OUR VIEWPOINT
G8
and the climate crisis: Will deeds match words?
The governments
of some of the world’s most powerful countries (1) recently
met in Italy and produced a document titled “Responsible
Leadership for a Sustainable Future”. In their statement,
they inform the world that they are “determined to ensure
sustainable growth and to tackle the interlinked challenges of
the economic crisis, poverty and climate change.”
It could be
funny, were it not because the current situation is so tragic.
The world
is facing a major economic crisis, poverty is increasing worldwide
–and also in those 8 countries- and the climate crisis is
nearing disaster. All as a direct result of the “responsible”
leadership provided by the governments of those –and a few
other- countries over many decades.
It is obvious
that no-one can blame countries like Tuvalu, Fiji, Laos, Cambodia,
Papua New Guinea, Gambia, Namibia, Uruguay, Cuba or most of the
192 member states of the United Nations for having created those
problems. However, most of them are already heavily impacting
on their peoples.
The G8 now
promises that they will take “the lead in the fight against
climate change”, but reality shows that they are doing exactly
the opposite: protestors are being criminalized in the UK for
trying to prevent the use of coal, oil is planned to be drilled
in Alaska, oil and gas companies from G8 countries continue to
profit from fossil fuels while consumption in G8 countries result
in further rainforest destruction.
Countries
already suffering from climate change have never expressed their
desire to be “led” by the G8. On the contrary, they
are demanding them and a few other powerful governments to accept
their responsibility for the problems they have created and to
do something about it. Not by 2050 but right now. Not with declarations
but in concrete actions. Not through “market mechanisms”
but through stringent legislation.
The world
–its peoples and ecosystems- can no longer tolerate a system
where a few governments –based on economic, political and
military power- use and destroy the planet for their own benefit.
In that respect, the G8 needs to be reminded what democracy means
and to accept that they are a tiny minority with no leadership
mandate from anyone except themselves.
The world
does not want or need their “leadership” but it does
need them to act in a “responsible” manner to address
the climate disaster they have created. The world needs them to
match their words with deeds.
(1) The G8’s
members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the
United Kingdom and the United States. The European Commission
attends as well.
index
INTERNATIONAL
MANGROVE DAY
Mangrove
Action Day- July 26th
Mangrove Action
Project (MAP) has been working since 1992 to halt the rampant
destruction of the earth's mangrove forest wetlands that are threatened
by unsustainable development. Such industries as charcoal and
petroleum production, tourism and urban expansion, golf courses
and marinas are all threats to mangrove forests today. Still,
the largest threat stems from industrial shrimp aquaculture production,
which is the largest contributor to current mangrove loss. Shrimp
farms are located along the coastal zones for convenience for
the investors, but at the cost of the coastal wetland zones which
are cleared of mangroves to make way for the hundreds of thousands
of acres of shrimp ponds. The shrimps are raised for export in
most cases, and the ponds themselves may last only a few years
before being shut down because of pollution and disease problems
affecting the farmed shrimp. Today, as a telling testament
to this wasteful industry, there are over 250,000 ha of abandoned
shrimp farms around the world, and over 1 million ha of important,
productive coastal wetlands, including mangroves, have been devastated
for the sake of a luxury seafood product for the wealthy nations
to enjoy. But at what costs?
Over
half the world's mangrove forests have been lost to such short-sighted
development pressures. Today, only around 15 million ha of the
estimated original 36 million ha of mangroves still exist, while
much of the remaining mangroves are degraded and in poor health.
Each year, around 150,000 ha or more of mangroves are being cleared.
This loss of mangroves represents a serious threat to the future
of life on this planet for several very relevant reasons.
For one, mangroves
play a vital role in coastal biodiversity, acting as nurseries
for juvenile fish and supplying much of the detritus that becomes
part of the coastal food chain supporting a vast array of life
in the process. Mangrove wetlands play an important role
as stop-over sites and feeding sites for migratory birds. Mangroves
also help hold coastal soils in place, preventing erosion and
sedimentation, which can suffocate the sea grass beds and coral
reefs, which are already threatened by pollution and global warming.
They also filter out pollutants from upland, thus keeping the
sea water purer. Mangroves themselves sequester massive amounts
of carbon in their leaves and branches, as well as store carbon
in the soils beneath their root structures. When mangroves are
cleared vast amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere
contributing further to global warming.
Mangroves
also protect coastal communities from hurricane force winds and
wave surges. Many scientists believe that mangroves provided some
important protection against the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that
struck the coasts of Asia and East Africa. Those living behind
healthy mangroves stood a much better chance of surviving the
tsunami waves’ onslaught.
For these
reasons and more, in 2003, MAP joined other organizations from
the global South to promote July 26th as Mangrove Action Day.
Background
on Mangrove Action Day!
The plan to
make this call to action arose during the "In the Hands of
the Fishers Workshop" held in Fortaleza, Brazil in early
2003. The workshop attendees came from Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras,
Colombia and Guatemala. The IHOF mainly focused on the issues
surrounding mangrove and salt flats endangered by expansion of
the shrimp farm industry, as well as strategies to help halt the
continued expansion of these shrimp farm ventures. It was brought
up during this workshop that an international campaign involving
local fisherfolk should be undertaken where participating NGOs
and local community representatives organize their own local events
on the same day, thus linking these local events with each other
to make an international movement or action.
July 26th
was chosen because of its existing significance for the movement
in Latin America led by Red Manglar. July 26th has been called
the "Day of the Mangrove," commemorating that day in
1998 when a Greenpeace activist from Micronesia, Hayhow Daniel
Nanoto, died of a heart attack while involved in a massive protest
action led by FUNDECOL and Greenpeace, International. During this
action the local community of Muisne (Ecuador) joined the NGOs
in dismantling an illegally placed shrimp pond in an attempt to
restore this damaged mangrove zone back to its former state. Since
Hayhow's death, FUNDECOL and others have commemorated this day
as a day to remember and to take renewed action to Save the Mangroves!
With no Greenpeace
ship in sight on the horizon, we decided that the fisherfolk form
cooperative flotillas to protest the destructive expansion of
shrimp farming in their areas. This call got positive responses
from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico,
Honduras, Nigeria, Europe and the USA. And it looks like momentum
is building globally for an annual commemoration of July 26th
as Mangrove Action Day, with some groups organizing teach-ins,
some mangrove tree planting, wetland clean-ups, protests and letter
writing.
A
New Call To Action on July 26th, 2009!
MAP wishes
to lend full support to the plans and actions of all network members
for Global Action on 26 July 2009. MAP staff and volunteers based
in the Seattle area will be attending the 35th Annual Ballard
Seafood Fest on 25-26 July, tabling at this popular Seattle event
and talking with consumers about the problems of shrimp farming
worldwide. MAP will be promoting our "Shrimp Less, Think
More" Consumer Awareness Campaign.
We ask that
you and/or your organizations please join us all in a global protest
against the ongoing losses of the mangrove forest ecosystems and
the local communities that depend upon the mangroves for their
lives and livelihoods. Please send MAP your regional or local
plans for actions that are meant to commemorate this international
Day for the Mangroves! MAP would like to again share your plans
and ideas with our global network. We look forward to hearing
from you soon in this regard!
For more details,
contact mangroveap@olympus.net
index
Ecuador:
Memory and future emerge from women’s struggle for their
mangroves
The Muisne
canton, province of Esmeraldas hosted the “First Meeting:
Women of the Mangrove Ecosystem of Ecuador, our dreams, our rights,
our challenges,” held in May this year.
Over 80 women
shared this meeting, in which they told their stories as women
who are facing discrimination and violence. Members of REDMANGLAR
International came from Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Brazil
to reconstruct the historical memory of women who have always
lived in mangroves.
Fisherwomen,
shell, crab, oyster and clam gatherers, women companions of the
mangrove in their work, in their struggle to survive, reflected
on where they come from and where they are going. They portrayed
their stories and mangrove biodiversity, they portrayed their
families working and playing in the mangroves. They also portrayed
destruction and deforestation. They portrayed the way they wanted
life to be in the future. The talked, made more friends, started
finding other women like themselves and finding themselves.
They said
that mangroves are the natural industry that gives them everything
and that when the ecosystem is lost, life is lost. “I
am sure that when León Febres Cordero was president they
started felling the mangrove. Then along came the shrimp farmers
to destroy the mangrove. Any President taking up office supports
the shrimp farmers and forgets the poor,” complained one
of the participants.
The
memory
Each one drew
her story. The women from the province of Esmeraldas depicted
themselves with a cigarette in their mouth; they smoke to keep
the mosquitoes away when they are gathering shells from the mangroves.
They depicted themselves in the midst of the exuberant mangrove
ecosystem, but also in the midst of the devastation caused by
industrial shrimp aquiculture. They said that there are hardly
any shellfish left and that although they take great care of the
ecosystem, much more has to be done, that they reforested together
with their companions from other organizations, with students,
voluntary workers and that they knocked down the walls of the
shrimp ponds that came to invade and to destroy everything.
In the province
of Manabi the struggling women from the mangroves come from two
areas, the estuary of the Portoviejo River and the estuary of
the Chone River. With the arrival of the shrimp farms the mangrove
was lost. “We were fisherwomen; we also did short cycle
farming. When the shrimp farms arrived we helped collect larvae
for the laboratories and soon everything came to an end.
Now we have no work, some of us are employed removing the heads
off shrimps in the ponds, but it is hard work, they pay little
and it is not a permanent job.”
They remembered
that previously the El Niño phenomenon had been a blessing
because it was accompanied by abundant fishing and the land was
renewed. “Since the loss of the mangroves, each El Niño
phenomenon is a disaster arriving in our communities, everything
is flooded, houses are lost and people have to leave their territory,”
they lamented.
In Guayas
there is still a great diversity of fish, shrimps and shellfish,
there is still a considerable extension of mangroves protected
by the communities. But there are locations such as Puna Island,
where the shrimp farmers have finished off the mangrove and many
shell and shrimp gatherers no longer have any work or anywhere
to get food from.
The mangroves
have been almost completely wiped out in the province of Santa
Elena, but it has coral reefs and fish banks that supply fisheries
exuberantly. However, these resources must be protected as industrial
fishing is depleting them and, because mangroves (the fishes’
“nursery”) no longer exist, this wealth will soon
disappear.
The
struggle
“We
have been threatened, we have been attacked, the shrimp farmers
have shot at us and they have thrown us out like dogs in order
to take the mangrove away from us and to keep this heritage of
ours. But here we are willing to give our lives if necessary because
we were born here, this is where our history is, our stories,
our work, our food, our families and friends,” stated the
women from Esmeraldas.
And the women
sang:
I wish
the president could hear me out
What I want to say to him now
Listen Mr. President, have a little pity
The mangroves are ours, they do not belong to the authority
Ay, until
when and until when
Please until when
Until when will they harm
The poor people of Ecuador
In the words
of the women of Manabi “our dream is to see the result of
our efforts and to recover the lost territory. To end the marches,
win this struggle and enjoy what we have and what we recover.”
The
future
These women’s
dream is for the shellfish to come back. For those 1,000 or 1,500
that existed some twenty years ago to exist again today. They
want to return to work gathering shellfish, gathering crabs. They
dream that many species that can be used to feed themselves return,
that the men continue to be “mangleros” making charcoal,
making houses out of mangrove timber; that the mangroves return
to their previous state and their lives too.
It is also
true that all is not a bed of roses, that life in the mangroves
is hard. “With my work as a shellfish gatherer I have given
my children the possibility to study, so that they are not what
I am, so they are something better. I feel proud of my children,
I have given them progress. I didn’t leave them like I was
left, as my mother didn’t give me any learning,” says
Jacinta, the delegate of the Muisne canton, province of Esmeraldas
and this consideration triggered off a heated discussion among
the participants.
This is “because
we are discriminated against, we are scornfully treated as “cholas”
(half-breeds), because our work is not valued. A woman who goes
to the mangrove is not respected like one who has a university
profession and that is why we think our children must study to
be respected and not discriminated against. Because society is
like that, it does not understand how marvellous the mangroves
are or that we give them their food with our work. It is
not us who despise and renounce our mangroves, it is the country’s
president, those in power, those who destroy, that do not understand,”
reflected the women from the province of El Oro. “We
want to raise our voices to be heard and have each of our ideals
respected. To preserve what is ours and what enables the work
of us women and men to cover our families’ economy. We want
to be admired for the effort we make to defend our territory and
for discrimination to end so that our children can inherit the
mangroves and feel proud of being from the mangroves. We dream
that the violence in our communities ends, that they let us walk
and run in our mangroves, working with dignity,” they affirmed.
“My
dream of the mangrove is to sow it and cultivate it for my grandchildren
and great-grandchildren to produce and to tell the same story
I am telling you now. For them to be part of the mangroves as
I am now a part,” stated Rosa, a crab-gatherer aged 52,
who has taught all her generation to earn their living gathering
crabs in the mangroves and loving them.
The meeting
ended with an affirmation of life. On fifty hectares of mangroves
illegally occupied and destroyed by Mr. Ilario Patiño with
shrimp ponds, the women reforested two hectares of mangroves in
the location of Casa Vieja, in the parish of Bolívar.
The Minister
of the Environment has been requested to proceed to register this
area and it is hoped that on this occasion, the reforestation
carried out by the women will be guaranteed and that the area
can live again.
Based on the
account of the meeting, sent by C-CONDEM - Corporación
Coordinadora Nacional para la Defensa del Ecosistema Manglar,
manglares@ccondem.org.ec, www.ccondem.org.ec
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In
Africa mangroves are disappearing and with them, the livelihoods
of its people
Mangroves
are “an original habitat and a specific environment” consisting
of trees with aerial roots that bury themselves in the mud but
also of other shrubs and tree-like bushes that are distinguished
by their ability to adapt to the environment and particularly
to water salinity. This explains the specific location of each
species within the ecosystem, known as zonation.
From Mauritania
to Angola, the aerial roots of the mangrove Rhizophora are a privileged
refuge where fish can spawn, and they play an important role in
the economic life of the surrounding inhabitants. For them, mangroves
represent an essential source of income and means of subsistence:
fishing, firewood, timber, various foodstuffs, shellfish, medicines,
tourism, etc. Additionally, mangroves regulate the tides and sedimentation
and act as a protective barrier against storms and coastal erosion.
Scientists
estimate that three-quarters of the fish caught in the tropics
depend on mangroves for food or shelter. Mangroves are spawning
and nursery sites both for coastal and deep-sea fish.
The northern
part of Cameroun is characterized by abundant estuaries and mangroves,
through which rivers flow into the sea. These mangroves act, among
other things, as breeding and spawning areas for various species
of fish and shellfish..
In Senegal,
mangroves greatly contribute to the social, economic and cultural
welfare of the inhabitants of the Saloum Delta. This is also an
important rest area for numerous species of migratory birds. This
wealth has earned it international status as a World Heritage
site. “A unique biological diversity, today endangered by the
disappearance of this natural habitat,” says Abdoulaye Diamé,
of the NGO WAAME (West African Association for Marine Environment).
In Kenya,
mangroves cover some 54,000 hectares and are mainly to be found
in the Lamu and Tana River districts. They are a direct source
of numerous wood and non-wood products. The wood products are:
timber, building timber and coal, used both in urban and rural
areas. Building timber is classified in various categories according
to its use. It is also used to make masts for boats and traps
for fish. The largest mangrove trunks are used to build traditional
boats. The aerial roots serve as floats for fishing nets. The
local inhabitants also make furniture with mangrove wood. Among
the many non-timber products found in the mangroves are honey,
medicines, crabs and fish.
Nigeria has
the largest surface of mangroves in Africa: 7,386 km2 (UNEP-WCMC,
2007). The eight species of mangroves existing in the area are
to be found there. The inhabitants carry out various economic
activities: fishing, shrimp farming, timber production, tourism,
etc. The Niger Delta mangroves are considered to be a significant
conservation area for the west coast of Africa because of their
extraordinary biological diversity. Studies have shown that almost
60 percent of the fish in the Gulf of Guinea breed there.
Nevertheless,
mangrove extension is steadily decreasing. It is a fairly vulnerable
ecosystem that is already very degraded in the areas further from
the coast. Between 1980 and 2006 a quarter of the mangroves in
the west of Africa disappeared and it is expected that the loss
will rise to 70 percent if no measures are taken.
The degradation
of these ecosystems has a considerable impact on biological diversity
and the socio-economic activities depending on it: the disappearance
of species of fauna and flora, poverty, unemployment, disputes,
nutrition-related diseases, etc.
Two different
processes affecting mangroves should be noted. In some cases their
total destruction may be observed due to commercial logging, to
their substitution by shrimp-ponds or their elimination by large-scale
tourism undertakings. However, in other cases degradation of mangrove
systems takes place – although many trees may remain standing
– due to oil exploitation. That is to say, the installation of
pipelines and seismic exploration cause deforestation; while oil-spills,
waste dumping and gas flaring pollute the water and the air and
seriously affect the ecosystem as a whole.
In Kenya for
example, between 1983 and 1993 the port of Mombasa and the surrounding
waters received 391,680 tons of spilled oil, affecting the Puerto
Ritz and Makupa cove mangroves. Something similar has taken place
in Cameroun, where pollution caused by the oil industry is endangering
mangrove integrity.
However, the
most serious case of large-scale mangrove degradation from oil
production occurs in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, where oil giants
such as Shell and Chevron extract millions of dollars worth of
oil from the Niger Delta, in exchange for social and environmental
destruction.
Regarding
deforestation, the area of Nigerian mangroves dropped from 9,990
km2 to 7,386 km2 between 1980 and 2006.
In terms of
degradation, major oil spills have occurred that have devastated
rivers, killed mangroves and coastal life and affected the health
and livelihoods of millions of inhabitants of the Niger Delta.
As denounced by Amnesty International, the local communities rely
on “the land and natural waterways for their livelihood and sustenance.
Now, they have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water
and eat fish contaminated with toxins. They have lost farming
land and their incomes from oil spills and breathe air that reeks
of oil, gas and other pollutants.” (http://www.amnesty.org.au/action/action/21246/).
The countries
of the North say that they are concerned over poverty in Africa.
However, their oil companies continue to destroy the sources of
food of millions of Africans whose lives depend on the health
of the mangroves. More than receiving surplus food, what mangrove
communities really need is for these companies to leave and before
they go, to restore the mangroves they have destroyed. In this
way their true wealth will return and the hunger they suffer from
today will be left behind. .
Compilation
of documents sent by Abdoulaye Diame, WAAME, e-mail: abdoulayediame@yahoo.com:
«La mangrove, la sécheresse et le sacré”» Abdoulaye Diame; «Article
sur la situation des forêts au Cameroun», Moudingo E. Jean Hude,
Cameroon Wildlife Conservation Society; «Sénégal. Lutte contre
la dégradation des écosystèmes de mangroves»; “Conservation and
management of mangrove forests in Kenya”, Joseph K. S. Lang’at
and James G. Kairo, Mangrove Reforestation Programme; “One wrong
step too many: FAO supports unsustainable shrimp farming and food
insecurity investments in Nigeria”, Centre for Environment, Human
Rights and Development (CEHRD); « Biodiversité du Parc marin des
mangroves en République démocratique du Congo: faune ichtyologique»,
Réseau africain pour la conservation de la mangrove (RAM), y “Niger
Delta's Mangrove Communities Threatened By Continued Gas Flaring”,
MAP Alert Action.
index
Bangladesh:
losing mangroves to shrimp farming leads to food loss and environmental
insecurity
Industrial
shrimp farming has been a major cause of mangrove wetlands destruction
in Bangladesh –some 45%- and has led to biodiversity loss as well
as to the loss of livelihood for millions of people who have depended
on mangroves.
In
the 90’s, the World Bank promoted and supported shrimp aquaculture
as part of the drive for export-led policies. An article by A.
K. M Enayet Kabir (1) assesses that “In the name of earning foreign
exchange, many people are now associated with shrimp cultivation,
which has covered a vast area of the coastal districts of Bangladesh
since the 1980s.”
And
he wonders: “We have hardly assessed as to where the valuable
forex goes and who are the beneficiaries? The forex earned at
the cost of local people's health and adverse effects on our Sunderbans
is not benefiting the people.”
In
a country which has the highest level of malnutrition in the Asia-Pacific
region affecting 70-80% of children with a very high infant mortality
rate, subsistence fishing could be a resource to alleviate this
problem. However, shrimp cultivation has polluted the environment
in and around the Sunderbans, undermining the very basis of shrimp
culture by disturbing the natural nutrient cycle.
Loss
of mangroves have also led to loss of protection regarding cyclones.
A study by J. Martinez-Alier et al.(2) comments that “Television
reports of flooding and loss of life in Bangladesh are not uncommon
in Northern homes, but the connection to destroyed mangroves,
abandoned shrimp farms, and decreased coastal defence against
cyclones is not often made. Deforestation has left the area highly
vulnerable to sea water intrusion when cyclones strike. Thus,
the lack of food security because of the enclosure of the mangroves
in order to produce a luxury export product such as shrimps is
compounded by environmental insecurity.”
A
research carried out by India's University of Delhi and Duke University
in the United States studied storm-related deaths from the massive
cyclone that in 1999 wiped out entire villages in the eastern
coast of India. The study (3) found that villages shielded from
the storm surge by mangrove forests experienced significantly
fewer deaths than did less-protected villages.
The
research findings were made public in April this year, just a
month before cyclone Aila killed some 90 people in the south-western
districts of Bangladesh and flooded about 40 per cent of the shrimp
farms in the Khulna region in May 26. (4)
Tragically,
replacing mangroves for cash earning shrimp production has now
led people into bankruptucy and left them with no protection nor
food.
(1)
“Ecological impact has to be assessed”, A. K. M Enayet Kabir,
http://www.ecologyasia.com/news-archives/2002/may-02/
independent-bangladesh_280502.htm
(2) “The Environmentalism of the Poor”, J. Martinez-Alier, UK,
http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/WSSD/alier.pdf
(3) “Mangrove Forests Save Lives In Storms, Study Of 1999 Super
Cyclone Finds”, ScienceDaily, April 21, 2009, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414172924.htm
(4) “Blow to shrimp cultivation”, The New Nation, http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2009/06/22/news0737.htm
index
COMMUNITIES AND FORESTS
Brazil:
New legislation allows agribusiness to advance in the Amazon
On 9 July
2008 the Brazilian Senate adopted a provision by the Executive
known as a “provisional measure,” subject to the subsequent
approval of the Legislative. The provision has been harshly questioned
by environmentalists and various political and social sectors
in Brazil, including the former Minister of the Environment, Senator
Marina Silva.
During the
1970s and 1980s, the dictatorial governments of the time granted
incentives for the occupation of the Amazon, benefiting large
landowners who gained strength in the region and illegally took
over public land. This situation led to disputes with the
traditional peoples of the area.
Last June,
in a third attempt, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
promulgated the “provisional measure” that became
a law (Conversion 09 (PLV) Bill), that had been adopted by the
Chamber of Deputies and subsequently by the Senate. With this
law the situation of the occupiers of over 67 million hectares
of state land in the Legal Amazon – that covers a total
of 508.8 million hectares in the states of Acre, Amapá,
Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and
Tocantins and part of Maranhão- is now regularized.
Up until now,
the concession of public lands – by the National Institute
for Settlement and Agrarian Reform – to private individuals
for rural use and without requirements such as calls for bids,
was limited to 500 hectare units. The legal measure increases
this limit to 1,500 hectares. This implies that regularization
will leave 72% of the land under the control of 7% of the occupants,
who may farm it or put cattle on it and after three years, may
put it up for sale.
The complaints
allege that the measure does not distinguish between peasant occupiers:
usually families that have established themselves to work the
land (“posseiros”) and speculators – both those
trying to obtain the greatest number of plots to subsequently
sell them at a greater value and those who have taken over the
land by means of violence, usually large landowners (“grileiros”)
who have created a real mafia and who concoct documents and deeds
in areas that are marked by disputes and deforestation.
According
to Marina Silva, the measure “will mean a process of land
privatization, of legalization of areas that have been illegally
appropriated [Grilagem: Illegal drawing up of deeds and appropriation
of land] with serious damage to the Plan of Action against Deforestation
in the Amazon.”
Ariovaldo
Umbelino, Professor of Agrarian Geography at the University of
Sao Paulo explains: “Another part of this ingenious operation
to legalize the appropriation of land of the National Institute
for Settlement and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in the Legal Amazon,
has been to take advantage of the increase in deforestation in
that region to carry out a new real estate registry. This will
enable the ‘grileiros’ who had not yet registered
the public land that they had appropriated up to December 2004,
to do so now and thus qualify to ‘buy’ land that they
had taken over without the need to bid. Furthermore, the
notice in the INCRA website on the new registry, absurdly recognizes
already the ‘grileiros’ as ‘posseiros: ‘The
owners or ‘posseiros’ of areas greater than four fiscal
modules [...] shall have to submit to INCRA, between 3 March and
2 April, documents proving their ownership or peaceful possession
of the land, ground plans and descriptive specifications with
the correct geographical location of the rural real estate’
(http://www.incra.gov.br). It should be noted that the plots of
peasant farmer families in the Amazon cover less than 100 hectares
each and that the changes foreseen in the new legislation are
intended to regularize the appropriation of public lands that
corrupt INCRA officials illegally ‘sold’ to agro-bandits.”
(1)
According
to Greenpeace’s Nilo D’Ávila, “The trend
is for the larger and better property to remain in the hands of
real estate speculators and of people who do not live on that
land. The door for real estate speculation in the Amazon is totally
open. And the result of the sum of these actions that the government
is promoting will be equivalent to deforestation.”(2)
It is worth
noting that the pressure from social and environmental organizations
managed to make some improvements to the original measure. Presidente
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced a veto on article
7 of the provision that allowed land to be transferred to legal
entities or individuals that did not inhabit the region and who
managed their lands using a “front.” However criticism
pointed out that this may not be of significance considering that
the speculators do not usually act as legal entities.
The agrarian
reform that through mobilization by the people had laboriously
been introduced into the constitution, is being “blocked,”
according to the words of the coordinator of the Landless Workers
Movement (MST - Movimiento de Trabajadores Sin Tierra), Joao Stedile.
"Land that should be used for the agrarian reform is being
allocated to foreign companies to produce eucalyptus, soybean,
cattle and agrofuel,” (3) he denounced, mentioning among
others the major companies engaged in eucalyptus plantation and
pulp production, such as Aracruz, Veracel y Suzano.
According
to MST data, “In 1992, there were a little over 19 thousand
large landowners holding over 2 thousand hectares which, as a
whole, amounted to 121 million hectares. In 2003, the number of
these properties had risen to 32 thousand (almost double) and
the total area amounted to 132 million hectares. In 11 years,
12 million hectares have been taken over by the large landowners.”
(4)
These are
times when a dangerous world process of land appropriation by
agribusiness is taking place, as an answer to the financial and
food crisis. Governments and companies have launched themselves
into the search for farm lands in Asia and Africa, but they are
also reaching Latin America. China and Saudi Arabia are interested
in acquiring farm land in Brazil. According to INCRA there are
four million hectares in Brazil registered in the name of foreigners
and over half of this area is located in the Amazon.
At the present
time, the General Attorney of the Republic has filed an appeal
of unconstitutionality before the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court
against the new law for the regularization of invaded lands in
the Amazon region, considering that it violates article 188 of
the Constitution which provides that “the purpose of public
and fiscal land shall be compatible with the agricultural policy
and the national agrarian reform plan.” Furthermore, it
affirms in its article 191 that “those who, not owning rural
or urban real estate, possess as their own uninterruptedly for
five years and without opposition an area of land in a rural zone,
of no more than fifty hectares, making it productive through their
work or that of their families, and having on it their dwelling,
shall acquire ownership.”
The last word
has not been said. Resistance continues.
(1) “A
farra da legalização da grilagem”, 03/04/2008,
Ariovaldo Umbelino, http://www.mst.org.br/mst/pagina.php?cd=5162
(2) “MP da Grilagem beneficia poucos posseiros com muita
terra na Amazônia”, 06/07/2009, Brasil de fato, http://www.brasildefato.com.br/v01/agencia/
nacional/mp-da-grilagem-beneficia-poucos-posseiro
s-com-muita-terra-na-amazonia/
(3) “MST denounces that the Agrarian Reform is “blocked”
in Brazil,” AMARC-ALC, http://www.agenciapulsar.org/nota.php?id=13954
(4) “MST assesses the Agrarian Reform in the country and
criticises agribusiness,” 14/04/09, Adital, http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia.asp?lang=ES&cod=38204
index
Dominican
Republic: The people say “no” to the cement factory
at Los Haitises!
The “Los
Haitises National Park” located between the Provinces of
Samana, Monte Plata and Hato Mayor, has been classed as a protected
area since 1976. Its distinctive features as a subtropical rainforest
make it not only an important sanctuary for the country’s
native flora and fauna but also the most important expression
of Caribbean mangroves.
Its importance,
however, is not only due to its qualities as an ecosystem hosting
extraordinary and unique biodiversity and cultural resources –
making it the habitat of numerous endangered endemic species–
but also because of its very special interconnected groundwater
system, that makes it an irreplaceable water reserve. This
location is where the Payabo, Los Cocos and Naranjo rivers converge
and it is also the outlet for the Yuna River.
Another important
aspect of Los Haitises is its cave system where pictographs and
petroglyphs created by the island’s distant ancestors have
been found, making it a world heritage area. For many people visiting
it, the experience is that of a trip to pre-history.
But at present all these values are endangered as the area is
to be turned over to produce cement. At the location where the
area’s main aquifers converge, a cement factory is being
built with the sponsorship of the Dominican Mining Consortium.
The project will not only ruin the Los Haitises area, but also
affect the health of the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages
by contaminating the rivers Comate, Yabacao, Cambita, Almirante,
Casuí, Boyá, Socoa, Sabita and the underground Brujuela,
which supply over 50% of the water used in the country.
This is why
the inhabitants of the area have voiced their total rejection
of the project, considering that it will have negative impacts
on agricultural production, that provides them with their main
sources of food. The United Communities’ Small Farmers Movement
(MCCU - Movimiento Campesino de la Comunidades Unidas) has started
judicial proceedings demanding the annulment of the licence enabling
the cement factory to be installed. This implies suspending work
until the judicial proceedings have finalized.
However, on
30 June most of the inhabitants of Gonzalo that had been leading
and participating in the struggle for the preservation of Los
Haitises and against the installation of the cement factory received
notices that they were to be evicted from the plots they occupy
within the following 10 days, alleging that these plots belong
to the State Sugar Council (CEA - Consejo Estatal del Azúcar).
According to the small farmers, these lands were transferred to
them and many farmers possess CEA loan documents while others
initiated a process over 8 years ago to obtain the deeds from
the institution. They consider the evictions to be a clear reprisal
for having participated actively in the struggle against the cement
factory.
In addition to the small farmers’ movement there is a youth
movement that, with guitars in hand, one day in May camped in
the Gonzalo Municipal District, Province of Monte Plata. Since
then they have attracted the attention of the country and of the
cybernetic world. They refute the myth that youth “don’t
care about anything.” The Gonzalo camp has become an effervescent
call for action, a cry of concern, a statement of hope that much
of the game is yet to be played. With guitars and ciphered codes,
contemporary youth movements practice new forms of social mobilization,
with different strategies to face the excesses of those who, in
the name of progress lead the country back into the past.
The Gonzalo
camp has become a place of resistance, of encounters and unstructured
articulation to reject the cement factory of those who, believing
themselves to be the owners of the country, relentlessly want
to install it in Los Haitises.
From the Camp
for Solidarity with Los Haitises, they are demanding the annulment
of the concession allowing the Dominican Mining Consortium to
build the cement factory in the vicinity of Los Haitises and that
the land granted to the Consortium be returned to the small farmers
who have been evicted.
Article based
on material sent by Alexander Mundaray, a member of the MCCU small
farmers’ movement and information available at the webpage
Ecolucha http://www.ecolucha.org/ and Clave Digital http://clavedigital.com.do/
index
India:
Dehradun Declaration of forest people
On 10-12 June
2009, adivasis, forest workers and other forest dwellers from
16 states of India held a conference on ‘Resisting commodification
of Forests; Establishing community governance over forest resources’.
After discussing and debating they united in a strong message
called the ‘Dehradun Declaration 2009’.
Forests and
forest people, and the whole world, are immersed in a crisis which
is more than that: “This is no ordinary crisis. Not
merely, a climate crisis - or in your words this magnified self-created
monster of a financial crisis. We believe it’s a crisis
of Civilizations.” On one side the civilisation that “rests
on ideas of power, territories, boundaries, profit, exploitation
and oppression”. The civilisation that tries “to own
everything, including Mother Nature. This is what drives your
civilisation. You need this world of oppression and exploitation;
to survive and feel good.” On the other side, the civilisation
of the rest of the people. Those who don’t see the world
in terms of pure merchandise. People like the forest people of
the world who state:“We, the forest people of the world
living in the woods, surviving on the fruits and crops,
farming on the jhoom(1) land, re-cultivating the forest land,
roaming around with our herds have occupied this land since
ages. We announce loudly, in unity and solidarity that let there
be no doubt on the future: we are the forests, and the forests
are us and our existence is mutually dependent. The crisis faced
by our forests and environment today will only intensify without
us.”
It is a fundamental
clash: “ If you want to include us in your world by
‘civilising’ us, we will happily choose to remain
uncivilised. Call us savages, we do not care! We have learnt amidst
these trees, this water, this air, and other forest beings- a
life of freedom, of being without boundaries, and yet never forgetting
the boundaries of nature.”
The Dehradun
Declaration becomes the voice of the Indian forest people who
speak loud: “We, therefore, reject your unnatural law,
your civilization of tyranny and cruelty. What freedom? We see
no freedom in being driven out of our forests, separated from
water, land, fields, trees, air, and friendly animals, to the
ecosystem to which we belong. What freedom, which doesn’t
forget to chain its own brothers and sisters. False Freedom! We
see no truth in a society that remains haunted by the prosperity
of a few capitalists, whilst, never forgetting to oppress the
workers, adivasis, dalits, women and poor of the world! We reject
you!”
And they warn:
“There is a climate crisis around and no amount of free
trade, capital or technology will eliminate the roots of this
crisis. You forget that the crises has emanated from the way your
society is structured - an edifice based on an unending desire
for resources and a way of life that sees nature as an object
of exploitation and extraction. Fools! You are doomed to bear
the brunt and suffer the pains of your actions, but we ask you
- Why must we suffer? You have intruded in our lifestyle, in the
rhythm of Mother Earth. You have corrupted the environs by your
vehicles, industries, arms, and development and your actions have
created a crisis in our homes. You have sinned against the essence
of our being, and amidst our rage and tears, we reject the basis
of your being: a thought - of mistrust, of control, of vicious
self-interest, of injustice, and blame.
How dare
you blame us for a climate crisis? It is the product of un-natural
practices, and it has devastated our lives. How could you cut
our trees unthinkingly? Temperature is increasing, rainfall is
diminishing and the forests are burning- consuming themselves
in pain. Now you want us out of our habitats in the name of conserving
our forests! You kill, unsparingly, relish in “terrorizing”
busts of tigers, decorating your mantelpiece - all pointing to
your moral sensibility and - yet you have the audacity to
tell us to leave the forests so that you can protect the Tigers!
What law do you know? Who are you to teach what is legal? You
are illegal - contradicting the very law of nature - of coexistence.
You have no solutions - you only destroy.
You may
not care of our times, but, spare a thought for the coming generations,
their inheritance. Do you wish to present to them a world of chaos
and destruction? Are you so blinded by your greed? At least, now
- in this crisis - we need to unite, all civilizations, and forest
people of the world, to resolve the crisis, to restore our relationship
with nature.
Today,
at Dehradun, we call for and welcome the solidarity and harmony
of all world’s forest people; workers, adivasis and fellow
travellers, on this journey to realizing the fulfilment of our
existence, in communion with our forests. We warn your civilization
that we are a people, united in struggle against the structure
of capitalism - of greed, thievery and profiteering. We warn the
nations of the world, that you must not forget to honour our existence,
or else from deep within our hearts - we shout out loud:
NO MORE SILENCE! We will rise from the ashes of your devastating
fire! To resist your order, undeterred by your traps. We will
rise - a united forest people - together, in strength and solidarity,
to challenge the very fabric of your civilization, and become
one with nature, again!
Arise!
Forest People of the World Unite! Zindabad! National Forum of
Forest Peoples and Forest Workers, India”
(1)
A patch of arable land in the forest.
The full declaration
is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/India/Dehradun.html
index
COMMUNITIES
AND TREE MONOCULTURES
Brazil:
FSC greenwashing of eucalyptus plantations is strongly questioned
and a warning made vis-à-vis their advance in Piaui
One year ago,
Judson Barros, Coordinator of the Piaui Environmental Network
stated that “the south of Piaui has been destroyed, its
rivers and streams poisoned to satisfy the voraciousness of some
companies that seek easy profit through the destruction of ecosystems,
with their coal, soybean, timber, castor-oil and eucalyptus activities.
The wealth produced remains in the hands of a few people, while
most of the population continues living but not enjoying the assets
offered for free by Mother Nature. Family farming hardly exists
any more. None of the towns where soybeans, castor plants, timber
or coal are present have shown changes in their social profiles.
Rural workers die from poison and the State pretends not to notice
that the workforce is based on slave labour, biodiversity is implacably
destroyed, the waters of the Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) are
disappearing and deserts are being created.” (1)
To make matters
even worse, the pulp and paper company Suzano has appeared on
the scene. It is encroaching on the Atlantic Forest, on
the banks of the River Paranaíba and on the Cerrado, where
it has received authorization to establish monoculture eucalyptus
plantations covering 160,000 hectares. Of course, the company
has also brought with it many promises of jobs: between 12 and
30 thousand indirect jobs and 3,500 direct ones...”
“This
discourse was used when Bunge Foods and Brasil Ecodiesel settled
in Piauí”, reflected Barros, adding: “Today
the situation is cruel, no jobs are being created, the factory
has been closed down as the government discovered that cars can’t
run on castor-oil.” But only after having put a lot of public
money into the business. The Governor gave 100,000 hectares of
public land to this company, worth approximately 50 million Brazilian
Reais. Is the destruction of the environment justifiable because
it is going to generate some jobs? They try to instil in the people
that because of these jobs, society must passively accept the
destruction of entire forests in the neighbourhood of Teresina
[the capital of Piauí], completely eliminating the fauna
and flora, contributing to increase the heat and lack of rain
in the region and transforming the Paranaíba into a gutter,
worse than it is already. The water supply in the capital in terms
of quality and availability will also be seriously impaired.”
The examples
of what is going to happen are plentiful, in spite of the trite
promises. As stated in an open letter sent to the FSC national
and international offices and those of the certifying company
IMAFLORA disseminated on 10 July (2), “For a decade now
the Green Desert Network has been warning Brazilian and international
society about the profound and negative impacts of monoculture
eucalyptus plantations on society, on the economy and on the environment
in the extreme south of Bahia, the north of Espirito Santo and
in Minas Gerais, denouncing the lack of sustainability of chemical
and industrial eucalyptus plantations. Furthermore, the Green
Desert Network has mobilized a significant segment of regional
society, giving rise to a series of public hearings in municipal,
state and federal parliaments and also to legal proceedings, even
brought before international courts, in which the State and monoculture
plantations are made responsible for the violation of economic,
social, cultural and environmental human rights.”
Social, peasant,
landless and traditional peoples’ movements, workers’
unions, churches, non-governmental organizations, technicians,
academics and individuals participating in the Alert against the
Green Desert Network have denounced that the agrochemicals used
in eucalyptus plantations “since the seventies and until
today have polluted the soil and the water in a macro-region,
their lands have overlapped traditional ethnic territories, their
mechanization has generated large-scale unemployment, their industrial
pollution has affected an enormous territory, their trucks and
facilities have disrupted rural highways and communities, their
outsourcing and degradation of labour have mutilated and poisoned
workers, while disability pensions have not been conquered. Their
management of monoculture plantations has generated food insecurity
and the concentration of land in a territory showing high rural
exodus, a lack of Agrarian Reform and public policies and with
no deeds for traditional territories.”
In spite of
all this, Suzano’s monoculture eucalyptus plantations have
been granted FSC certification, through the Imaflora certifying
company. The Alert against the Green Desert Network states
in its press release that the FSC seal “certifies and greenwashes
as sustainable this social and environmental tragedy instead of
contributing to reduce social, economic and environmental inequality
in the region.”
The issue
of certification of harmful monoculture tree plantations is something
that has already been suffered by the communities that resist
them. Veracel was certified in the extreme south of Bahia, Plantar
was certified in Minas Gerais and now, Suzano has been certified.
As the Networks states in its open letter “Unfortunately
FSC’s principle 10 continues to go against the flow in the
environmental debate, granting certification of uniform tree plantations
as sustainable forests and misrepresenting the message of the
green label to the consumers from the North.”
It is precisely
these consumers who should know that “For us, the Green
Desert Network, the FSC for the Suzano Company has been a greenwashing
of a company that would not even be financially sustainable if
it were not for the enormous and advantageous public moneys invested
by the State, under the form of direct investment, credit or tax
concessions. The Suzano Company’s green seal should be revised
immediately and withdrawn, enabling the granting of deeds to traditional
territories, peasant farming and the agrarian reform, promoting
agro-ecology, food sovereignty and the recovery of the climate
and the Atlantic Forest in the region.”
They finally
conclude that “devastating companies deserve FSC and FSC
deserves the devastating companies! Those who do not deserve FSC
are the peasant, landless communities, the Quilombolas
(slave descendents), the indigenous and riparian peoples and the
neighbouring peoples, hit by these plantations. Neither do the
final consumers in the North, interested in revising their excessive
consumption, deserve FSC.
All the false
promises that Suzano is now making in Piaui – such as the
12 to 30 thousand indirect jobs and the 3,500 direct ones –
have been made before in Espirito Santo and Bahia, but now it
is known that their eucalyptus plantations not only did not generate
jobs but resulted in massive unemployment. As the Green Desert
Network stated in its letter of 10 July “the socio-environmental
disputes throbbing in the north of Espirito Santo and in the extreme
south of Bahia, arising from the installation of thousands of
hectares of monoculture plantations, are about to occur in the
states of Maranhão and Piauí”. Considering
that Suzano’s plantations in Piaui are still at the environmental
impact assessment stage, it is essential for the local inhabitants
to know that all the company’s promises are false and that
they are still on time to avoid the social and environmental disaster
that will be caused by the establishment of these plantations.
(1)
“O papelão da Suzano no Piauí”, Judson
Barros – Coordinator of the “Rede Ambiental do Piauí”,
http://www.portaldomeioambiente.org.br/pma/
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=717
(2) Press Release by the Alert against the Green Desert Network,
10 July 2009
index
Laos:
Chinese company Sun Paper plans eucalyptus monocultures
A Chinese
company called Shandong Sun Paper is planning to establish 100,000
hectares of eucalyptus plantations in Savannakhet province in
central Laos. Of this area, the government has granted a 50 year
land concession to Sun Paper for 30,000 hectares. The remaining
70,000 hectares is to be planted by farmers on their own land,
under contract to Sun Paper. The US$15 million project is planned
to start in early 2010.
“We
also plan to build wood pulp mills in Xepon or Phin district,”
Sun Paper's Deputy General Manager, Ying Guang Dong, told the
Vientiane Times. Sun Paper plans to invest US$300-500 million
to build a pulp mill with a capacity of 300,000 tonnes. “Then
we will invest about US$1.8 billion for the second phase,”
Ying said.
Ying claims
that the pulp mill will employ 10,000 people. If true, it would
be either the largest or the most labour intensive pulp mill on
the planet. Sun Paper is China's largest private paper company,
with an annual capacity of more than 2.2 million tonnes of paper
and paperboard. It employs a total of about 7,000 people. Botnia's
US$1.2 billion pulp mill in Uruguay, which has a capacity of one
million tonnes of pulp a year, employs a grand total of 300 people.
While Sun
Paper exaggerates the number of people it will employ, it is at
least honest about how much money it will provide to local communities:
US$200,000. This money is supposed to build schools and health
dispensaries, and to construct and maintain roads. There are 44
villages in the concession area. That works out at about US$4,500
per village, which may be better than nothing, but not by much.
Sun Paper
does not even plan to employ local people in its plantations.
“Currently, we aim to use labor from Vietnam to cut the
wood in the plantations,” Ying told the forestry industry
information company RISI in February 2009.
Before the
pulp mill is built, the wood will be exported via the port of
Da Nang in Vietnam. In March 2009, Sun Paper announced that it
would invest US$15 million in a wood chip mill in Vietnam to process
the wood from Laos. From Vietnam, the wood chips will be shipped
to Sun Paper's plant in Yanzhou city in China. Part of Sun Paper's
operations in Yanzhou are run as a joint venture with International
Paper.
One problem
that Sun Paper will run into is that there is not sufficient land
available for large scale concessions in Savannakhet province.
In October 2007, the Vientiane Times reported that “Savannakhet
authorities are facing difficulties in supplying land for foreign
investors, who have requested thousands of hectares over the past
years for their projects.” An Indian company, Birla Lao
Pulp & Plantations Company Limited, is reported to be running
into serious difficulties finding enough land for its proposed
50,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations in Savannakhet province.
Sun Paper
has carried out environmental impact studies and claims it will
involve people living in the concession area in the decision-making
and monitoring process. It claims it is going to “employ”
50,000 people as tree growers. But there is a history of this
sort of project in Laos, the most notorious being the Asian Development
Bank's Industrial Tree Plantation Project. In December 2005, the
ADB's Operations Evaluation Department concluded that the ADB
project had “failed to improve the socioeconomic conditions
of intended beneficiaries, as people were driven further into
poverty by having to repay loans that financed failed plantations.”
Put another way, the farmers that Sun Paper hopes will grow its
trees for them need their land to grow food on.
In 2007, the
Lao government suspended the issuance of new land concessions
“after learning such arrangements were negatively affecting
local communities”, as the Vientiane Times put it. In May
2009, the government announced a Prime Minister's decree on state
land leases and concessions, which once again allows large scale
land concessions. Yet little has changed in Savannakhet. No new
land has appeared in the province. So the questions remain. Where
will Sun Paper find the land? Who will benefit? And why on earth
did the Lao government agree to this project?
By Chris Lang,
http://chrislang.org
index
Mexico:
Oil palm business at the expense of the poor
Since 2004
the Mexican government has been promoting the expansion of oil
palm plantations. Presently there are 9 oil extraction plants
in four states, 6 of which are located in Chiapas, the main palm
oil producing state in Mexico. During 2009, the government of
the state of Chiapas will reach a total of 44 thousand hectares
planted with oil palm trees and its governor has announced that
by 2012 the intention is to reach a total of 100 thousand hectares,
with a future projection reaching over 900 thousand hectares.
What is clear
is that palm oil production has been possible thanks to strong
government support, making it a profitable business. Direct support
to farm operators for productive reconversion has been given in
addition to trade promotion programmes and fostering of exports,
advice and training etc. The European Union, also interested in
oil palm plantations for agrofuel has been promoting the plantations
in Chiapas since 2005, and more specifically, in the Lacandona
Forest buffer zone and the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve buffer
zone on the frontier with Guatemala.
Both the Federal
and Chiapas governments affirm that the palm trees are being planted
in areas that had previously been deforested by cattle raising
and other activities that are no longer profitable. However,
many activities are no longer “profitable” for the
entrepreneurial market because the government’s strategy
to gain land for oil palm has been to decrease support to other
sectors in order to give them over to these plantations. The government
has abandoned rural areas and small farmers and, within the rationale
of the Free Trade Agreements, it has focussed on the agribusiness
market and not on food sovereignty. Small farmers, peasants
and indigenous people are forgotten and very often obliged to
enter these new dynamics and provide both cheap labour and their
lands, thus subsidizing agribusiness profits. The oil palm
business would not be profitable without the major subsidies granted
by the government, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB), with their funding of programmes such as Procampo,
intended for investment in oil palm plantations.
As denounced
by the International Declaration against the ‘Roundtable
on Sustainable Palm Oil’ (RSPO) (http://www.wrm.org.uy/temas/Agrocombustibles/Declaracion_Internacional_RSPO.html)
monoculture oil palm plantations “replace tropical forests
and other ecosystems, leading to serious deforestation together
with loss of biodiversity, flooding, the worsening of droughts,
soil erosion, pollution of water courses and the apparition of
pests due to a breakdown in the ecological balance and to changes
in food chains”. Additionally, monoculture oil palm plantations
“also endanger the conservation of water, soil, flora and
fauna. Forest degradation diminishes their climatic functions
and their disappearance affects humanity as a whole.”
The United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Forests identified as causes
of deforestation and forest degradation governmental policies
to replace forests with industrial tree plantations – such
as oil palm – in addition to the advance of the agricultural
frontier, pushed forward by monoculture tree plantations. Nevertheless,
in the Montes Azules region, where deforestation has reached 80
percent of the 220 thousand hectares of forest, the government
is talking of creating “protection belts through high impact
production projects, such as oil palm,” among others.
Oil palm plantations
have not improved the living conditions of the population but
worsened them. One of the serious problems that they cause
is related to water. Faced with no supply of drinking water, the
over 11 thousand people who live in the municipality of Marques
de Comillas in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve mainly consume
water from wells from groundwater sources. Oil palm plantations,
great consumers of water, jeopardize the availability of water
in the region. They also use large quantities of agrochemicals:
insecticides such as endosulphan and other chemicals, including
rodenticides that end up in the water courses. Hurricanes make
the problem more serious when they cause the rivers to overflow,
as is the case in the Lacandona forest with the Lacantun River,
which contaminates the local farmers’ subsistence crops
and scatters agrochemicals in an area of rich biodiversity.
According
to studies by the Chiapas Produce Foundation, the income of “an
average ejido farmer with seven hectares and an average production
of 19 tons per hectare” is the equivalent of 274 pesos (21
dollars) per day, that is to say, less than the Mexican minimum
wage per hectare. Within the annual investment to
establish one hectare of palm trees, the technological package
costs the farmer roughly 6,500 pesos (that is 17 pesos or 1.3
dollars per day): it includes sowing (preparation of the land,
purchase of the seedlings, weed control, clearing of paths, application
of weed-killers, manual plantation), fertilization, pest control,
pruning, equipment and services. One third of the cost is
allocated to weed-killers, fertilizers and rodenticides. Furthermore,
for the first three years there is no production or harvest and
only as from the eighth year can 100 percent be harvested.
The farmers
working for an oil palm processing company are usually trapped
in this situation. The Extraction Plant of the Palma Tica de Mexico
company offered seedlings to the farmers, on credit, under the
condition that they sold all their harvest to the company. In
many cases the farmers have neither the training nor the appropriate
tools to harvest; in other cases they do not have the training
or the technical advice for overall cultivation, control and management
of the plantations. Very often the indigenous or peasant farmers
selling to oil processing companies are not protected by purchase
contracts or agreements, or insurance. This implies that if the
company does not want to buy their production, they are not obliged
to do so. There are no price differences in relation to
the quality of the product being delivered.
In 2008, a
group of workers from the AGROIMSA oil plant in the municipality
of Mapastepec were repressed by public forces and an advisor and
several leaders were arrested, some of them remaining in prison.
They were also laid off which led to a labour dispute.
Moreover,
oil palm plantations exclude other types of production. In the
municipality of Villa Comaltitlan, one of the main cattle raising
areas together with other coastal municipalities, it has been
confirmed that the drop in cattle raising “was not due to
negligence on the part of the farmers, but rather to the arrival
of other crops that cannot be combined with cattle-raising. For
example banana and oil palm plantations have taken up space, implying
a drop in cattle-raising.” In Chiapas monoculture palm plantations
have had disastrous impacts on honey production, on which thousands
of bee-keepers depend. The crisis has become more serious as the
plantations increase. hey also cause other damage: in the
municipality of Acapetahua, Mr. Manuel Jimenez stated that “the
main culprits causing the destruction of roads and highways are
the heavy goods transporters, as they cause damage with their
trucks loaded with stones, cane and oil palm fruit.” At
the Mapastepec municipal seat, “along the ditch made to
introduce drainage the land subsided (...) in the 15 September
neighbourhood and now traffic is obstructed and great clouds of
dust arise, affecting the health of the neighbours.” Gabriel
Colon and Elio Ventura, who live in this neighbourhood, have demanded
that the mayor’s office mend the road that has a lot of
traffic, mainly trucks loaded with oil palm fruit going to the
oil processing plant.
There is no
doubt that great business deals are made at the expense of the
poor, on their lands and territories and at the cost of humanity’s
common assets. Enough of monoculture plantations!
Summarized
and adapted from: “La palma africana en México. Los
monocultivos desastrosos”, Gustavo Castro Soto, Otros Mundos,
AC/Amigos de la Tierra México,
12 June 2009. The complete article may be accessed at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Mexico.html#info
index
Statement
on Tree Plantations from participants at recent Forest Movement
Europe meeting
The Forest
Movement Europe (FME) is an informal network of more than 45 NGOs
from12 European countries. It is a loose movement with no formal
membership and without a formal secretariat that has been working
on forest issues for nearly ten years.
It was mainly
due to the activities of the groups that participated in the movement
that the tropical rainforest campaigns in Europe took off, imports
of tropical timber into several European countries declined and
the struggle of forest peoples, e.g. in Sarawak, Malaysia and
the Amazon were headline stories.
The FME meets
once a year and in this year’s meeting, June 2009, the following
Statement on Tree Plantations was issued, supported by many NGOs
and some individuals:
“The
undersigned participants of the Forest Movement Europe wish to
express our concern about the spread of fast wood tree plantations
in the South, which are being implemented with support from some
European governments and the direct involvement of a number of
corporations based in Europe.
In spite of
the fact that those plantations are resulting in a large number
of severe social and environmental impacts, they continue to be
promoted as ‘planted forests’ as a means of hiding
their true destructive nature.
Local communities
impacted by eucalyptus, pine and other fast wood monocultures
state that ‘plantations are not forests’. All the
available evidence proves that local communities are right, because
while forests provide a wide range of benefits to both people
and the environment, plantations result in:
• the
appropriation of forest land that provides for peoples’
livelihoods
• the
destruction of forests and other equally valuable ecosystems
• the
depletion of water resources
• the
impoverishment of soils
• the
disappearance of plant and animal biodiversity.
We therefore call on European governments to stop all types of
support to the spread of fast wood plantations and to adopt a
clear definition of forests, which excludes large scale monoculture
tree plantations.”
The document
with signatures is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/information/Statement_Tree_Plantations_2009.html
index
GE
trees: when scientists mutate into publicists
The Convention
on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) mandate is to protect the
world’s biodiversity. Strong campaigning from an increasing
number of NGOs and IPOs raised the threats posed to forest biodiversity
by genetically engineered trees. The issue was discussed and addressed
by the Convention, that agreed about the need to take a precautionary
approach regarding the release of GE trees into the environment.
The CBD’s
stance has been welcomed by organizations concerned about the
fate of the world’s forests and its peoples but is being
strongly opposed by those who stand to gain from the GE tree business.
A recent article
from four pro-GE tree scientists illustrates how unscientific
some people can be when trying to put their case forward. The
article, produced by Stephen Strauss, Huimin Tan, Wout Boerjan
and Roger Sedjo is titled “Strangled at birth? Forest biotech
and the Convention on Biological Diversity”.
The article
is quite long and detailed, which shows the importance that the
pro-GE tree lobby gives to the CBD’s stance on the issue.
At the same time, the article shows how far these scientists are
willing to go in order to defend their positions. What follows
are a few examples to illustrate this, but we encourage people
involved in the issue to analize the article in full at http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/stopgetrees_news.php?ID=294
The title
tends to make people believe that GE tree have been “Strangled
at birth” by the CBD. However, the authors forget to say
that GE tree research is being carried out in at least 20 countries
and that field trials already exist in at least 11 countries (see
details in http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/GMTrees/Information_sheets.html).
What the CBD is doing is simply to apply the precautionary approach
to avoid the possibility of irreversible impacts on biodiversity
resulting from those GE trees. That is to say, that the CBD is
complying with its mandate.
The CBD’s
position is in fact strengthened by what the article says. Strauss
et al provide the arguments for doing so.
They say that
“Perhaps the most credible science-based concerns about
GM trees relate to their potential for wide dispersal of seeds
and pollen when they are allowed to flower.” They add that
“There is wide agreement from scientists that until very
strong containment genes are developed, socially accepted and
their efficiency verified in the field, some level of
gene dispersal —either from pollen, seeds
or vegetative propagules—is certain in most forestry
species. Moreover, the distances over which dispersal
can occur are large, on the order of kilometers or more.”[emphasis
added] To make matters worse, they add that “The limited
level of domestication of most tree species contributes to this
concern, as propagules are generally fit enough to survive in
wild or feral environments.”
The above
should be enough for most scientists to desist in carrying out
such a dangerous activity, but not for Strauss et al.
Among the
many arguments they use to justify their research and open air
field trials, the following is a good example of their unscientific
approach. They say that “very few GM species
are under commercial development that are sexually compatible
with wild forests, or will be used in or very near to
wild forests, and thus it will be extremely rare
that transgenes could introgress into wild tree genomes to
a significant degree, and thus become common in wild
ecosystems.” [emphasis added]
For people
who try to prove all their points by emphasizing that they are
scientists –as these four do throughout the article- the
above paragraph proves exactly the opposite: a totally unscientific
approach.
1) The difference
between hypotheses and fact is blurred and the former are shown
as synonymous to the latter. Evidence:
- science
cannot know if GM species “will be used in or very near
to wild forests”, because this will be defined by companies
and governments
- science cannot know if “it will be extremely rare that
transgenes could introgress into wild tree genomes to a significant
degree” or not
- there is no quantification regarding the meaning of “extremely
rare” or “to a significant degree”
2) There is
confusion regarding species and forests
- GM species
can be sexually compatible or incompatible with natural tree species
but not with “wild forests”
- The use of the undefined expression “wild forests”
might mean that their only concern refers to contamination of
species living in “primary” forest and not to the
species themselves
3) Existing
evidence is hidden
- the most
common genus being genetically engineered is poplar (several species).
However, the article fails to mention that there is already evidence
of GE contamination of “wild” (native) poplars in
China.
- The article fails to mention that the two main other trees being
genetically manipulated are pine (which grows in many “wild”
forests around the world) and eucalyptus (native to Australia
and grown in a very large number of countries in the world). In
both cases, seed and pollen dispersal would be inevitable and
no scientist can prove that eucalyptus forests in Australia would
be safe from GE contamination
- They say that “The area planted with GM forest [sic] trees
is likely to remain relatively small; forest plantations [sic]
comprise only 5% of the world's forest cover”. They
fail to mention that the area of plantations, according
to FAO, covers a total of 270 million hectares! To describe such
an area as “relatively small” is unscientific, to
say the least.
Similar examples
abound throughout the article, but perhaps one of the most enlightening
is the following: “ … there may be potential benefits
for wild tree species from some kinds of GM trees; for example,
a wild tree might benefit by acquiring a trait enhancing stress
resistance and thus acquire resilience in the face of new forms
of biotic or abiotic stresses, perhaps brought on by rapid climate
change”.
The above
of course acknowledges the fact that GE tree contamination will
occur, if GE trees are released. At the same time it is difficult
to understand -unless the authors have a PhD in futurology- how
science can determine if “wild” trees may benefit
or not from acquiring new traits or if the species with “enhanced
resistance” will not endanger forest biodiversity precisely
because of the new trait.
In sum, the
article ends up proving that NGO arguments for calling on a ban
on GE trees are scientifically correct and helps to strengthen
the CBD’s call for a precautionary approach.
By Ricardo
Carrere
(1) Strangled
at birth? Forest biotech and the Convention on Biological Diversity
Nature Biotechnology 27, 519 - 527 (2009). Steven H. Strauss,
Huimin Tan, Wout Boerjan & Roger Sedjo
index
