OUR VIEWPOINT
-
FAO and WWF: birds of a feather promote “planted forests”
together
According to the FAO, halting
deforestation is neither a political nor a social nor an environmental
issue: it is just a matter of definitions.
As evidence of the above,
the FAO has just released a report (1) which proves that we
and many others have been absolutely wrong: deforestation in
Asia is not only not happening; forests have actually expanded
during the last decade! The report says: “Asia, which
had a net loss [in forest area] in the 1990s, reported a net
gain of forest in the period 2000–2010”. Hallelujah!
How did this miracle happen?
Well, in the first place it is not a miracle (it’s a fraud)
and in the second place it did not happen (it’s a lie).
As the FAO report adds, the “net gain of forest”
was “primarily due to the large-scale afforestation reported
by China”. That means that those plantations “reported
by China” -defined by FAO as “forests”- can
counter the “continued high rates of net loss in many
countries in South and Southeast Asia.”
As stated above, it’s
just a matter of definitions. According to FAO’s “expertise”,
any area covered by trees is a “forest”. Which means
that if forests are destroyed –as they certainly have
been- in Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, India, etc.- the
Asian forest area will not have changed if a similar area has
been planted with tree monocultures in another Asian country:
in this case China.
But the issue is not restricted
to Asia. FAO states that “Large-scale planting of trees
is significantly reducing the net loss of forest area globally.”
“The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2010
is estimated at –5.2 million hectares per year (an area
about the size of Costa Rica), down from –8.3 million
hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.”
Under this fraudulent approach,
all the world’s forests can be destroyed and substituted
by monoculture tree plantations (eucalyptus, pines, acacias,
oil palm, rubber) and the “net forest area” will
not have changed. As a result, the FAO will eventually be able
to announce the good news that deforestation has been stopped!
Given the increasing number
of people and organizations challenging FAO’s unscientific
“forest” definition and the growing opposition to
large-scale monoculture tree plantations, another organization
has stepped in to provide support to both FAO and plantation
companies: the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
This move comes as no surprise
given the role played by WWF in corporate-friendly processes
such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the Roundtable
on Responsible Soy, Sustainable Aquaculture and in the certification
of monoculture tree plantations under the Forest Stewardship
Council.
While it is difficult to
see how the wildlife that WWF is supposed to be protecting –
headed by the charismatic panda bear it uses as logo- may benefit
from monoculture tree plantations, the fact is that WWF is leading
and coordinating a process called the “New Generation
Plantations Project” (2, 3). Participants in the project
are well known plantation companies, including Forestal Oriental
(Finnish UPM/Kymmene subsidiary in Uruguay), Mondi (South Africa),
Portucel (Portugal), Smurfit Kappa Carton de Colombia (Irish-Dutch
company operating in Colombia), Stora Enso (Finnish-Swedish),
UPM Kymmene (Finland), as well as the Sabah Forest Department
(Malaysia), the State Forest Administration of China and the
UK Forestry Commission.
What WWF is actually doing
is to promote the expansion of tree monocultures and helping
to greenwash the long –and well documented- history of
past and present destructive activities of the companies and
organizations involved in this project. At the same time, it
is assisting the beleaguered FAO by continuing to define tree
plantations as “planted forests”, thereby weakening
the growing civil society demand for changing a definition that
has so much served plantation companies for obscuring the true
and negative nature of these monocultures.
Legend has it that the Italian
mathematician, physicist and philosopher Galileo Galilei muttered
the phrase “Eppur si muove” meaning “And yet
it moves” after being forced to recant in 1633, before
the Inquisition, his belief that the Earth moves around the
Sun. In a similar vein, we hope that some serious FAO officials
and honest WWF activists will be heard muttering: “And
yet plantations are not forests”.
Sources:
(1) http://www.fao.org/forestry/static/data/fra2010/KeyFindings-en.pdf
(2) http://assets.panda.org/downloads/newgenerationplantationsreport2009.pdf
(3) http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/forestry/sustainable_
plantations/newgenerationplantations/
index
COMMUNITIES AND FORESTS
- Indonesia: NGOs denounce misleading propaganda
of APP
Asia Pulp & Paper (APP)
is a giant pulp and paper company which has long been deforesting
Indonesian forests in Riau province, Sumatra, destroying Kerumutan’s
and Bukit Tigapuluh’s peat forests. Most of the estimated
25 percent deforestation of the original natural forest cover
has taken place on carbon rich soils.
The damage carried out by
APP has several implications: it destroys the territory and
livelihoods of indigenous communities who have been living there
for centuries; it threatens the survival of some of them; it
leads Sumatran tigers, elephants and orangutans to the verge
of extinction; it causes millions of tons of greenhouse
gas emissions as the forest is cleared and drained peat soils
oxidize, pushing Indonesia into third place (behind China and
the U.S.) of greenhouse gas emitters.
It is difficult to think
that with such a profile APP could earn some credit. However,
the company is trying to promote their corporate responsibility
and paper products through propaganda.
During the 12th Annual RISI
European pulp & paper outlook conference held in Amsterdam,
Netherlands, on March 10, APP attempted to promote their “corporate
responsibility”. Several Indonesian NGOs reacted calling
on buyers and investors of APP “to reject the company’s
misinformation and stop purchasing or financing the company
until it met conditions articulated in an open letter calling
for reforms in Indonesia’s pulp and paper sector”.
In a joint communiqué
NGOs denounced that a series of TV paid programming (infomercials)
touting APP’s environmental and social accomplishments
may be “an effort to pave the way for the company’s
anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of its Chinese division,
and comes at the same time as new investments in direct sales
capacity in Europe and North American paper markets. In the
early 2000’s, APP defaulted on a debt of more than U.S.
$13 billion and became Asia’s biggest bankruptcy. In the
aftermath of the bankruptcy, significant legal, social and environmental
issues associated with the company’s pulp production,
natural forest clearance and pulpwood sourcing operations emerged”.
WALHI/Friends of the Earth Indonesia, the national environmental
forum in Indonesia which has over 450 member NGOs, blew the
whistle on the misinformation campaign and alerted consumers:
“We’re trying to set the record straight for APP’s
customers and investors who may have been taken in by APP’s
misleading advertisements and glossy brochures,” said
Teguh Surya Campaign Director of WALHI. “APP and its affiliates
continue to do more damage to Indonesia’s forest dependent
communities, wildlife and the world’s climate that any
other single corporate player. Being associated with APP poses
major reputational risks to companies that do business with
it”, Teguh said.
Rivani Noor of the Indonesian
national network, Community Alliance for Pulp and Paper Advocacy
(CAPPA) bears witness of APP’s deeds: “Indonesian
NGO’s and the communities we work with have experienced
the devastation caused by APP firsthand, so we can’t be
fooled by infomercials or environmental prizes,” he said.
APP’s record of destruction
and violation of community rights cannot be cleaned up with
propaganda.
CAPPA’s Rivani Noor
declared that “We urge APP to stop the destruction of
natural forests and peatlands, respect community rights and
tenure, resolve existing disputes and retract misleading statements
about their low carbon footprint. This is how APP can go beyond
business as usual and help fulfill Indonesia’s greenhouse
gas emission reduction targets and the transition to an equitable
and low-carbon future for all Indonesians”.
Article based on the “Open
Letter to Customers of and Investors in the Indonesian Pulp
and Paper Sector” (http://www.eyesontheforest.or.id),
and the joint communiqué “Indonesian groups reject
APP’s green claims at RISI Paper Conference”, sent
by Rivani Noor, Coordinator, Community Alliance Pulp and Paper
Advocacy (CAPPA), e-mail: rivani@cappa.or.id
. More on APP’s social and environmental impacts is
documented at: http://www.eyesontheforest.or.id,
http://www.savesumatra.org/index.php/link,
http://www.environmentalpaper.org/indonesiaroundtablesummary.htm,
and photos of APP impacts at: http://www.eyesontheforest.or.id
index
- European Ecolabel's greenwashing of Asia Pulp
and Paper must stop
The European Commission
claims that the EU Ecolabel is only awarded to “the very
best products, which are kindest to the environment”.
But when the EU Ecolabel has been awarded to Golden Plus and
Lucky Boss, two brands of photocopy paper manufactured by Pindo
Deli, a subsidiary of Asia Pulp and Paper, this claim is greenwash.
“EU Ecolabel allows
forest destruction: The case of Pindo Deli,” is the title
of my latest report, recently published by FERN. Despite the
EU Ecolabel, which was awarded in 2006, the logging and plantation
operations associated with Pindo Deli are extremely destructive
and in some cases may not even be legal under Indonesian law.
Pindo Deli is a paper manufacturing
company with two paper mills in West Java, producing around
one million tonnes of paper products a year. Around 80 per cent
of the pulp used in Pindo Deli's paper mills comes from two
massive APP pulp mills in Sumatra: Lontar Papyrus and Indah
Kiat.
Vast areas of forest have
been cleared to supply the raw material to these pulp mills.
Two forestry companies, PT Arara Abadi and PT Wirakarya Sakti
(PT WKS), supply timber to the pulp mills. Both are part of
the Sinar Mas Group, the company that owns Asia Pulp and Paper.
PT Arara Abadi has an appalling record of human rights abuses,
documented in detail in a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch,
titled “Without Remedy”.
In November 2009, David
Gilbert of Rainforest Action Network visited PT WKS's logging
operations in Jambi province, Sumatra. Gilbert travelled to
the edge of PT WKS's concession, bordering Bukit Tigapuluh National
Park. “Private security forces turned us away,”
he says. “Just beyond the gates, biodiverse lowland rainforests
are being illegally logged by Asia Pulp and Paper.” Gilbert
saw around 100 trucks leaving the forest, “headed to the
nearby APP pulp and paper factory.” That factory is Lontar
Papyrus.
About 10,000 people live
in PT WKS's concession area, including about 500 members of
the Orang Rimba indigenous group. The Orang Rimba's livelihoods
are being devastated by PT WKS's logging operations.
A 2008 report by a group
of NGOs, including WWF Indonesia, found that PT WKS was logging
in an area of forest where orangutans had recently been re-introduced.
The NGOs documented the destructive logging and questioned whether
PT WKS's operations in Bukit Tigapuluh were legal.
APP's operations are so
controversial that even the Forest Stewardship Council will
have nothing to do with the company. In December 2007, FSC issued
a statement “dissociating” itself from APP. “There
is substantial publicly available information,” FSC wrote,
“that suggests that APP, a Sinar Mas subsidiary, is associated
with destructive forestry practices.”
I tried to find out how
on earth the EU Ecolabel could have been awarded to a company
involved in this level of destruction. To get the Ecolabel,
Pindo Deli had to convince one of the EU's “Competent
Bodies” that it complied with the Ecolabel's criteria.
In this case, the “Competent Body” was a French
company called AFNOR.
I wrote to AFNOR to make
a formal request for the assessment report carried out before
the Ecolabel was awarded and any audits that had been carried
out since the award. AFNOR declined to respond.
I wrote to Pindo Deli and
APP to ask, among other things, what evidence the company could
provide that its raw material comes from “sustainable
forest management”, as required to comply with the Ecolabel
criteria. Pindo Deli and APP declined to respond, even when
I sent a draft copy of my report and invited them to provide
a comment and offered to include the comment as an annex to
the report. APP did respond after the report had been published,
but failed to address the allegations of destructive logging
operations in the report.
I wrote to the European
Ecolabel Helpdesk to ask what information about the assessment
is publicly available. None, it turns out. “I doubt that
the assessments are available to the public since it might contain
private information, for example regarding the composition of
the products, that producers might not want to disclose,”
Camille Ouellete from the Helpdesk told me. “Unfortunately,
I fear you will not be able to obtain those documents,”
she added.
Benjamin Caspar at the European
Commission's environment department told me that “I don’t
think that French CB [Competent Body] can give any information
to external parties and not even sure if the Aarhus convention
[on access to information] is applicable in this case.”
ENDS Daily (a news service
covering European environmental issues) reports that the European
Commission's environment department will ask AFNOR to investigate
and “act in response to these severe accusations”.
Whether AFNOR's investigation will be made public, however,
is not clear. “When licenses are found to be in breach,
which happens occasionally, they are taken away immediately,"
the environment department told ENDS Daily.
There is little doubt that
APP's operations are not sustainable, nor do they comply with
the EU Ecolabel criteria. EU's greenwashing of this destructive
company should stop. The EU Ecolabel should be withdrawn from
Pindo Deli's photocopy paper.
By Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
The report “EU Ecolabel
allows forest destruction: The case of Pindo Deli” is
available here: http://fern.org/node/4684 (pdf file 1.26
MB)
index
- Madagascar: Forest communities impacted by
a Rio Tinto mine
Madagascar is the world’s
fourth largest island and is usually portrayed as being one
of the poorest countries in Africa, with over three-quarters
of its population mainly dependant on agriculture for their
livelihoods.
The Anosy region, located
in the mountains in the south east corner of Madagascar, is
home to approximately half a million inhabitants. It is a wet
region with varied biodiversity ranging across littoral, humid,
and transition forests to marshlands and wooded bush.
Since 2005 the main city
of the region, known as Fort Dauphin, has been the target of
financial investment under a World Bank ‘growth pole’
programme which has placed mining at the core of the regional
development strategy. The mine is privately owned by QIT Minerals
Madagascar (QMM), a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. Over the next sixty
years it will extract and export to Canada approximately 750,000
tons of ilmenite (a mineral which transforms into industrial
whitener titanium dioxide).
The mine has brought dramatic
changes to the lives of rural villagers who live adjacent to,
and who depend upon, the local forests situated in the mine’s
trajectory. Approximately 6000 hectares of coastal landscape
is under QMM project custody for extraction. An estimated 1097
hectares have been designated as conservation zones with restricted
access.
The newly designated ‘conservation
zones’, set up by QMM and the Forest Service, employ a
system that restricts access to the forest. This means that
many villagers – who previously relied on their own traditional
management mechanisms –- must now pay (or be fined) to
enter and take products from the forest. Most are cash strapped
market gardeners and fishermen earning less than a dollar per
day who now find themselves excluded from this vital resource.
Some communities have already
been displaced from their lands to allow for construction of
a new port, quarry, roads and housing for mine workers. Others
have been restricted from access to their traditional fishing
sites. A cash compensation process has been applied for those
affected by displacement, but there are ongoing disputes about
the level of compensation delivered. Most consider it insufficient
to balance the loss of access to farmlands or fishing areas
that have supported their families over many generations.
The majority of local people
live from the land (86%) as subsistence farmers. They designate
ownership of their land by traditional means which are recognised
at community level. Legal tenure is difficult and costly and
of an estimated 90% of Malagasy farmers who own land, only 8%
have formal land titles. Compensation processes inevitably favour
those who can establish legal title.
What follows are some testimonies
from local people on the impacts that have resulted from the
mining project:
A 22 year old woman called
Fanja, tells: “I have to collect sticks from the forest
to fence the vegetable garden and stop domestic animals grazing
or eating the seeds. But collecting sticks has become a problem
because the forest belongs to the foreigners (QMM). It is amazing
how a forest growing in our region can become the property of
foreigners. Right now, local people need authorisation to cut
down trees. The worst thing is that we have to pay to get the
permit... We did not have to purchase firewood [before]... Men
went to collect construction wood and brought back the amount
they needed to build a house. Women took advantage of free firewood
and made a small business of selling it to other people... In
addition, people did not buy medicines. Medicinal plants were
available to us from the forest... I still rely on the forest
to supply my needs, especially to collect mahampy for my occupation
[weaving baskets]… In [the past], if I could not collect
mahampy, I could switch to collecting firewood and make a little
bit of money... Now, everything has changed. The forest is a
forbidden place... If such restrictions continue we will fall
into chronic hardship.”
Constand, a 31 year old
man, explains how the forest became “a protected area”:
“QMM came to the village... They said that they needed
the forest to be protected... QMM collected signatures from
each individual in the village to get approval for the transfer
of forest management to them... The local community, along with
the local NGO, registered their opposition to QMM’s plan
to manage the forest. But this could not prevent QMM from appropriating
the forest around St Luce... [They said] deforestation threatened
St Luce Forest so it was time to take action... People in St
Luce believed...they would still have access to the forest...
So they did not oppose the plan vehemently enough.
Unfortunately, [our] hardships
have been accentuated, because QMM does not allow access to
the forest any more... It has taken away so many of the resources
that people need to sustain their lives... Because people are
poor, they need the forest... Instead of building houses of
bricks, people use forest resources... Second, forested land
is fertile and provides good yields of cassava, sweet potatoes
and rice. Therefore many farmers clear forest in order to expand
their cropland. Third, the forest provides many good things
such as medicinal plants... The only thing that people are still
allowed to do is collect firewood, but QMM’s forest guards
must supervise anyone who wants to do that...
In the past, the local community
managed the forest directly; they collected fees from tourists
visiting the forest and its biodiversity. The number of tourists
has increased every year, and now many foreign students come
to conduct scientific research. Such visits improve people’s
income.
Those benefits have [now]
disappeared... Now QMM staff have tagged most of the animals
living in the forest. Soon QMM will claim that all those tagged
animals are theirs...
I came to the conclusion
that only the government can work out a deal to claim back the
local community’s rights… It is a huge challenge
for people to draft a letter and send it to the respective authorities.
Most of us are illiterate... The only opportunity for the people
of St Luce to express their complaints is through interviews
like this.”
Bruno, male, 43, remembers:
“In the past, there was thick forest, but since QMM has
taken over its management, it is as if the forest has diminished...
This has made it difficult for us to survive, since our lives
depend so directly on forest products... Our children are going
to have difficulty finding construction wood and they lack money
to buy it elsewhere...
Another problem is the restriction
on collecting firewood, despite this being the primary means
by which we cook our meals. [Now] people are obliged to go to
Fort Dauphin to buy charcoal...
If I have a visitor in my
house, our custom is to give them something to eat... Now I
do not have a supply of firewood, I cannot rapidly prepare a
meal... I am obliged to go off to look for it... [My visitor]
might leave without having eaten, which in my culture brings
shame on me.”
As Zanaboatsy, male, 58,
explains “[QMM] took advantage of our situation, of us
being too weak to oppose them. In addition, we are mostly uneducated
people; therefore we had to accept – against our will
– what they [proposed].” Zanaboatsy sums up the
situation by describing QMM as “the bain-tany” –
literally ‘wound of the earth’, expression meaning
a time of hardship and deprivation- and that he now has “no
opportunity to succeed in life and provide a better future for
my family.”
Extracted and adapted from:
“Madagascar. Voices of Change”, Andrew Lees Trust
& Panos London, 2009. The complete document is available
at: http://www.andrewleestrust.org/Reports/Voices%20of%20Change.pdf
index
- Honduras: Shrimp farm expansion within a Ramsar
Site and protected area
Wetlands are ecosystems
having a high biodiversity, temporarily or permanently flooded
by fresh water, brackish water, mixed waters or sea water with
a maximum depth of 6 metres. In some cases they form swamps,
mud flats, peat bogs, lakes or lagoons, usually accompanied
by grasses, seaweeds, mangroves or other vegetation. In some
cases wetlands remain temporarily dry and devoid of vegetation
and desert-like and become productive and full of life during
rainy seasons.
Mangrove ecosystem included
in the mudflats, lagoons, marshes, grasslands, etc., are considered
wasteland by hotel and shrimp entrepreneurs and other “developers”
whereby justifying their use of the land for hotels, restaurants,
shrimp farms, etc., without considering the environmental, social
and economic damages caused to humanity.
The Ramsar Convention is
committed to safeguarding wetlands, thus recognizing the importance
of their biodiversity, in addition to their function in maintaining
aquifers, rehabilitating fisheries, lessening erosion, protecting
against winds and storms, as a carbon and pollution trap, as
a salinity regulator for groundwater and as the basis of food
sovereignty.
Honduras is signatory to
the International Ramsar Convention and boasts about having
declared and having under conservation measures five “Ramsar
Sites,” totalling 223,230 hectares of wetlands which are
supposedly “under State protection.” But what
is going on in a part of the “Ramsar Site” reveals
that this is a false “protection.”
The tropical coastal wetlands
ecosystem of Berbería, Municipality of el Triunfo, Department
of Choluteca, is fed by creeks along which mangroves grow amid
grasses, tropical pasture plants and other vegetation on sand
flats. This ecosystem hosts a wide resident and migratory biodiversity
which interrelates with the fishing communities giving them
access to firewood, game, fish and recreation.
The expansion of shrimp
farming in Honduras started in 1972 and in 2010 it is still
expanding, with no kind of development plan. The only
means of control are shrimp diseases, a drop in prices on the
international markets, lower demand and sometimes, pressure
from the communities. However, destruction, pollution,
eviction of the communities and looting of natural resources
have given rise to a social movement aimed at lessening the
negative impacts. This movement has been headed by the organization
CODDEFFAGOLF since 1988 and has established as its objective
to get the Gulf of Fonseca Wetlands to be declared a Protected
Area.
CODDEFFAGOLF submitted a
proposal for Protected Area, including segments of the shrimp
farms within its limits, in order to halt expansion, classifying
them as “of intensive use.” In July 1999,
during the International RAMSAR Convention, the Honduran shrimp
farmers (ANDAH) were surprised that Honduras was able to achieve
nomination of the coastal wetlands of the Gulf of Fonseca (mangroves,
lagoons sand flats and other fragile ecosystems) as “Ramsar
Site” allocated no. 1000 on the list of the world’s
wetlands, with the consequent commitment of conserving them.
In 2000, following mass
mobilization by fisher-folk and forced negotiations with the
shrimp farming sector, Berbería was included among the
Protected Areas of the Gulf of Fonseca. The objective would
seem to have been achieved as the expectations were to halt
the expansion of shrimp farming and place the rest of the wetlands
under conservation measures. But a few months after promulgation
of the Decree, a Spanish company known as El Faro converted
over 100 hectares of wetlands in the Protected Area of La Berbería
into shrimp holding ponds. Meanwhile, the EMAR I company was
advancing, without an environmental license, over tens of hectares.
In 2004 the Central American
Water Tribunal condemned the Government of Honduras, the El
Faro, Granjas Marinas San Bernardo shrimp farms and the World
Bank for pollution and destruction of the wetlands. The
verdict amounts to an ethical and moral sentence and therefore
does not go beyond a slight embarassment for distracting the
guilty party.
In 2005 the ANDAH shrimp
farmers held up adoption of the Management Plans and it was
only due to local, national and international pressure that
they agreed to the submission and adoption of the Management
Plans for the “Natural Protected Areas of the Southern
Zone Sub-System,” which includes “la Berbería.”
Nevertheless, expansion
over the wetlands continued, stimulated by high international
demand for shrimps. In January 2010, the Natural Resources and
Environment Secretariat (Secretaría de Recursos Naturales
y Ambiente -SERNA) granted an environmental license to EMAR
II to set up a shrimp farm on 169 hectares following an amazingly
short licensing process lasting only five days (21-26 January).
Over this short period a license was also granted to EMAR I,
which had been operating for several years without an environmental
license. It also took three SERNA Directorates just one
day to issue favourable reports before the new governor took
up office!
As if this were not enough,
the EXCASUR company waited for EMAR II to establish its shrimp
farm with impunity to expand over other tens of hectares, claiming
to have an Environmental License obtained on 15 December 2009.
What is ironical and cynical in all these cases is that the
police and even the state army are protecting the shrimp farm
operations, equipment and facilities. Meanwhile, the President
of the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (Consejo Hondureño
de la Empresa Privada - COHEP), stated that “We need more
security, because, while the peasants in Bajo Aguan try to recover
their lands, in the South, (Gulf of Fonseca), they have “taken
over” a shrimp farm: work cannot be done in this way because
they frightens off investment...”
To demonstrate the fraud
committed by government officials in confabulation with the
companies, CODDEFFAGOLF decided to carry out a field assessment,
observing than on a local level, on 5 March 2010, over two hundred
hectares of wetlands had been added to thousands of others converted
into fish farms in the Gulf of Fonseca. In la Berbería,
wildlife has lost almost all its habitat and the fisher-folk
have either lost or are fighting for their right to access the
mangroves, their source of food and survival. They are putting
direct pressure on the companies in order to obtain social compensation
measures.
On a national level, disrepute
of the Honduran legal system is almost total. The institutions
that are responsible for working in favour of environmental
conservation act as if they were subordinate to the corporate
groups that recently took part in a coup d’état
and that seemingly continue to be in power behind the mask of
a new democracy. The Director of ANDAH, a brother of the former
dictator Micheletti, managed to get agreements signed between
ANDAH and government institutions together with other arrangements
that attack natural resources, conventions and agreements still
in force with the new government.
On an international level,
the Ramsar Convention would seem to ignore the situation, which
is not exclusive to Honduras. Even if they knew about it, their
limited power would only enable them to advise the Honduran
government on the introduction of ways to improve their behaviour.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the
Dutch Oxfam Novib in addition to the World Wildlife Fund-USA
(WWF-USA), among other international NGOs, have changed their
interest in conservation and are now into the business of certifying
shrimp and other aquiculture species’ farming.
La Berbería is just
a tiny example of what is going on in the tropical zones of
the planet where the addition of impacts is contributing inter
alia, to climate change, to the destruction of biological diversity
and to the loss of food sovereignty.
While the insatiable demand
for shrimp continues in Europe, Japan, the United States and
Australia, wetland ecosystems continue to disappear. Does it
matter?
Article
excerpted and adapted from: “Consumismo en países
desarrollados causa destrucción de Humedales en el trópico”(Consumerism
in developed countries causes destruction of Wetlands in the
tropics), Jorge Varela Márquez, CODDEFFAGOLF, March 2010.
The complete document with photos can be found in: http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Honduras/Consumismo.pdf
index
- Indonesia: REDD project – many threats,
no solution
Last month, a new Australian-Indonesian
Forest Carbon Partnership was announced under the scheme of
the International Forest Carbon Initiative (IFCI) - a government
initiative, with implementation jointly managed by AusAID and
the Department of Climate Change. The A$30 million funded REDD
(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) trial
project will be implemented in the Indonesian Jambi province
located on the east coast of central Sumatra.
Forests in Jambi are experiencing
high deforestation rates as a result of rampant expansion of
oil palm and pulpwood plantations by multinational companies
as well as mining and logging operations. The ecological disturbance
has brought about drought and forest and land fires in the dry
season, and floods and landslides in the rainy season.
Allegedly aimed at paying
for not cutting forest and thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
the REDD project has been denounced by NGOs from Indonesia and
Australia as a mere “source of cheap credit for the increase
in emissions in Australia”, as Arif Munandar, Jambi’s
Regional Executive Director of WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia),
put it.
“Treasury modelling
shows that the [Australian] government plans to achieve its
5% (30.75 MtCO2) emission reduction target by purchasing 46MtCO2
of offsets for overseas, that is purchasing more tonnes of carbon
offsets that we reduce emissions by! Without offsets the modelling
shows that our emissions would actually increase by over 5%”,
explained James Goodman from Friends of the Earth Australia,
who added that such “offsets” do not reduce global
carbon emissions, but provide a dangerous smokescreen behind
which the Australia government can hide its lack of action on
climate change and continued fossil fuel use.
Many social organisations
share this concern. A statement of the Durban Group for Climate
Justice against Schemes for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation
and Forest Degradation expresses that: “The new pollution
licenses to be generated by REDD are designed in a way that
obstructs the only workable solution to climate change: keeping
oil, coal and gas in the ground.” “Like CDM credits,
they exacerbate climate change by giving industrialized countries
and companies incentives to delay undertaking the sweeping structural
change away from fossil fuel-dependent systems of production,
consumption, transportation that the climate problem demands.
They waste years of time that the world doesn’t have.”
(2)
It is difficult to believe
in good intentions to avoid deforestation when, as Chris Lang
reminded (see WRM Bulletin Nº 145) “Indonesia was
the first country in the world to establish legislation on REDD
investments. Yet earlier this year, the same Indonesian government
decided to allow the expansion of oil palm plantations on peatlands.
To grow palm oil or pulpwood tree plantations on peatland the
land has to be cleared and drained, which releases millions
of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The authorities also allow
pulp companies to log native forests and turn a blind eye when
they use illegal timber.”
WALHI Jambi and Friends
of the Earth Australia fear also “that REDD projects will
undermine the rights of Indigenous and forest-dependant peoples
in the area. In September 2009 the United Nations Committee
on Racial Discrimination wrote [to the government of] Indonesia
to express concerns that Indonesia REDD regulations do not respect
the rights of Indigenous peoples. Documents from the Australian-Indonesian
Kalimantan REDD project fail to guarantee the rights of Indigenous
people in the area.”
As many have warned, covered
under REDD schemes land grabbing grows and financial transactions
are promoted for the benefit of big corporations. Meanwhile
our common future is warming up.
(1) http://www.foe.org.au/news/2010/sumatran-forest-carbon-deal-slammed-by-australian-and-indonesian-environment-groups
(2) http://www.wrm.org.uy/COP15/durban.pdf
index
- Meso-America: Communities issue statement
on protected areas
The concept of protected
areas, born in the United States in the nineteenth century as
an idea of conservation by establishing “national parks,”
was part of the colonization of the “Wild West”
and, in many cases served as an instrument to appropriate indigenous
peoples’ territory, handing it over to the States, research
centres or corporate interests. Although an international
organization such as the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) has acknowledged that when establishing protected
areas, indigenous peoples’ rights to their territories
should be respected and the value of their lifestyles recognized,
most of the protected areas established since then have violated
these rights.
Last March the Third Meso-American Congress on Protected Areas
took place in the City of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. Simultaneously,
the Indigenous Peoples, Local and Afro-descendant Communities
of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Panama gathered at the Third pre-congress of
Meso-American Indigenous Peoples, Local and Afro-descendant
Communities on protected areas and territorial rights, to claim
that “we have existed since time immemorial on this territory
and well before the formation of the present Nation States.”
The “Yucatan Declaration”
(1) was a result of this meeting, reaffirming that “In
our ancestral concept, the territory goes far beyond a physical
space, because it is there that we are born, raised and our
culture is reproduced and it is there that we must continue
our life after life. It also represents the security and continuity
of future generations.”
“Territoriality
is where we develop our condition as subjects of political,
economic, social, cultural and environmental rights in self-management
of Good Living and the continuity in time of our cosmovision.”
This reaffirmation seems
particularly appropriate in the light of events over the past
forty years, during which the rich indigenous territories of
this area “have been subject to reiterated colonialist
systems of looting, expropriation, bio-piracy, bio-prospecting,
dispossession, declaration of protected areas and megaprojects.”
In this context, the Declaration
demands recognition of the Indigenous Peoples, Local and Afro-descendant
communities’ right to free determination and to reserve
the right to establish management/conservation areas under their
own regulatory systems and institutions, guaranteed by a legal
framework implemented in each one of the Meso-American States.
Therefore, “the States shall not declare protected or
conservation areas of any type on the lands and territories
that the Indigenous Peoples, Local and Afro-descendant communities
have historically or traditionally used, possessed or occupied,
without their free, prior and informed consent.”
In those cases that protected areas have been declared without
free, prior and informed consent, it is demanded that processes
be initiated to return these lands and territories.
The declaration warns against
projects promoted by national governments such as the Meso-American
Biological Corridor, the Merida Plan, the Meso-American Strategy
for Environmental Sustainability or the programme for the Reduction
of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), that
directly affect indigenous territories and that therefore should
guarantee full and effective participation of the local communities.
In short, what is at stake
is the free determination of the peoples’ and their right
to Good Living.
(1) See full text of the
Yucatán Declaration (in Spanish) at: http://www.indigenouspeoplesissues.com/attachments/4378_Declaracion_Yucatan.pdf
index
-
Ecuador: The long struggle in defence of El Pambilar forest
El Pambilar with its 3123
hectares of native forest, has since 1997 been a matter of dispute
between peasant farmers and the logging company Bosques Tropicales
S.A (Botrosa), belonging to the Peña Durini group.
El Pambilar is part of the
almost disappeared Ecuadorian Choco ecosystem, recognised as
one of the world’s 10 biodiversity hotspots. In 1997,
ignoring this fact, the Agrarian Development Institute illegally
allocated El Pambilar to the Endesa Botrosa company for forest
exploitation. This allocation disregarded the fact that the
inhabitants of the place, peasant farmers and settlers, used
the forest and that their economy was partially based on this
ecosystem. It also disregarded the fact that this location is
a State Forest Heritage site and that they therefore had no
right to dispose of it in this manner. However, this type of
illegal allocation, favouring major corporations has been very
common in the country and in Latin America in general.
The dispute arose when peasant
farmers from the location of “El Pambilar” in the
parish of Malimpia, Esmeraldas province, did not give in to
pressure exerted by the BOTROSA logging company on their forest.
They had been living there for the past 20-24 years, in small
scattered settlements comprising some 10 to 25 families of settlers
from different provinces from all over the country. It was to
this same area of state heritage, over which the families had
acquired rights of possession, that BOTROSA entered in1997 with
the aim of extracting timber.
Faced by some of the inhabitants
refusal to sell, company employees, private guards and the police
set fire to peasant homes, destroyed their crops, seeds, tools,
household equipment and threw gases at men, women and children.
The loss of their belongings
and the physical aggression forced some of the families to abandon
their lands. Others gave up their rights of possession to the
company.
Following the destruction,
the company planted grass over the rubble to hide the evidence.
Over a period of a year, some 35 homes were burnt down.
This climate of violence
became a constant theme in the area. The company had an armed
group of between 10 and 50 people to dissuade the inhabitants
circulating in the forest, going as far as to threaten to kill
them.
However, the struggle in
defence of El Pambilar did not only take place on the site;
it was also brought up before the State legal institutions.
Thus, several governmental institutions made different statements,
pointing out that the allocation to Botrosa was illegal and
that they were in favour of the conservation of El Pambilar.
The Peoples’ Defence
Counsel issued a resolution in 2001 declaring that the allocation
to Botrosa was illegal and urging that the forest be returned
to the State. The Ministry of the Environment made a statement
on similar terms in the year 2000, the National Congress in
2001, the Commission for Civil Control of Corruption in 2001,
the Constitutional Tribunal in 2002, the General State Auditor
in 2003. Finally, in 2008, the Constitutional Tribunal issued
a non appealable sentence annulling the allocation of 3123 hectares
of tropical rainforest and ordering the land to be returned
to the State. For over TEN YEARS six of the most important State
institutions issued sentences in favour of the conservation
of El Pambilar and its inhabitants, while the company, through
wheeling and dealing, corruption and cheating, managed to remain
in the forest that it had illegally taken over.
The new National Assembly
had to take matters directly in its hands to have the Constitutional
Tribunal’s sentence executed, achieving that, at least
on paper, Ecuador regained El Pambilar.
Within this context, José
Antonio Aguilar and his wife Yola Garófalo were murdered
on 24 February 2010. A few days before their death, a national
radio had broadcast evidence given by José Aguilar on
Botrosa’s aggression towards him to force him to sell
his forest.
This murder is a dangerous
precedent for all those defending nature. With the death of
this couple, the message given to the local inhabitants is one
of defencelessness, impunity, of the untouchable economic and
political power moving its wheels and its puppets to silence
all those who oppose its decisions. If the news gets about that
in Esmeraldas it is possible to take over forests and lands
by murdering their owners, what was once a green province will
be left without forests or inhabitants, it will only have desolation
and deserts.
It is for this reason that
the designation of El Pambilar as a Protector Forest leaves
us with a sweet and sour taste. Peace and satisfaction will
come with justice, when a real investigation is carried out
in the country to discover those who are responsible, the minds
behind these crimes, the accomplices and those that covered
them up.
It is not enough that Botrosa
has left El Pambilar; a process of social and environmental
justice must be launched in order to repair the environmental
and social damage caused and the investigation recommended in
the Auditor’s report must be continued for the rest of
Block 10 of the State’s Forest Heritage.
We all, the Aguilar-Garófalo
family, our communities, our companions, our country, we all
demand that this crime does not go by unpunished. We demand
that compensation be awarded to those who for the past ten years
have been affected by State omission: that the homes burnt down,
the crops destroyed, the families destroyed, the daily life
under the terror of violence and incomplete justice should be
recognized.
The designation of El Pambilar
as a Protector Forest is barely a small step forward. The way
is long and for our own good, we must cover it.
By Acción Ecológica,
e-mail: info@accionecologica.org
index
COMMUNITIES AND TREE MONOCULTURES
- Brazil: Communities hit by monoculture eucalyptus
plantations exchange experiences in Minas Gerais
On 19 and 20 March this
year, peasant, indigenous and quilombola* communities and movements
from the States of Espirito Santo and Bahia who are fighting
to get back their territory invaded by monoculture eucalyptus
plantation companies, paid a visit to Raiz and Vereda Funda
in the locality of Rio Pardo in the north of Minas Gerais, in
solidarity and to exchange experiences with these two communities
struggling to regain their traditional territory.
Over 30 years ago the northern
region of Minas Gerais was taken over by companies exploiting
monoculture eucalyptus plantations for charcoal, the energy
source used in the production of iron and steel in the scores
of metal works located in the State. The invasion of eucalyptus
trees was devastating. The companies managed to plant over one
million hectares of eucalyptus, forming one of the world’s
largest continuous tract of plantations of this monoculture.
The companies were mainly
interested in the flat lands known as ‘chapadas.’
These lands were used by the traditional communities of the
region, called ‘geraizeiras’, to graze their cattle
and to gather innumerable fruit and medicinal plants from the
‘cerrado’ (savannah). As a result the communities
were trapped in the valleys and their streams and springs dried
up. They were deprived of their freedom to come and go over
their own territory and are even being criminalized every time
they try to gather firewood in the ‘chapadas.’ The
companies’ big promise had been employment. But in the
locality of Rio Pardo de Minas, the over 90 thousand hectares
of eucalyptus gave rise to fewer jobs than the artisan production
of ‘caña’ (alcoholic drink produced from
sugar cane) which provided 1,150 jobs and only covered 2,500
hectares. It should be borne in mind that the employment generated
by monoculture eucalyptus plantations very often is degrading,
with work carried out under appalling conditions, jeopardizing
the workers’ health and quality of life.
Motivated by the networking
and meetings promoted over the last 10 years by the Alert against
the Green Desert Network – a network gathering communities
opposed to monoculture eucalyptus plantations who are struggling
to regain their territories – various communities from
the north of Minas Gerais started to organize themselves to
achieve this goal. Two of the communities that are struggling
are Vereda Funda and Raíz.
The first to recover their
territory in the region were the 130 families from Vereda Funda.
This territory covers 5 thousand hectares of collectively used
‘chapada,’ which had been rented out by the state
government of Minas Gerais to the Florestaminas Company. Following
expiry of the contract and inspired by the struggle of the Tupiniquim
and Guarani indigenous people from Espírito Santo, in
2005 the community recovered an area of 5 thousand hectares
with the support of Via Campesina.
After much struggle, confrontation
and persecution, the community achieved definitive control of
the area which the state of Minas Gerais is presently transferring
to INCRA- a federal institution for agrarian reform –
in order to set up an agro-extractivist settlement. Within
the settlement each family will have its own area to plant and
there will also be collective areas for agro-extractivist production
and for cattle-grazing. The community, with the support of the
Rio Pardo de Minas rural workers’ trade union and the
Centre for Alternative Agriculture of Minas Gerais, drew up
a plan for reoccupation of the territory and a map, with some
areas corresponding to environmental rehabilitation of the cerrado
and others for crop growing. Embrapa Cerrados is contributing
with studies in the community towards this purpose. Regaining
the territory gave new encouragement to the community, particularly
to the older members as, on removing the eucalyptus plantations,
the springs are flowing again and wildlife is returning.
Furthermore, the community re-conquered a fundamental right:
its freedom.
At the Vereda Funda community
centre, the visitors were shown a pilot scheme for an agro-forestry
system and then were taken on a field visit to a farm with corn,
bean, cassava and other crops growing on a piece of land that
had been planted with eucalyptus. In this area they want to
plant various crops together in an agro-ecological way, replacing
the chemical monoculture eucalyptus plantation. They were also
shown an agro-industry making jams, where a group of women work
thus generating more income and labour.
The Vereda Funda community
served as a mirror for other struggles for land. For example,
the Raiz community, that was also visited. In the 80s this community
comprising 40 families underwent expropriation of 3,600 hectares
of their traditional territory for eucalyptus exploitation and
the land is presently in the hands of the Replasa company. The
monoculture eucalyptus plantation depleted the valley’s
water resources, forcing the families to move up to the ‘chapada’
in order to find adequate land for their crops. However the
company occupied the whole ‘chapada’ trapping the
families in the valleys. During the struggle, the community
discovered that the company considered that the valleys they
inhabited was its legal reservation. This made them even more
aware that if they did not adopt a strong stand they would also
be evicted from that area and outraged with this discovery,
decided to start struggling to regain their territory.
With the help of the elders,
the community of Raiz started to demarcate the community area,
resulting in a map. According to this map the community had
lost close on 3,600 hectares to Replasa. Immediately, the community
got mobilized and made public the self-demarcation of its territory,
once again following the example of the Tupiniquim and Guarani
indigenous people of Espirito Santo and of the community of
Vereda Funda. Subsequently, they stopped the company’s
machines from pulling up the tree-trunks of native cerrado trees
to plant eucalyptus. Later, in December 2009 with the support
of Via Campesina, the community finally recovered its traditional
territory with the construction of a camp, resisting eviction
up to the present although there is an eviction resolution threatening
its continuity on the site.
According to the participants,
this exchange and supportive visit was very important in strengthening
and encouraging the struggles, both of Raiz and of Vereda Funda
and also those of the communities and movements of Espirito
Santo and Bahia. And there are many struggles. Only in the locality
of Rio Pardo there are at least 18 disputes involving eucalyptus
companies!
For those who inhabit regions
where encroachment by eucalyptus is at an initial phase, such
as in some parts of Bahia, the experience of the communities
visited was an example for trying to avoid the same process
in these regions. The communities of Minas Gerais also gave
a practical lesson on the importance of resistance, in particular
that of Raiz which is presently seriously threatened with eviction
from the area they have regained. A noteworthy aspect
was that of the strength of women who are actively participating
in the struggle. Additionally, an important aspect is the planting
of food crops to replace eucalyptus as well as the various experiences
aimed at implementing agro-ecological practices.
At the end of the meeting,
following a fairly positive assessment by all the participants,
those present proposed that these exchanges should be continued
as an essential element in encouraging, socializing and strengthening
the struggle in different states. Furthermore, the participants
showed great interest in continuing to organize themselves on
different fronts such as fostering knowledge and exchange on
reforesting with native trees, the promotion of agro-ecology,
political and ideological training and joint and mutual support
in concrete struggles against the expansion of monoculture eucalyptus
plantations and in favour of regaining the territories of the
quilombolas, indigenous, geraizeiros and peasant farming people.
By: Winnie Overbeek, Alert
against the Green Desert Network and Cepedes/BA, 23 March 2010
*Quilombolas: the descendents
of slaves that escaped from slave plantations that existed in
Brazil until abolition in 1888
index
- South Africa: Thirsty alien trees in a water
scarce country
GeaSphere and EcoDoc
have just launched a report by Liane Greeff of EcoDoc Africa,
“Thirsty alien trees, no water left and climate confusion
– what version of sustainable development are we leaving
our children”. The paper highlights the dramatic contradiction
of the expansion of water intensive industrial timber plantations
in South Africa under planned development programmes, and the
scarce water resources of the country. It is a thorough report
that we highly recommend and which can be read at: Http://www.geasphere.co.za/articles/thirstytreesnowater.htm
Liane Greeff has produced the following summary in order to
give WRM’s readers a brief view of the report.
There is not enough water
for South Africa’s current and planned developmental approach,
and therefore we need to re-examine the impossible nexus between
our scarce water resources, potential climate change impacts,
our decision to plant more water intensive timber plantations,
and issues of long term food security. We need to weave these
threads together in a way that links with the broader issues
of a sustainable development that our planet is facing, and
humanity’s current collision course with an unknown climatic
crisis. The question we need to ask ourselves (as a species)
is “Why isn’t our generation doing something whilst
we still can, and why aren’t our leaders leading us?”
Southern Africa is the 30th
driest country on the planet, and according to recent statistics
South Africa is already using 98% of its available water and
within the next few years will be having a water deficit.
Exacerbating this situation are the dire climate change predictions
which indicate that Africa will be affected badly, and that
South Africa in particular is likely to experience less rainfall
over most of the region with longer dry periods and increased
storm events. When you put these statements together they portray
a very bleak picture of water availability in our future.
Our leaders, however, seem
to be carrying on with their business as usual approach to macro-economic
planning. Most of the development projects planned, such
as the 150 000 hectares of timber plantations in the drought
prone Eastern Cape, are water intensive and seem to be taking
place in complete isolation from the fact that South Africa
is a water-scarce and arid country. Indeed, South Africa needs
to take much greater cognisance of our natural resource constraints.
The history of timber
plantations and water research: Since 1935 South Africa
has been researching timber plantations and their water use
due to complaints when rivers downstream of plantations starting
running dry. This resulted in seventy years of hydrological
research at Jonkershoek and other sites, using the paired-catchment
approach, which showed that plantations result in significant
streamflow reductions, which vary according to species. For
pines, it was calculated that there was 30-40 mm streamflow
reduction per 10% of catchment planted, at peak water use, and
using about 400-450mm of rainfall equivalent.
Eucalypts use more water
- approximately 600mm of rainfall equivalent – because
of their ability to grow deep roots, which measure 30 to 50
metres, and therefore are able to “mine” soil water,
or desiccate a catchment. In a South African catchment
with deep soils and afforested with eucalypts, the stream can
dry up completely and only reappear 3-4 years after the trees
are removed. The amount of water a tree uses is dependent on
what species it is, what age, where it is in the landscape,
its size, the size of its canopy, how close it is to a river
and whether it is growing by itself or as part of a plantation.
Generally speaking a eucalyptus tree will use anything from
100 to one thousand litres of water per day and a pine from
50 to 600 litres of water per day.
Recent research has found
that plantations use a much higher proportion of streamflow
during periods of low rainfall and low stream flow, when compared
to an average per annum reduction. For example, in South Africa
the annual reduction to stream flow caused by plantations is
about 3.2%. However, the impact is far worse in periods of low
flow where plantations reduce the stream flow by 8%. This means
that when there is a lot of water, plantations use a smaller
proportion, but when there is limited water, plantations use
a higher proportion. So when water is scarce, timber plantations
uses a lot and uses it before other users get a chance.
How much water does
timber use? The exact answer is difficult. According to
Statistics South Africa, timber used 10 828 million m3 or 16%
of South Africa’s water for 2000 whilst for the same year
the National Water Resources Strategy indicates that the incremental
water use of the timber plantations in excess of the natural
vegetation amounted to 1 460 million m3 (3%) for South Africa
as a whole. However, the word “incremental” is important
as it gives the impression that plantations use less then they
do. The difference between these two figures is because the
Statistics SA Water Accounts reflect the evapotranspiration
use of the plantation trees whilst the NWRS figure refers only
to incremental use and the reduction in streamflow. Environmental
organisation GeaSphere calculated plantations to use an amount
equal to 30 times more water each day than the entire population’s
free basic water allocation of 25 litres per person per day.
What makes timber very different is that the trees use the water
before it gets into the stream flows, which means that once
the trees are planted the water-use is committed.
Community experiences
of water scarcity: Timber plantations have impacted on
communities in a number of ways. Firstly, timber plantations
cover 1.7 million hectares of land in the high rainfall belt,
and about 40% of this land is claimed by communities as their
ancestral land, and rightfully theirs. Secondly, communities
living downstream of plantations find that their water supply
often dries up and they have no water.
Timber plantations and
other invasive alien plants: Many of the species used in
plantations such as some pines, eucalyptus and black wattle,
are highly invasive, and South Africa has a huge problem with
invasive plants taking over our natural landscapes and using
vast quantities of water resources. Recent research indicate
that under current conditions the amount of South Africa’s
water being lost to the expansion of alien invasive species
could rise from its current estimate of 3% to over 16%.
Climate Change Predictions
for South Africa and the double burden of clean development
mechanisms using plantations as carbon sinks: The clean
development mechanism is one of the more controversial climate
change mitigation strategies which enables trading based on
carbon sequestration or the sink solution, whereby carbon emitting
industries in the North can continue or expand if the equivalent
amount of carbon is sunk somewhere else, for instance in a plantation.
Using timber as carbon sinks have been described by some authors
as trading water for carbon, whilst other studies conclude that
where plantations could cause or intensify water shortages,
that this factor should be explicitly addressed when considering
carbon sequestration programs. Indeed many organisations complain
that carbon sequestration programmes often result in people
from developing countries “paying twice” for climate
change – firstly, with the climate change itself, and
secondly with the often devastating impacts that are associated
with development projects such as tree plantations and large
dams.
Pulp and paper industry: Another factor to be included
in the consideration of timber and water use is the amount of
water used and polluted through the pulp and paper processing
mills. Linked to this is the wasteful use of paper around the
world where global use has increased five times in 40 years.
Conclusion
The intention of the report is to share with you just how thirsty
alien trees are and to try and give you an idea of how vast
the plantations are in terms of land area, and the size of the
problem with respect to the shortage of available water that
this generation is facing. With respect to climate change, the
paper has argued that the costs specifically in terms of water
use and biodiversity are too great and that timber plantations
should not be expanded further, and indeed where possible, removed,
and that other forms of carbon sequestration, such as increasing
organic soil concentrations and promoting grassland health,
are preferable.
By Liane Greeff , EcoDoc
Africa, e-mail: liane@kingsley.co.za,
www.ecodocafrica.co.za
index
- RSPO: The impossible “greening”
of the palm oil business
Over the past few decades,
oil palm plantations have rapidly spread throughout Asia, Africa
and Latin America, where millions of hectares have already been
planted and millions more are planned for the next few years.
These plantations are causing increasingly serious problems
for local peoples and their environment, including social conflict
and human rights violations. In spite of this, a number of actors
– national and international – continue to actively
promote this crop, against a background of growing opposition
at the local level.
It is within this context
that a voluntary certification scheme has emerged – the
Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil- with the aim of ensuring
consumers that the palm oil they consume –in foodstuffs,
soap, cosmetics or fuel- has been produced in a “sustainable”
manner.
Given the importance of
this issue, WRM has produced a new briefing: “RSPO: The
‘greening’ of the dark palm oil business”,
available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf
As the briefing states,
the major flaw of the RSPO is that it tries to make sustainable
what is inherently unsustainable: a product obtained from large
scale monocultures of mostly alien palm trees, which have severe
impacts on water, soil, wildlife, forests, livelihoods as well
as on human health, provoking displacement and leading to human
rights violations.
A recent Court decision
in Malaysia helps to illustrate the difference between the stated
aims of the RSPO and on-the-ground reality. This month, the
Kayan native community of Long Teran Kanan on the Tinjar river
in the Malaysian part of Borneo won an important legal battle
against the Sarawak state government and IOI Pelita, a subsidiary
of Malaysian oil palm producer IOI - a founding and leading
member of the RSPO. (1)
The Court declared the land
leases used by IOI "null and void" as they had been
issued by the Sarawak state government in an illegal and unconstitutional
way. In the light of this decision it is important to know that,
according to IOI, the RSPO had found that the company "had
acted responsibly for the management of land in Sarawak".
The above means that, in
the absence of a 12-year long legal case brought up by a local
community and in the absence of a Court decision, IOI’s
activities would have been “greened” by the RSPO
and the communities affected would have received no compensation
at all.
WRM’s briefing explains
that the RSPO does not even ensure the conservation of forests.
On the contrary, RSPO legalizes past, present and future destruction
of all types of forests, with the exception of those defined
as “primary forests” or as “high conservation
value habitats”. All the others can be “sustainably”
bulldozed, planted to oil palm and receive RSPO certification.
In relation to local peoples’
rights, the RSPO criteria do not ensure sufficient safeguards
against the further expansion of oil palm plantations over their
territories, which will deprive them of their lands and means
of livelihoods, while at the same time impacting on their health.
As respects to soils, water
and biodiversity, the RSPO will only serve to disguise the inevitable
impacts of oil palm plantation management on these three crucial
resources, while forest destruction will add further C02 emissions
to climate change.
The problem with the RSPO
is that it conveys the message that palm oil can be certified
as “sustainable”. Confronted with that claim, the
only possible response from anyone who knows something about
the impacts of large-scale oil palm monocultures is that RSPO
certification is a fraud.
It is quite clear that the
only palm oil that could truly claim to be ecologically sustainable
is the one produced by local communities in Western Africa –where
oil palm is a native species- from natural palm stands. Small
scale plantations outside the species’ native habitat
–such as in the case of Bahia in Brazil where it is part
of the culture of Afrobrazilians- have also proven to be socially
beneficial and environmentally sustainable.
However, most of the oil
traded internationally –even from Western Africa- comes
from large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations that result
in widespread social and environmental impacts. As with plantations
of other trees –such as eucalyptus and pines- the problem
is not the species planted but the way and scale in which they
are established. To pretend that palm oil produced from such
plantations can be certified as sustainable is clearly an impossible
task.
(1) “Borneo natives win class action suit against Malaysian
oil palm giant”, BRIMAS Media Release, 31 March 2010,
http://www.illegal-logging.info/item_single.php?it_id=4323&it=news,
disseminated by Bruno Manser Fund, Basel / Switzerland, e-mail:
bmf@bmf.ch
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- Brasil: Outrage over killing of local man
by Fibria Celulose’s guards
On 16 March 2010, Henrique
de Souza Pereira, 24-years old, was killed by a team of guards
of the private ‘security’ company hired by Fibria,
former Aracruz Celulose and partner of Stora Enso in the Veracel
Celulose company.
They alleged that Henrique
was stealing wood in an area of the company with eucalyptus
trees and that he had responded ‘aggressively’
when he was requested to leave. Henrique’s father Osvaldo
Pereira Bezerra was accompanying his son and during the incident,
the security force broke his arm. Henrique eventually died of
his wounds since after shotting him, the security force left
the area and returned with an ambulance only after 40 minutes.
As the press release of
the Socio-Environmental Forum of the Extreme South of
Bahia and the Alert against the Green Desert Network recalls,
Henrique was “one of the innumerous neighbours of the
extensive eucalyptus areas who are trying to survive, fenced
inside small properties. Another murder happened in 2007 when
Antônio Joaquim dos Santos, geraizeiro [traditional inhabitant
of the Cerrado region], was killed by the Security force of
V&M Florestal when he was collecting firewood in an area
with eucalyptus from V&M Florestal. It is noteworthy that
both V&M Florestal as well Fibria had at the moment that
these incidents happened the international FSC certificate that
affirms to the consumer that the production comes from a “socially
beneficial forest management”.
The statement adds that
“in the Extreme South of Bahia and in the north of Espirito
Santo, tens of local people, landless workers and especially
quilombolas [Afro-Brazilians] are being criminalized and persecuted,
supposedly because of ‘stealing’ wood of the company
from lands that have always belonged collectively to these communities
and that always guaranteed their subsistence. On November 11,
2009, the state government of Espirito Santo carried out in
the quilombola community of São Domingos a big police
action with 130 armed police men with rifles and sub-machine
guns, dogs and horses, arresting 39 quilombolas”.
The root of the conflict
remains unsolved. While big plantation companies like Fibria
continue receiving support and even public funds from the authorities
to expand their land area to plant eucalyptus monoculture –Fibria
presently occupies more than 1 million hectares in Brazil- the
agrarian land reform and the demarcation of quilombola, indigenous,
peasant and geraizeira lands keep being past over.
The concerns expressed in
the press release are more than relevant: “In the face
of what happened, one may ask: what is this social and economic
development that destroys the life of local inhabitants? That
ignores the rights of communities and destroys the hope of the
people? It is unacceptable that a company with these practices
can obtain supposed ‘sustainability’ seals such
as FSC and Cerflor, besides the many ‘sustainability ratings’.”
Based on the press release
"Armed security force of Fibria (Aracruz) kills local villager
in Bahia", Sócio-Environmental Fórum of the
Extreme South of Bahia and the Alert against the Green
Desert Network, March 23, 2010
index
CLIMATE CHANGE
-
Bolivia: a peoples’ conference on climate change - a forum
for changing course
Following the resounding
and anticipated failure of the United Nations Convention on
Climate Change held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the president
of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has taken the initiative of calling
another type of summit meeting in search of solutions. The World
Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of
Mother Earth will be held from 19 to 22 April 2010, in the Bolivian
city of Cochabamba (http://cmpcc.org/).
It is expected that some
10,000 people will attend, mainly members of social organizations
and movements, although there will be official delegations from
countries all over the world.
It will be possible to participate
either personally or virtually in the 17 working groups organized
for the event. Some of the groups are focused on classical issues
such as “Forests,” “Adaptation,” “The
Kyoto Protocol,” “Funding.” But there are
other issues that surely reveal the intention of taking a different
path from that followed so far by the Climate Change Convention
in seeking solutions, such as “Dangers of carbon trading,”
“Climate debt,” “Climate Justice Tribunal,”
“Referendum on Climate Change,” “The Rights
of Mother Earth,” “Structural Causes.”
Furthermore, there is a
long list of self-organized events that reveal a wide diversity
of confronting ways for addressing the problem. Critical analyses
on the interests surrounding the commodification of nature are
to be found, like those regarding forests in mechanisms such
as REDD. There are those who state that we are facing a crisis
of civilization and that we must seek alternative paradigms,
defending the importance of peasant agriculture and food sovereignty
as a way of addressing climate change, involving the very active
participation of women as agents for proposals and change –
in organizations such as the World March of Women, GenderCC,
National Confederation of Peasant and Indigenous Women of Bolivia,
Community Feminist Network, Movement of Peasant Women, National
Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI), to name
but a few.
This peoples’ summit
opens up the possibility for other voices and other proposals,
silenced at official events, to be heard with greater force.
The recent Climate Change Convention negotiations held in Bonn
in April agreed that the new text for negotiation under discussion
shall take into account proposals made before 26 April 2010.
This means that there is time to include those arising from
the Peoples’ Conference.
This conference is a grass-roots
meeting in a Latin American country, where the indigenous people
have been bled and plundered for over 500 years by colonialism,
neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism but that have also fought
and won an incredible battle for water and for their dignity
and that have put into government the first indigenous president
of the continent. It is a significant venue to transform
this climate crisis we have been sunk into by the prevailing
western model of civilization, into an opportunity for change.
A change that will return us to our roots, to harmony with Mother
Nature, among the brothers and sisters who live on Her.
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- Global Sign-On Campaign against REDD
Criticism of the ineffective
and unjust solutions to climate change which under carbon compensation
and trading pretend to continue business as usual, are mounting
amid global civil society.
Affiliates from the Durban
Group for Climate Justice - an international network of independent
organisations, individuals and people's movements - draw attention
to the dangers of REDD including land grabs and the inclusion
of REDD in the carbon market and request urgent solidarity in
a new statement rejecting Schemes for Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) currently being
formulated under the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change – and already piloted in schemes such as
the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and
the United Nations REDD Programme. The new pollution licenses
to be generated by REDD are designed in a way that obstructs
the only workable solution to climate change: keeping oil, coal
and gas in the ground.
They urge to sign onto the
REDD Statement ahead of the World Peoples Conference on Climate
Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia, 19-22 April
2010, so that the voices of those opposing REDD can speak with
global support.
The statement can be signed
at http://www.durbanclimatejustice.org/
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