands of people suddenly found themselves bereft of livelihood.
One after another, the old Sal trees (known as the Pride of Buxa)
started to disappear, as jobless and hungry people were forced
to take to forests.
The
tiger conservation mechanism in Buxa swung into motion, and money
from various sources like the World Bank --Buxa was one of the
seven Global Environment Facility funded India Eco Development
Projects in India-- came and went. But both wild life and their
habitat continue to disappear. Tigers became a rarity, so much
so that no one knows exactly how many tigers are there in Buxa
now…4-5 will be an optimist estimate.
The
"conservation"-oriented new regime foresters of Buxa
continued to persecute the forest villagers of the area, especially
the indigenous Rava community. A 2005 Public hearing organised
by National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW)
and others recorded innumerable cases of torture, harassment and
murders of the forest-dwellers by the Forest Personnel. People,
many of them children and youth, were killed in cold blood inside
and outside the forest. The most recent incident was the killing
of Samuel Rava of Poro village in 2008 February, after the Forest
Rights Act with its package of rights had
formally been notified. None of the killers has ever been brought
to justice.
In
Jayanti, very few people of this once-thriving and now a ghost
settlement situated inside the so-called core area of Buxa Tiger
Reserve know about the Forest Rights Act –that, among other things,
recognize rights of tribal and traditional forest dwellers in
areas declared as protected areas (see WRM Bulletin Nº 115).
This settlement has apparently been identified as to-be-relocated
village, and the State Forest Department has started the relocation
proceedings. In Jayanti, the Range Officer can still forbid people
to undertake renovation work in their own homes without permission
from the Department on the grounds that it violates the Wild Life
Protection Act, 1972. No one seems to know
that under the Wild Life Protection Act, 2006 and the Forest Rights
Act, 2006, the concept of core/buffer has changed so much that
any demarcation of such areas need mandatory endorsement by the
community.
Instead,
the Range Officer and his staff threatened the people to leave
their land. Notices of relocation got many people angry: "Why
should we who raised and protected these forests all these years
be asked to leave?" said an old man. Another old woman waived
her frail fists: "I won't, won't, won't go...before we go
we'll kill you all. If we cannot stay, we will not let you stay
either".
Forest
officers have also offered the people wads of money if they leave
voluntarily knowing that the lure is too strong.
Almost
the same happens in Buxa Road (a remote forest village, constantly
threatened both by wild elephants and soil erosion) and the uphill
village of Santarabari, another two villages targeted to relocation
by the State Forest Department ignoring the new 2006 legislation.
The
way the Forest Department tries to conserve wild life in the Buxa
Tiger Reserve seems far from being participatory.
By
Soumitra Ghosh, from notes of the visit of a 4-member team on
behalf of National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW),
North Bengal Regional Committee, to the area. The full document
is available at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/India/BuxaTiger.pdf
index
-
Malaysia: The logging trail leading to
tree monocultures in Sarawak
In
1989, WRM and Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth) produced
the publication “The Battle for Sarawak’s Forests”, which documented
not only the destruction of forests and forest peoples’ livelihoods
in Sarawak, but also the local resistance process, which included
major road blockades established as from 1987 by local communities
for stopping the entry of logging trucks into their territories.
The
aim of that publication was to serve as a tool for the worldwide
campaign that had been launched two years before by a large number
of Northern and Southern organizations against the social and
environmental destruction resulting from industrial logging in
the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
The
campaign made the issue well known at the international level
and put the Malaysian logging industry and government in a difficult
position. For instance, in July 1988, the European Parliament
adopted a resolution calling on member states to suspend imports
of timber from Sarawak and in October-November a number of delegations
visited Malaysian embassies in different countries to urge that
logging activities not disturb the Sarawak natives’ livelihood.
Internally,
local police repression and judicial persecution followed, coupled
with a smear campaign that termed as traitors all Malaysians that
participated in the protection of Sarawak’s peoples and forests.
In
Sarawak, the main losers from forest destruction
are the Penan, a nomadic people entirely dependent –physically,
socially and culturally- on the disappeared tropical forests.
However hard their current situation may be, it must at least
serve to learn lessons for the future and in this respect the
Sarawak struggle illustrates several important points:
-
First and foremost, it shows that local peoples and their supporters
were right in opposing industrial logging. From a Human Rights’
perspective, logging violated the basic rights of local peoples
–territorial, physical, social, cultural- and even their right
to life. Environmentally, logging resulted in the destruction
of a forest ecosystem that hosted an enormously rich biodiversity
in terms of animals and plants. Economically, logging enriched
a few while pushing the majority into poverty.
-
Secondly, and equally important, it is today clear that the logging
industry, the Sarawak state government and the Malaysian federal
government lied to the people of Sarawak. Industry and government
promised development and jobs. None of this happened. The forest
all but disappeared while people became poorer. The only visible
“development” were the roads built for the purpose of extracting
wood. In response to the international campaign, industry and
government promised to carry out “sustainable logging”, which
in fact resulted in the same type of destructive logging as before,
now under a different name.
A
recent video produced by Hilary Chiew and Chi too (“Penusah Tapa:
the forgotten struggle”), documents “the untold Penan story” through
the testimonies of local people, many of whom participated in
the long struggle to protect the forest.
Those
testimonies not only provide evidence on the disastrous social
and environmental consequences of industrial logging, but also
on the current process of substitution of logged over forests
with monocultures of oil palms (aimed at producing palm oil) and
acacias (for the production of pulp for paper). This means the
final death of the forest. As one man interviewed in the video
says: “We think that the loggers are bad. But if they only take
the logs, the forests will still regenerate. But when oil palm
and tree plantations come, that will cause the trees to be gone
forever ...”
The
video is available at
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4gqci_penusah-tana_politics
index
-
Peru/Brazil: The right to self-determination of indigenous peoples
living in voluntary isolation
In
late May, aerial photos taken during a fly-over piloted by the
coordinator of the Ethno-Environmental Front of FUNAI (the National
Indigenous Foundation of Brazil) confirmed the existence of indigenous
people living in voluntary isolation on the border between the
Brazilian state of Acre and Peru. They are members of one of four
indigenous ethnic groups living in isolation in this area.
Newspapers
around the world published images of the indigenous warriors painted
red with the natural pigment annatto, produced from the fruit
of the achiote tree, aiming their bows and arrows at the plane.
Other members of the group are standing back, unarmed, their bodies
painted black with genipap fruit juice, while women and children
can be glimpsed hiding in the forest. The pictures give the impression
that they have had bad experiences in the past associated with
airplanes, and their reaction leaves no room for doubt: they want
the intruders to go away.
The
photographs also captured two large thatched huts built on wide
areas cleared in the rainforest to grow bananas, cassava, corn
and other crops.
Anthropologist
Beatriz Huertas of the International Committee for the Protection
of Peoples in Isolation makes a distinction between groups living
in “isolation” and those living in a situation considered of “initial
contact”. The former are reluctant to establish sustained interaction
with members of the enveloping society while the latter have mainly
been forced to abandon isolation by external factors or agents,
and are more vulnerable to contagion of external diseases against
for which they have developed no immunological defences.
Both
groups share one problem in common, however: the invasion of their
territories by oil companies, logging companies, and more recently,
soybean farming operations on the Brazilian side of the border.
It
is known that in many cases some predecessors of these groups
had “extremely traumatic” experiences when coming into contact
with outsiders, and as a result they have chosen to remain in
isolation.
In
the case of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest region, Huertas says
there are 14 ethnic groups or segments of ethnic groups living
in isolation, with the majority concentrated along the border
with Brazil. She also pointed out that with few exceptions, virtually
all the Land Reserves created and proposed to favour those peoples
living in isolation are encroached by hundreds of loggers, many
of whom have harassed or murdered isolated indigenous people who
have come across them. Certain firms that have been granted logging
concessions in neighbouring areas to those that are home to indigenous
communities are also logging in reserves and launder the timber
through their concessions and licenses.
In
an interview with Terra Magazine (1), Huertas stressed that there
have been countless denunciations of problems provoked by illegal
logging on the Brazilian-Peruvian border since 1998. “Since then
both countries have set up commissions to deal with the problem
but they never reached any clear agreements, nor did they undertake
any firm actions to remedy the situation,” she noted.
Despite
the abundance of evidence and complaints regarding this situation,
some of the companies involved are even able to market their wood
with the added advantage of certification. This is supposed to
ensure consumers that the products they purchase are made from
wood produced through “sustainable” logging practices, which would
imply respect for the rights of the aboriginal peoples living
in the area.
The
International Indigenous Committee for the Protection of Peoples
in Isolation and Initial Contact of the Amazon, the Chaco Basin
and the Eastern Region of Paraguay (CIPIACI) declared in a press
statement: “The movement of isolated tribes into Brazil seems
to be the result of the constant aggression and threats they have
been facing on their land in Peru. Effectively, this kind of displacement
has been going on for the last few years because of the invasion
of their territories, mainly by loggers or missionaries who follow
them and want to contact and evangelize them.” (2)
The
photographic evidence of the “invisible” indigenous peoples created
a certain level of awareness that has made it possible for the
International Indigenous Committee for the Protection of Peoples
in Isolation to highlight the situation. This month, after visiting
the region on the Brazilian-Peruvian border, accompanied by a
FENAMAD (Federación Nativa del Río Madre de Dios y Afluentes)
leader and Ashaninka indigenous people from the village of Apiwtxa,
Huertas announced: “We are going to prepare a report on this issue
and present it to the governments of Brazil and Peru and to international
human rights organizations. To the greatest extent possible, we
are going to do everything within our reach to ensure that this
problem is addressed.”
The
dissemination of the photographs of the indigenous peoples living
in voluntary isolation on the Brazilian-Peruvian border had positive
repercussions, but as Huertas pointed out, “Nevertheless, we have
to be cautious about certain journalists who expressed a great
deal of interest in travelling to the region to establish contact
in order to capture images of the uncontacted Indians. This could
be catastrophic and could result in the death of the entire group,
because of contagious diseases or even a confrontation that could
possibly erupt.”
“We
have always advocated the right to self-determination, and this
means the right of these peoples to decide freely and voluntarily
about the ways of life they want to have, without the forced imposition
of contact or actions that threaten this right, and this desire.
They are living in isolation and it is necessary to respect this
isolation. At the same time, if they seek contact, we will have
to respect the decision they have made, but we cannot in any way
force contact upon them,” she concluded.
Sources:
(1)
“Comisión hará informe sobre indios aislados entre Brasil y Perú”,
12 June 2008
http://www.co.terra.com/terramagazine/interna/0,,OI2944081-EI8865,00.html
(2)
“South American Indians demand ‘respect’ for uncontacted tribes”,
4 June 2008
http://www.survival-international.org/news/3368;
and personal comments of Beatriz Huertas.
index
COMMUNITIES AND TREE MONOCULTURES
-
Chile: The “modern slaves” of the “forestry
boom”
The
rural-urban migratory process in Chile is the result of internal
conflicts in the agrarian structure and, in the case of the VIII
Region – the Bio-Bio Region – it is linked to a productive restructuring
which is in fact forestry restructuring.
The
forestry sector is advertised in Chile as a key economic sector,
representing the second largest export after copper mining. However,
comparatively the territories where plantations and forest industries
are installed show adverse effects rather than the benefits that
could have been obtained if the land had been turned over to alternative
economic activities.
In
spite of the gravitation forestry activities have in the macro-economy,
this has not been reflected in job generation, characterized by
its cyclical nature, considerable lack of stability and precarious
salary levels. While over the past 20 years employment has grown
66%, forested areas have grown by 277%. Furthermore, in
some cases, the expansion of forestry activities
has taken place on land previously exploited by small landowners
who have been absorbed by the so-called “green mantle” (referring
to the millions of trees in the monoculture tree plantations).
According to estimates made by the Forestry
Workers Confederation (CTF - Corporación de Trabajadores Forestales)
considering all the various forestry occupations,
between 1997 and 2000 the work-force decreased by 12 per cent.
Forestry
activities “offer” seasonal work in association with certain stages
linked to the process of growth and care of the species planted
(plantation, thinning, logging, etc.) An enormous majority- probably
some 75–80 per cent – of the workers employed in the Chilean forestry
sector work under temporary contracts. The loggers and chain-saw
operators work for brief periods and they are paid in accordance
with productivity standards established by the companies themselves,
involving exhausting working days. According to available information,
at least 26 per cent of the workers in the forestry sector declare
that they normally work for over 10 hours a day.
The
drastic reduction in workers’ rights and in their negotiating
capacity – which makes it possible to increase each worker’s productivity
– is linked to another characteristic factor of the workforce
employed in forestry: the worker’s relationship with the forestry
companies is influenced by the action of contracting companies
selling their services to forestry companies which hire workers
for seasonal work. These companies respond to the forestry companies’
productive demands, leading to high worker turnover and seriously
hindering their possibility of getting organized and defending
their interests. The results are poor quality jobs and a remuneration
that does not really enable the workers and their families’ to
enjoy the possibility of welfare.
This
is the segment where the greatest exploitation of the workforce
takes place, both because the tasks themselves are carried out
far from urbanized centres (demanding lengthy travel to the workplace)
and because these workers have no possibility of organizing themselves
into trade unions to face the frequent violation of their rights
and to improve their working relationship.
In
1988, 80 per cent of the workers in the sector did not belong
to any kind of union and were open to management arbitrariness,
obliged to work up to 16 hours a day for minimum wages, to live
in subhuman conditions and to work with tools under minimum safety
conditions: “modern slaves,” the other face of the so-called “Forestry
Boom.”
It
is worth looking at work-related accidents in the forestry sector,
which shows the highest accident rates (the accident rate corresponds
to the number of accidents occurring in one year per one hundred
workers). This may well be due to the great effort demanded from
the workers causing their exhaustion and with it, such high accident
rates. The workers try to cut as much timber as they possibly
can during long working hours to the detriment of their own safety.
According to information supplied by leaders, work-related accidents
cause the death of 15 workers per year.
From
the above it may be deduced that the forestry sector is an excluding
sector, that it does not generate development and that it is framed
in the rationale of a neo-liberal model, only seeking to consolidate
and perpetuate itself, and that it responds to the conscience
and interests of the class that governs it.
Extracted
and adapted from: “Los cambios socio-espaciales producidos por
la explotación forestal en la región del Bio-Bio, particularmente
en la comuna de Mulchen” (Socio-spatial changes caused by forestry
exploitation in the Bio-Bio region, particularly in the Mulchen
commune), by Juan Luis Muñoz L. Thesis to apply for a Graduate
degree in Education, History and Geography honours. University
of Concepcion. The complete report is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Chile/Tesis_Munoz.pdf
index
-
Indonesia: Killings by Perhutani in East
Java teak plantations – a twofold perverted notion of joint forest
management
The
state-owned company Perhutani boasts of having “one of the highest
percentages of forest plantation in the world” (http://perhutaniproducts.com/)
with a land area of 2,426,206 Ha in Java and Madura Island of
Indonesia.
It
has also the gloomy record of having severely damaged or destroyed
well over half the 'state forest' of Wonosobo in Central Java
(see WRM Bulletin Nº 96).
On
top of that, it has recently added notoriousness for killing villagers
from the forest fringe of teak plantations in Perhutani's Madiun
and Bojonegoro sectors.
Lidah
Tani, a local NGO based in Blora, East Java, Indonesia, which
supports forest farmers, issued a letter of protest denouncing
that:
“Yaimin
was shot dead by forest security forces in teak plantations in
Perhutani's Madiun sector on Tuesday 6th May 2008. He received
4 bullet wounds in the chest. He was suspected, with others, of
being involved in illegal logging.” His friends deny the accusation,
but, beyond that, Lidah Tani rightfully rebukes: “Four bullets
for one man!”
The
letter recalls that: “Less than two weeks previously, on 23rd
April 2008, three people who were looking for wood in Perhutani
teak plantations in the Bojonegoro sector were also shot. Two
died and one is still in a critical condition.”
These
dead people belonged to communities who were the original owners
of the forest land that was seized over a hundred years ago by
the Dutch and never returned to them. Later on Perhutani took
control of the forest and established teak plantations depriving
forest farmers of their livelihood.
Recently
Perhutani has vigorously promoted its Joint Forest Management
programme as a means of involving communities in forest management
and protection. However, the Indonesian local NGO wonders: “Is
joint management the right term when the forestry company has
seized control of community forests?”
People
who have lived communally in the forests for generations, relying
on subsistence agriculture, livestock, fruit and non timber forest
products gathering such as honey, resin and fiber became the workforce
to prepare the land and plant and tend the trees so Perutani harvests
the timber of its teak plantations.
The
meaning of joint forest management has been twofold perverted,
because monoculture plantations of teak are by no means a biodiverse
forest, and because joint management is far from implying the
killing of forest community members.
“What
is the meaning of 'joint management' when Perhutani shoots people
to protect forests and members of the community are its victims?”,
asks Lidah Tani in the letter of protest. The organisation denounces
that allegedly to protect state assets, Perhutani and its forest
guards “shoot and kill people from villages on the forest margins
those who are poor and oppressed”. The criminal record of the
company since 1998 is 31 dead and 69 people who were beaten up
or shot by forest guards.
Lidah
Tani’ demands: “that justice is done. The perpetrators of murder
and human rights violations must be sought out, tried and given
appropriate sentences. We call on all parties to stop all forms
of violence and for a forest protection system without guns. We
urge all farmers' groups and community organisations to stop all
forms of cooperation with Perhutani. Starting from today! Don't
wait for the next victim!”
Article
based on the “Letter of Protest About Killings of Villagers From
the Forest Fringe by Perhutani”, available at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Indonesia/Killing_Villagers.html
index
- Ivory
Coast: Tanoé Swamps Forest under destruction by Unilever/Palm-Ci’s
oil palm plantations
The
Tanoé Swamps Forest, in the department of Adiaké, is the very
last remaining forest block in the south-eastern corner of Côte
d’Ivoire and extends in an area that has been classified by conservation
experts as being, among other things, of high importance for the
conservation of mammals and birds, and of very high importance
for the conservation of fresh water ecosystems. It is considered
a High Value Forest and a major refuge for primates like the threatened
Miss Waldron red colobus (Piliocolobus badius waldronae), the
diana roloway (Cercopithecus diana roloway) and the white-napped
mangabey (Cercocebus atys lunulatus).
The
swamps of the Tanoé Forest have acted up to now as a powerful
“shield” that has protected the forest from major aggressions.
The forest extends along the sub-prefectures of Noah, Nouamou
and Tiapoum, and the bordering villages of Kongodjan Tanoé, Kadjakro,
Yao-Akakro, Kotouagnouan, Dohouan, Atchimanou, Saykro and Nouamou.
Villagers regard it as their reserve of fishing, medicinal and
food resources. (1)
Since
February 2008, the palm oil company PALM-CI has begun destroying
this 6,000 hectare centre of biodiversity to convert it to oil
palm plantations. They are currently building drainage systems
at the periphery and, once the rainy season is over, they intend
to clearcut all of the forest.
If
the Tanoé Forest is destroyed, the three primate species -as well
as many plant species- will almost certainly become globally extinct,
and large amounts of carbon dioxide will be released from the
carbon-rich swamp forests.
Drainage
systems are being built in order to produce seedbeds of palm tree
seedlings on approximately 5 hectares of land between Kongodjan
Tanoé and Kadjakro –a situation that according to many observers
may arouse another land conflict before long in the department
of Adiaké, since local communities have said that they are ready
to defend the forest’s integrity.
Unilever
--one of the world's leading food and personal care consumer brands--
has been a long-term investor in PALM-CI and is represented on
the company's board. They are stakeholders in a joint venture,
Newco, which is the main customer of PALM-CI. Unilever publicly
presents itself as a “responsible” palm oil company, being chair
of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). It announces
that it intends to only buy palm oil certified as sustainable
and has recently even said that it will support a moratorium on
rainforest and peatland destruction in Indonesia. Are Africa's
rainforests less important for Unilever than Indonesia’s? (2)
Despite
years of membership in the RSPO and proclamations about “sustainability”,
Unilever has so far not stopped purchasing palm oil grown on deforested
land, drained peatland, or at the expense of communities and food
production. Unilever continues to profit from the expansion of
oil palm monocultures, which are intrinsically unsustainable,
and certified palm oil “is unsubstantiated greenwash”. (3)
Article
based on: (1) “Adiake : 6 000 ha de forêt menacés de disparition”,
Moussa Touré,
http://news.abidjan.net/article/?n=294294; (2) “Action Alert:
Unilever Threatens Côte d'Ivoire's Primary Rainforests, Showing
Promises of ‘Sustainable’ Palm Oil Meaningless”, By Rainforest
Portal, http://www.rainforestportal.org/
and Climate Ark, http://www.climateark.org/
, June 2, 2008; (3) “Rainforest alert”, Rainforest Portal, June
2, 2008,
http://www.ecoearth.info/alerts/send.asp?id=ivory_coast_oil_palm
index
-
Uganda: Thousands of Indigenous People evicted
from FSC-certified Mount Elgon National Park
In
February 2008, the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the Uganda People's
Defense Forces evicted more than 4,000 people from the Benet and
Ndorobo communities living in Mount Elgon National Park in East
Uganda. People's houses and crops were destroyed, cattle were
confiscated and the people were left homeless. They found shelter
where they could: in caves and under trees. The luckier ones stayed
in a primary school or moved in with their relatives.
The
eviction of the Benet started ten days after Annick Van De Venster,
a Belgian tourist, was shot and killed in Mount Elgon National
Park. According to UWA, which is responsible for managing Uganda's
national parks, cattle thieves were responsible. UWA's executive
director, Moses Mapesa said, "We believe the people who shot
at the tourist's group mistook it to be a rival camp of cattle
thieves."
UWA
used the tragedy of a tourist's death at Mount Elgon as an excuse
to evict the Benet. "Following these incidents," Moses
Mapesa, UWA's executive director, said, "UWA found it prudent
to address the issue of encroachment in the park, which in any
case is all illegal as the boundaries of the park were redefined
in 2002." Mapesa claimed that the eviction was "being
undertaken humanely". He did not explain how evicting people
from their homes and leaving them with nothing had anything to
do with acting "humanely".
In
fact, the Benet have a legal right to live in Mount Elgon National
Park. In October 2005, the Ugandan High Court in Mbale ruled that
the Benet were the "historical and indigenous inhabitants"
of parts of Mount Elgon National Park. The ruling stated that
the Benet should be allowed to "carry out agricultural activities"
in the areas to which they have historical claim.
But
UWA's Joshua Masereka, chief of Mount Elgon National Park, ignores
the ruling. "We have always given the Benet time to vacate.
We do not need them in the Park," he said.
"Such
disregard for power of courts is what is making access to justice
for the poor and marginalized communities in Uganda unattainable,"
says Chemisto Satya, a Programme Manager with ActionAid Uganda.
ActionAid demanded that the government should provide immediate
relief to the evicted people through its Disaster Preparedness
Ministry.
Mount
Elgon National Park is certified as well managed under the Forest
Stewardship Council system. Clearly, the fact that the national
park is FSC certified has not helped the Benet Indigenous People.
SGS
Qualifor, the certifying body which issued the FSC certificate
for Mount Elgon, is aware of High Court ruling that the
