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WRM Bulletin
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Issue Number
53 - December 2001 |
| OUR VIEWPOINT | ||||||||
| LOGGING IN THE RAINFOREST | ||||||||
| LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS | ||||||||
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THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE: INDUSTRIAL LOGGING This WRM bulletin is entirely
dedicated to the issue of industrial logging in the tropics. We have tried
to broadly address the main issues and actors related to this activity,
which results in widespread social and environmental destruction. The aim of
the bulletin is to generate more awareness on this ongoing problem, in order
to increase global support to local peoples struggling to protect their
forests from large-scale logging. More general and detailed information on
logging is available in our web page at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/logging.html OUR VIEWPOINT - Logging the rainforest: A recipe for local and global disaster Industrial logging is the main cause of forest loss throughout the tropics. It is the starting point of a process leading to the forests' final destruction and substitution by agricultural crops, cattle raising or monoculture tree plantations. These are well known facts supported by more than sufficient evidence. Even more importantly, industrial logging destroys the livelihoods of forest and forest-dependent peoples who, deprived of the resources they depend on, become poor. Contrary to the official discourse, logging does not lead to development; it results in impoverishment and social disintegration. Women are disproportionately affected by logging activities, which provide them with no employment opportunities while depleting the resources they traditionally use and manage. In tropical countries, the process begins with the violation of the territorial rights of indigenous peoples and other traditional communities, who are the righteous owners of the forest. As most people confronted with such situation would, they frequently resist the entry of logging companies to their territories, which in turn usually results in state repression to protect the companies' legal "rights". Forest destruction, human rights abuses, poverty creation is the local part of the equation. On the other side there is wealth creation for transnationals and local elites and an abundant supply of cheap --though very valuable-- raw material to provide rich consumers with elegant toilet seats, sumptuous coffins and other equally "important" symbols of wealth. Some actors are crucial to make logging and end-consumers meet, among which the World Bank, the Inter American, African and Asian Development Banks and the International Monetary Fund. The banks provide the necessary funding for the road infrastructure needed to access the forest, while the IMF --as well as the banks-- force tropical countries into increasing natural resources' exports in order to ensure external debt payments. Being forests one of the main resources available, they are at the front line of exports and are later substituted by other export oriented crops grown in place of the forest. Another very powerful player has now been added to ensure that transnational corporations make wood flow to the consumer markets: the World Trade Organization. The whole process leading to forest destruction is clearly at odds with the international community's commitments to protect biodiversity and to counter climate change and desertification, agreed upon in three legally-binding conventions. At the same time, it also violates human rights commitments, including the protection of indigenous peoples' rights, and the commitments agreed upon at the 1995 Social Summit and the 1995 Conference on Women. The list of environmental and social instruments being violated by industrial logging --and its national and international backers-- is indeed very long, only shorter than the list of the actual violations themselves. The global market's demand for wood cannot continue being used as an excuse to justify forest destruction. Consumption of wood --and other raw materials produced in forest lands-- needs to be drastically reduced to a level that ensures social justice and environmental conservation. Wood is necessary, but the need to respect local peoples' rights and to protect the local and global environment is far more necessary. Industrial logging in the rainforest is a recipe for local and global disaster and must be made to stop.
LOGGING IN THE RAINFOREST - Industrial logging: a major cause of destruction Logging involves the removal operation of trees from the forest. When it is carried out for industrial purposes, it implies large-scale operations and becomes one of the primary causes of global deforestation. It is also a major threat to the world's remaining old growth forests, where the most rare and valuable species are selected. A number of actors are involved in the process. Some of them are the promoters and facilitators: transnational and national companies, multilateral banks (World Bank/WB, Inter American Development Bank/IDB, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank), international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund), the World Trade Organisation, development and cooperation agencies, northern consultancy firms, national and local governments. Other actors are the victims: indigenous and local peoples, poor countries, the world at large. The modern world is unbalanced, full of asymmetries and with a widening gap between the rich and the poor, both between and within nations. The Northern industrialised countries that hold the wheel have built an international architecture to rule the world. Southern impoverished countries, though rich in natural resources, have arrived later to industrial development and have paid historically for that. The Bretton Woods institutions (WB, IMF) have the international monies greatly needed by Southern countries, and they exert pressure on local governments imposing conditionalities to grant credits which usually go to pay the countries’ international debts. The governments get more indebted, thus creating a vicious circle involving the further destruction of the environment and the increasing impoverishment of the local population. Typical "development" plans promoted by the multilateral institutions imply export-oriented exploitation of local natural resources. In the case of tropical countries, the commercial interests which run a "marketed" globalised world see the forest only in terms of wood, disregarding all the other dimensions (shelter, medicinal plants, food, fishing, hunting, spiritual values, biodiversity). So wood becomes a profitable business to be exploited. Local elite’s vested interests --in close cooperation with transnational corporations-- plus pressure on the government by the financial institutions force national governments to promote logging operations which imply the granting of concessions in forests for long inhabited by indigenous or other local peoples. At the end of the logging chain are the end-consumers of products based on tropical wood, typically high income citizens from the monetary rich countries of the industrialised North. All usually starts with the construction of a road, typically financed by the World Bank or a regional bank within the framework of a "development" programme, to reach the most precious trees and take out the logs from the forests and eventually from the country. Along with the road come the loggers, the machinery, the trucks. Those outsiders encroach upon ancient dwellers’ habitats, who have been there for generations and the forest has been their "supermarket", their temple, their "pharmacy", their home. They are and have always been a nation, in the modern concept, with their own law, common roots, heritage, based on a territory: the forest. And one day a foreigner --representing the logging company-- comes and tells them that they have no rights to that land because they have not got an X paper, the only one the foreigner recognises as valid to grant ownership of the forest resource. Of course, the foreigner has it from the government --a government representing a state that did not even exist when the indigenous populations already inhabited the forest. When the traditional guardians of the forest react in self-defense to protect their rights and livelihoods, they face violence and violation of their human rights from that same government who granted the logging company the concession to log in their territories. Those new roads that initiate the above process also enable the arrival of other outsiders who carry out other unsustainable activities such as bushmeat hunting --thus depriving local communities of yet another basic resource-- or gold mining, resulting in the pollution of water courses and the decimation of the fish population also used by local people as a basic food resource. During the process triggered by logging, forest-dwelling peoples are severely affected by introduced diseases and many indigenous peoples have been entirely wiped out or their numbers have severely diminished from the introduction of those diseases. Additionally, the whole process generates poverty among forest peoples who are laid bare, deprived of their place, their resources, their culture, marginalised and eventually driven out of the remaining degraded forest. Even many other groups who depend on the forest or live in close association with it are affected by commercial logging. Their traditional tenure of and access rights to the land are usually overrun by logging concessions. In terms of the environment, the vegetation of a primary forest, where most logging takes place, is typically multi-layered. The tallest trees emerge from the general level of the canopy and may appear alone or in groups. Beneath the main canopy there are generally other layers of tree, shrub and herb species at different heights. Added to this vertical layering there are gaps of varying sizes caused by disturbance events. The majority of rainforest species are scarce at a per hectare level and generally few of them are acceptable to the timber trade, so although clearfelling --that is, the removal of all trees on a specified cutting area-- does sometimes occur, commercial logging in tropical rainforests is almost invariably "selective". Although the term "selective" might appear to be less harmful than "clearcutting", in fact it implies that a much larger area of the forest is affected by logging. "Standard" logging concessions in the tropics imply several hundred thousand hectares of forest per concession, and all of them adding up to millions of hectares in any one single country. Selective logging is thus synonymous to widespread damage. The total area of forest disturbed by a logging operation --felling gaps, skid trails, landing areas, tracks and roads-- can vary, but is always extensive. In selective felling operations, the FAO estimates a level of damage of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of the forest area and this figure can be as high as 70 per cent with intensive logging and careless felling methods. The whole selective logging process implies a great deal of damage and loss of marketable trees, but this is, however, only a comparatively minor effect. The felled trees are moved from the forest to "log landings" --large cleared areas in the forest which imply total deforestation-- along "skid trails" and transported out of the forest on a network of tracks and roads --resulting in further deforestation-- using heavy tracked or rubber tyred machinery which destroys the vegetation and compacts the soil. Indeed, most of the damage is "incidental damage" during the logging operation. As trees are felled they crash down through the remaining stands, crushing many trees. Debris decomposition may prevent seedling growth and the branches can form an ideal support for climbing vines which further suppress tree regeneration. The threat to biodiversity is enormous, given the radical changes to which large areas of the forest ecosystem are subjected to. And follow-up impacts are great. The hydrological cycle is disturbed since less rainfall is intercepted by a diminished canopy; evapotranspiration is reduced, and rainfall run off is higher due to decreased soil infiltration efficiency. Logging operations also degrade the soil and water courses through compactation, erosion and sedimentation which in turn lead to nutrient loss, also caused by the removal of biomass. The temperature of the surface is increased due to changes in evapotranspiration, and a significant amount of carbon dioxide stored in ancient trees is released to the atmosphere. Logging roads and secondary tracks open up previously inaccessible forests. This has many negative implications. One of them is related to fires: research studies confirm a long-suspected link between logging and the devastation of forest fires in tropical rainforests. Logging waste and dense undergrowth of fast-growing pioneer species provide large amounts of fuel that feeds the rampant spread of forest fires. On the contrary, tropical rainforests don't usually burn. In their natural state, fuel loads are low and not highly flammable, and the humidity is high even during drought years. Additionally, the forest wildlife begins to disappear as a result of intense logging operations. The noise itself and the presence of numerous workers make the animals flee. The destruction of much of the wildlife's habitat force many species to move elsewhere and loggers themselves hunt animals to complement the meager diet they receive from the company. All the above, coupled with extensive human rights violations also force people to leave their forests, where they are now unable to fulfil their basic needs. Logging thus generates poverty in areas where until then people were able to provide for their livelihoods. And when the forest has already been opened up and forest dwellers have been displaced, other operations are carried out which eventually lead to ultimate deforestation. Large-scale agriculture, cattle raising and monoculture tree plantations complete the liquidation process of what once used to be a thriving biodiverse, multi-purpose habitat. Unsustainable consumption and trade And one may wonder, all this destruction, what for? As happens with many other commercial operations where globalisation has facilitated transnational corporations’ access to natural resources (almost invariably located in the South), the driving force behind the international timber trade is a wasteful consumption pattern. In this case, massive demand for cheap and plentiful tropical timber in the consuming markets of the US, the European Union and Japan. Three quarters of the world’s commercial timber output is swallowed up by one quarter of its population. Unless radical changes are imposed on unsustainable consumption, the prevailing development paradigm will only create further problems as more countries embrace it. China provides an example of this. Chinese timber imports have risen dramatically in the last few years as a direct result of the government's efforts to combat deforestation through a logging ban. Yet the emphasis on supply controls rather than demand has prompted a flood of timber --legal and illegal-- entering the country. Recent trade statistics show that China is now one of the main two recipients of Indonesian timber and Chinese loggers are increasingly becoming a major actor in the destruction of forests throughout the tropics. For forestry corporations that have exhausted most of the resources in their host countries, the globalisation of their activities and the aggressive promotion of "free trade" in forest products is a matter of corporate survival. They influence on global economic rules and exert pressure on governments worldwide to adopt three basic elements of public policy: unregulated access to forests, increased access to consumers, minimising regulatory costs. All of them are at various stages of being introduced into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), with its legally binding instruments by which governments agree to restrain themselves from regulating international trade and investment. The WTO system threatens the ecological sustainability of the world’s forests by shifting power from local to global institutions through trade rules and proposed investment rules, increasing wasteful consumption, opening the door to invasive species and genetically modified organisms, enforcing monopoly controls over genetic resources, intensifying the conversion of forests to agriculture, weakening existing environmental protections, blocking new environmental protections, threatening eco-labeling initiatives and banning government procurement rules aimed at forest conservation. Member countries are required to bring their policies into line with the WTO’s spirit of privatisation, deregulation, subsidisation, and liberalisation of trade and investment. The soaring demand of tropical wood has fuelled the expansion of transnational corporations involved in every stage of the production process, from raw material extraction, through manufacturing, to marketing and distribution. A series of mergers and acquisitions has led to intense concentration of forest exploitation capacity in the hands of relatively few companies which concentrate huge economic power --and consequently political leverage-- to exploit new logging frontiers and roam the globe in their quest for profits. They are the great winners in this. As for the countries, we just have to look back to when they started to get involved in this process --some 20 years ago-- and ask: are they now better off? No one could seriously reply that they are. Indeed, they are poorer and more indebted. Only the local elites may have lined their pockets. And, all in all, corruption pervades the whole logging process. In most tropical countries, forests are government-owned --ignoring indigenous and other traditional peoples' territorial rights-- but harvesting is carried out by private parties who receive timber concessions often awarded as part of a political patronage process. The forestry sector is particularly susceptible to illegal actions and corruption because of the remoteness of operations, the lack of information about the quantity of timber in forests, the substantial discretionary power offered to government officials, the high monetary values involved and the lack of supervision from civil servants. And most of all, the enormous economic capacity of transnational companies to corrupt. The actors involved in industrial logging in tropical countries vary from country to country, but the main ones are usually transnational corporations. In a recent Greenpeace study on some few selected countries (including Brazil, Cameroon, Gabon, Guyana, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands), the top ten loggers were: 1) Rimbunan Hijau from Malaysia,
with an annual wood extraction from tropical forests of Brazil, Gabon, PNG
and Solomon Islands of some 1,5 million cubic metres; The above is only a sample of the many transnational companies profiting from logging extensive areas of forest concessions in the tropics and there is no single example to show that any of those countries has become more "developed". On the contrary, all of them are much poorer now than they were before. There are many well-intentioned efforts to stop in some way the destructive trend which threatens forest existence. One of these efforts is focused on addressing the issue of illegal logging operations with a view to reducing tropical wood production. But up to date, the scale of illegal logging is enormous and both governments and industry in consuming nations have failed to take steps to eliminate illegal timber from the supply chain. By turning a blind eye, consuming nations are colluding with the corrupt timber bosses that provide the chainsaws. The G8 group of industrialised nations has made a series of public statements concerning the need for sustainable forest management, yet continues to import vast amounts of timber, much of it illegal at source. The major suppliers to the G8 are the countries suffering the highest rates of illegal logging. The US imported over $450 million worth of timber from Indonesia in 2000 and over $330 million worth of timber stolen at source in Indonesia in a single year. Illegal logging is often portrayed as small communities cutting a few trees that they were not legally entitled to cut. It is time this myth is dispelled once and for all. Illegal logging is not about subsistence felling by local people. It is about the highly organised and vastly profitable international trafficking of timber stolen from the world’s dwindling tropical forests. In the long run it is the small communities that have the most to lose with their forests destroyed and their resources stolen. More importantly: the issue of illegal logging tends to hide the issue of logging in general. In the tropics, the important question that needs to be posed is: is there any legal logging at all? From a government perspective the answer is yes, but for the customary owners of the forest, all logging is illegal, because if fails to recognise their rights as owners and custodians of the forest. Logging and the future of the Earth And, finally, the great loser in this business is the entire planet. Forests in general and tropical forests in particular play crucial roles in the functioning of the Earth as a whole. They regulate the climate and constitute some or the major carbon reservoirs in the Planet. The carbon stored in the world’s forests is ten times larger than all the fossil fuels that have been burnt over the last hundred years. Destruction of the rainforests --especially by burning-- causes much of the stored carbon to be released into the atmosphere. The clearing of large areas of forests not only increases the social and environmental impacts of natural climatic phenomena (such as droughts, floods, hurricanes) but also accelerates climate change and its unpredictable impacts. At the same time, forest destruction entails the disappearance of species --mostly due to habitat loss-- and tropical forests constitute the main habitat for the world's terrestrial biodiversity. The conservation of this biodiversity is thus directly related to the conservation of tropical forests. Additionally, deforestation in tropical regions increases the threat of desertification. It is important to underscore that governments that met almost ten year ago in the so-called Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, committed themselves through three legally binding instruments to address those three issues related to deforestation: climate change, biodiversity and desertification. Given that industrial logging is the main threat to forests and given that forests protect the world's climate and biodiversity, it is clear that governments, South and North, have violated all their legal obligations --and continue doing so-- both through the promotion of industrial logging and through the promotion of international trade in wood extracted from tropical forests. Ten years after the Earth Summit, governments will meet again, this time in Johannesbourg, South Africa. Will they put themselves on trial? Will they decide to compensate the millions of people affected by their non-compliance of the Rio agreements? Will they put an end to industrial logging? Or, more probably: will they make yet more promises? More importantly: will the world's peoples allow them to get away with that? Article based on information from: "Buying Destruction", Greenpeace, August 1999; "Free Trade, Free Logging", Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization (IFG) , 1999; "Corporate Power, Corruption & the Destruction of the World’s Forests. The case for a new global forest agreement", Environmental Investigation Agency, 1996; "Life After Logging. The impacts of commercial timber extraction in tropical rainforests", Haworth, J., edited by Simon Counsell, June 1999.
- Is certification the solution? Although many NGOs believe that certification of wood and other forest products is a good idea, there are a number of doubts about whether the actual process is moving in the right direction. The issue has resulted in confrontations between environmental organizations in countries such as Brazil, where some NGOs are working hard to convince logging companies to move into Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, while other NGOs accuse those same NGOs of thereby promoting further forest destruction. There is also great controversy regarding the convenience of certifying forestry operations in countries such as Indonesia --where local peoples' land rights are unrecognized by the government-- and in Thailand, where most NGOs consider that there should be no certification because forests are already protected by an existing logging ban and that certification can undermine their efforts to protect forests. Leaving aside the issue of FSC certification of plantations --which we extensively addressed in WRM's February 2001 special bulletin-- we will try to highlight some of the advantages and disanvatages of forest management certification and to draw some conclusions. In this article we will only focus on the FSC, given that other existing certification schemes are merely aimed at "greenwashing" logging activities (a comparative analysis on the different certification systems is available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/logo.html ). The main advantage of a certification system such as the Forest Stewardship Council is that it takes into account both social and environmental issues and that it includes the active participation of environmental and social NGOs --as well as industry. Although the system has shown some problems regarding actual implementation, the nine principles related to forests and their criteria contain a number of positive conditions for certification, with which most people would agree. There are however some problems. The main problem appears to be the need perceived by the FSC to supply the world market with as much certified wood as possible. The only way to move in that direction is to certify as many large-scale operations as possible. This also makes sense from the point of view of certifiers, who need to secure adequate payment for their work --which they can only obtain from companies. This has meant that most of the certification processes have focused on the activities of large-scale corporations, while too little has been done to certify small-scale forestry activities carried out by local communities. And this in spite of the fact that most NGOs working within the FSC would undoubtedly prefer to support the latter instead of the former, both for social and environmental reasons. One underlying problem is that the FSC is focused on how to log. It has proved very difficult to get it to deal with the issue of where --and where not-- to log. To date, the FSC continues the focus on forests as sources of timber, largely failing to support or promote other revenue streams (fruits, medicines, resins, non timber fibres, etc). As such it has not helped those arguing for less logging and for forest areas to be off limits (permanently or under moratorium) to commercial logging. The discussion must therefore necessarily look at the underlying issue, which is clearly overconsumption of wood and wood products, particularly in industrialized countries. However, as a market based mechanism, FSC certification relies on the good will of consumers to help bring about changes in forest management, and not on actually reducing consumption. This is a major issue, because the necessary condition for sustainable production is sustainable consumption, yet current levels of consumption are already unsustainable. There is thus a clear need to work at both the production and consumption sides of the equation for certification to be meaningful. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that if certification is a tool for addressing some of the problems affecting forests, it will be unable to address many of them, since many originate outside the forest sector. For instance, large-scale logging is promoted by governments as a means to ensure the necessary hard currency export earnings for external debt servicing. In other cases, logging activities are promoted as a first step for the replacement of forests by other export-oriented crops such as soya beans, palm oil or wood pulp. In this context, it becomes clear that while certification can in some cases be a solution, in others it can be irrelevant or counterproductive. Given that the FSC is a market-based mechanism, it is necessary to underscore that the timber industry is a major example of an industry that has profitted from "market failure" --a failure to include the social and environmental costs of extraction in the price of timber. Notwithstanding its principles, the FSC is a market-driven process and experience has shown that it is failing to "internalise" some of the "externalities" that it is attempting to promote --such as indigenous peoples' rights and environmental values. Given that, at present, the "economies of scale" of certification favour large-scale operators, while placing costly and unsustainable burdens on small-scale, community-based certification schemes, the FSC needs to provide non-market incentives to small-scale operators to redress the current imbalance in the market place. Account must also be taken that in many countries, FSC has consumed a large proportion of the working time of many forest NGOs who previously had given their attention to a wide range of ways to resolve forest conflicts and bring about better forest management. Any assessment of the costs and benefits of the FSC should look at what work has been dropped in order to focus on certification. This is as true for groups who have been fighting against certification as it is for groups who think certification can help. Additionally, FSC national standard-setting and certification processes only work effectively in situations where human rights, law and order and principles of good governance are commonly observed. Where these conditions are absent, "participation" mechanisms are flawed and social and environmental considerations tend to get marginalised. The FSC therefore needs to adopt far more rigorous control mechanisms that would weed out flawed national standard-setting processes and limit the countries in which accredited certifiers can operate. Moreover, the FSC's standard-setting and certification processes reveal a failure to take into account the historical or institutional mistakes of the logging agencies or companies that are seeking certification. This results in these companies and agencies obtaining "certification" in some forest areas or operations while continuing their destructive logging and large-scale commercial plantations operations elsewhere, seriously undermining the efforts of NGOs and local communities working for structural changes in these forestry agencies/companies and their commercial forestry operations. In sum, the NGO movement should try to coordinate efforts on different fronts, trying to avoid divisions, but without avoiding necessary discussion. FSC people should ensure that the system works in the right direction, taking into account the viewpoints and needs of local communities and ensuring that no certification takes place where the nine principles cannot be implemented, such as in the case of Indonesia, or where local people’s movements do not want FSC or its certifiers undermining their efforts at forest conservation in other ways. At the same time, NGOs should join hands to combat overconsumption and to address those direct and underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation which are incapable of being addressed by FSC. All efforts should be seen as a contribution to a common aim. Certification is neither the solution nor the only problem. The problems are many and will be solved through a joint and coordinated effort. Within this approach, certification focused on small-scale community based forest management may well still play a positive role.
LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS AFRICA - Cameroon: Social and environmental impacts of industrial forestry exploitation In Cameroon, as in many other countries in the South, a process of deforestation is taking place directly and indirectly caused by intensive industrial logging. This process is generally promoted by political reforms and by loans from the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organisation for the construction of mega-projects such as highways or dams. As a consequence of this "international development aid," illegal exploitation of wood and commercial hunting have rapidly been added to "legal" logging, using the new highways as an access to the forest. Experts foresee that some of the large mammals in Cameroon will shortly disappear if this hunting is not put to a stop. Nearly all types of mammals and reptiles are exhibited on the urban markets. Gorilla and elephant meat is sold at high prices in the best restaurants. Theoretically it is forbidden to hunt these species and sell the meat or other parts of gorillas and chimpanzees, but this prohibition is widely transgressed. Industrial exploitation of forests has been the real priority of the structural adjustment programmes promoted by the World Bank. Based on the promotion of products for export (in which, wood ranks very highly) and on the decrease in export tariffs, these programmes have played an important role in the increase of wood exports. The results have been the expansion of poverty, the increased power of foreign industry and the lack of State control over resource exploitation. Corruption and illegality in forestry exploitation in Cameroon are widespread and scant control favours illegal activities in the forestry sector: illegal logging (outside boundaries, without authorisation, using sub-contracting, cutting trees of a smaller diameter than permitted, disregard for local restrictions), false declarations (on the quantities of wood production, on the volume of wood in inventories), illegal recovery of wood that has been confiscated. Although the production of wood has undergone major growth, tax income from activities in the sector has dropped. To carry out monitoring in the field, the officials often depend on trucks belonging to forestry companies to take them to their concessions, which obviously does not favour independence of controls. In some villages, the inhabitants block wood transport because the companies are not fulfilling their promises to build and/or to improve local facilities. The law foresees that the forestry companies are obliged to organise a meeting with the local population before exploitation can start. During these meetings, forestry companies make promises to the population (construction of a health centre, repairs to a bridge, fitting out a foot-ball field). But very often these promises take a long time to materialise, they are only partially fulfilled or they are simply badly implemented. Direct employment generated by forestry companies is very limited for the Baka "Pigmies," often employed for a few days by the company as prospectors to indicate the species of trees of commercial interest. In this way, they are unconsciously participating in the destruction of their own environment. Workers operating in the parks for stocking wood and in the sawmills are provided with very little or no protective clothing (gloves, helmet, masks against the dust). Very often the wood at the sawmills is treated with toxic products against parasites and fungus. Very often this treatment is done with pesticides with a lindane and pentachlorofenol base, that are prohibited in Europe and whose use is subject to very strict security measures. Workers operating with these products are not usually equipped with protective clothing or they are insufficiently informed on the risks of these toxic substances. The remains of these toxic insecticides and fungicides are simply thrown away after use. Although evident, the importance of water and soil pollution from these products has never been investigated. Due to their strict dependency on primary forests, the "Pigmies" are the main victims of forestry exploitation in Cameroon. According to estimates, at the end of the nineties, approximately 3,400 Bakolas lived in the South West and 40,000 Bakas in the Equatorial forests in South and South East of Cameroon. In the Yokadouma-Moloundou region, the Bakas are even more numerous than the Bantu. As their territorial rights are not recognised by the authorities, they cannot defend themselves against the present expansion of industrial logging in Eastern Cameroon. Wood-related activities, developed both by national and foreign companies are centred on a few high quality wood species (ayous, sapelli, azobé, tali) that monopolise 60% of wood exports. Some tree species, such as the moabi and the bubinga, are frequently an important reference point in the forest (because of their great height), in addition to the traditional cultural uses that the villagers or the "Pigmies" attribute to these and other species of trees. The law prohibits logging of maobis in a radius of 5 km around the villages, but this is openly violated by the logging companies. The oldest bubingas play an important social role in village life: popular meetings and local assemblies are organised under these trees, where the problems of the villagers are discussed. The moabis produce a high quality oil, the only food oil produced in this forest region. The production of this oil provides greater benefits than wood logging. The bark of these trees is used to make many drugs to cure hernias, back-ache and other diseases. Summing up, commercial logging in Cameroon (legal and illegal) is seriously affecting the ecosystem and therefore the peoples who live in the forests. Benefits to the local population are minor and even compliance with the promises made by the companies regarding improvements to local infrastructure depend on people getting mobilised. Employment generated is scant and dangerous. Those who benefit are obviously the forestry companies and the intermediaries between logging and European consumers. And this is called development. Article based on information from: "El asedio a los bosques tropicales de Camerún", Greenpeace Spain, April 2000, http://www.greenpeace.es/Ftp%20web/Documental/descarga/forest-camerun.doc
- Central Africa: European Union's major responsibility over deforestation In spite of the fact that the
situation in the Congo Basin has been much less publicized than that of the
Amazon Basin, the truth is that deforestation has reached alarming rates in
the six countries lying within the basin (Cameroon, Central African
Republic, Congo, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon). On 11
September 2001, Friends of the Earth and Forests Monitor presented to the
media the conclusions from a number of case studies on the social,
environmental and economic impacts resulting from the activities of European
forestry corporations in Central Africa (the full study in English "The
need to control transnational forestry corporations: a European case
study", is available in the web page at http://www.forestsmonitor.org/reports/solddownriver/cover.htm,
and in French The NGO Forests Monitor has focused its work on studying the case of the Congo Basin and for that purpose carried out a study on the impacts of the European industry on the forest. The study reveals that more than 11 million hectares are being currently exploited by European companies, most of which are French. Additionally, France is the main European importer of wood from the Congo Basin, with 19 per cent of total imports. The way in which France-based companies operate (Bolloré, Rougier, Thanry, Interwood, Pasquet) is particularly alarming. Those companies usually operate without any forest management plan and they rarely comply with existing legislation. Tree felling outside the concession area, cutting without respecting the established minimum exploitation diameters and the cutting of endangered species constitute common practices for this group of companies. In relation with the economic and social benefits resulting from industrial logging the conclusions are equally worrying. Forestry industry promoters present this activity as the best option for the use of Central African forests, underscoring the direct benefits resulting from employment generation and infrastructure development such as school buildings, health centres and churches. The report shows a more complex and much less positive reality. In 1999, in spite of the fact that the value of the wood imported by the European Union from Central African countries reached 609 million dollars, local communities received little or none of that money. In this way, the large European companies continue appropriating the African forest resources. The European Union is currently the main importer of tropical wood from the Congo Basin, with 63 per cent of imports (1999 data). "The European consumer countries must acknowledge their responsibility and adopt concrete measures to eradicate illegal wood production and trade, among other things banning the import of that wood and imposing strong economic sanctions to those European companies involved in this type of commerce", stated Samuel Nguiffo from Friends of the Earth Cameroon. Article sent by: Frederic Castell, Les Amis de la Terre France, e-mail: amiterre@micronet.fr
ASIA - Cambodia: Timber concessions vs community forests Massive logging has been identified as Cambodia's main environmental problem. Since the 90s, the timber sector, replicating the globalised forest management pattern that prioritises short-term financial profit to ecological stability, aggressively exploits Cambodian forests. Virtually all forestland, except for protected areas, has been allocated as concessions to mostly foreign companies. Additionally, the mid-nineties were characterized by large-scale uncontrolled and illegal logging activities throughout the country. It is estimated that 90% of the logging activities in 1997 were illegal. An Asian Development Bank-funded forest sector review conducted in 1999 and released in 2000 described the situation as a "total system failure." The report expressed that "The scenario is clear: the industry wants to cover its investment costs rapidly and continue earning as long as the resource lasts. In permitting this level of forest exploitation, Cambodia displays a classic example of unwise forest resource utilization. The country may soon turn from being a net exporter of timber to a net importer." Faced with the possibility of a moratorium on logging, the timber industry opted for a "voluntary restructuring process", which included re-negotiation of contracts that clearly defined responsibilities and rights of the industry and the government, the payment of overdue deposits and minimal royalties and the submission of new management plans according to standards set out in a new model concession agreement. However, the structures put in place to ensure credible monitoring and law enforcement were grossly inadequate. Since the Prime Minister's announcement in 1999 to crackdown on illegal logging, the government agency in charge basically adopted the view that Cambodia is now free of the illegal logging problem. Illegal logging is by now considered small-scale timber theft, that is still widespread and, from time to time, publicly suppressed by the authorities. Law enforcement activities are so far not targeting organized businesses and very rarely military personnel involved. The introduction of the Forest Crime Monitoring Project has not fulfilled expectations, partly due to technical and logical set-up failures, but mostly because of the lack of institutional support and political will on the government side. The agencies in charge lack capacity and motivation to consistently follow the progress, or shortcomings, of the reform process. In-country capacity to guide and supervise the process was --and is-- extremely limited. In particular the World Bank's approach of focusing on "illegal" logging instead of actively reducing the underlying system failures has reduced the momentum for change since 1999. An international panel of experts reviewing the sector assessment underlined the report's findings, but explicitly stressed the fact that the report concentrates heavily on the narrow view of forestry from an engineering and timber harvesting perspective, without adequately addressing overall strategic land-use planning issues such as community forestry, environmental and social values, which are fundamental to forest management planning. More and more the values and benefits of a different approach and understanding of "forest management", for local communities as well as for the overall economic and social development of developing countries, are widely recognised. The concept of industrial timber concessions to utilise tropical timber resources, developed in the seventies, especially if run by foreign companies, has proven to be unsatisfying and in some cases disastrous in numerous countries in the region and beyond. In the case of Cambodia, it is promising that after years of preparations, false starts and stalling, a new Sub-Degree on Community Forestry is finally on its way. Experiences with the Forest Crime Monitoring Project have shown that communities play a crucial role in monitoring and safeguarding Cambodia’s forests. Facing destruction and loss of their livelihood, communities are starting to organise themselves with petitions, demonstrations and direct confrontations with loggers and the military, with sometimes surprisingly successful outcomes. The time is right for the Cambodian government and the international community to actively encourage and support this process. Article based on information from: "Cambodia: The Forestry Sector Reform and the Myth of a Sustainable Logging Industry", by Marcus Hardtke, Global Witness Phnom Penh (the full report is available at: http://www.oneworld.org/globalwitness/reports/credibility/credibility.htm
- Indonesia: Low expectations on log export ban Newly installed forestry minister M. Prakosa and trade and industry minister Rini M.S. Suwandi announced a moratorium on the export of logs and wood chips in October in order to "safeguard the conservation of Indonesian forests." The move, which goes against the IMF's economic recovery strategy for Indonesia, is also seen as an attempt to rescue Indonesia's domestic timber and pulp industries by ensuring them a supply of raw materials. Indonesian timber smuggled to other countries, such as China and Malaysia, is enabling those countries to undercut Indonesia in international plywood and other wood product markets. The new ban will be a boost to the country's highly-indebted wood industry and the timber tycoons whose businesses have suffered from a lack of raw materials. A total of 128 companies are under the control of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA). A previous commitment to close half of these companies down has not been fulfilled. Whether the export ban will be helpful in tackling timber smuggling is open to question. It is not likely to curb smuggling while Indonesia's notoriously corrupt police force, government apparatus and courts continue as before. The new minister has promised to initiate a thoroughgoing reform of the timber concession system, and to continue with plans to tackle the problem of over-capacity in the wood industry. But similar promises made by previous ministers have had little result. Standing alone, the ban will also not address the underlying causes of forest loss. Once again, reductionist approaches fail to tackle a problem which is but another expression of an unsustainable model of production, trade and consumption. Article based on information from: Down to Earth, International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia, Newsletter No. 51, November 2001, Email: dte@gn.apc.org , www.gn.apc.org/dte
LATIN AMERICA - Brazil: Mahogany loggers destroying the Amazon forest More than 80 percent of timber from the Amazon is logged illegally, and mahogany --also known as the "green gold"-- has been the main target of such operations. Mahogany's value --a cubic meter can fetch more than US $1,600 per cubic meter-- has attracted loggers who encroach deep into pristine forests to supply a demand almost exclusively aimed at export markets. Brazil’s "mahogany belt" covers some 80 million hectares of the Brazilian Amazon, stretching from the south of Pará to Acre, crossing the north of Mato Grosso, Rondônia and southern Amazonas. Unsurprisingly, this region falls within the Amazon’s ‘deforestation belt’. Mahogany prospectors fly hundreds of kilometres over dense forest in search of scattered mahogany trees, often fewer than one per hectare. To gain access to a single mahogany tree, loggers often bulldoze illegal access roads --stretching over hundreds of kms-- criss-crossing previously untouched forest. Logs are extracted up to 500km from the nearest sawmill. Mahogany logging not only results in widespread forest destruction, but also impacts on indigenous peoples living in the area. The largest remaining concentrations of mahogany are found on or around Indian lands in Pará State. Fifteen Indian lands cover 16,243,000 hectares of forest and although the Brazilian Constitution protects Indian lands from all industrial exploitation, all those lands have been illegally invaded by logging companies in search of the green gold. The standard tactic used by the loggers is to enter the Indian lands, fell the trees and then negotiate on the basis of the trees that have been cut down, paying at best US$30 per tree, while the sawn timber from that tree then sells on the export market for upwards of US$3,300. Many violent conflicts resulting from the illegal industry have been reported on Indian lands. Indians have been forced to take direct action to halt the illegal invasion of their lands by loggers. Tragically, this has sometimes ended in violence. An unknown number of Indians have been murdered because of their opposition to the industry. The irony is that much of the mahogany extracted from the forest ends up as coffins and toilet seats, while the rest is mostly used for the production of extremely expensive furniture to be purchased by a very limited number of people. Exporters, traders, manufacturers, retailers and end consumers of mahogany thus participate in the process of devastation of the Amazon driven by profit on the one hand and "prestige" on the other. The glamourous products on sale in shops and showrooms across the world lend a respectable face to an industry that is both destructive and corrupt. Five countries --the USA, the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and the Dominican Republic-- import almost all the Brazilian mahogany exported from Pará, the largest mahogany producing region in Brazil. Four importers--DLH Nordisk, Aljoma Lumber, J. Gibson McIlvain Co. Ltd. and Intercontinental Hardwoods Inc-- buy more than two-thirds of the mahogany export trade from companies linked to Moises Carvalho Pereira and Osmar Alves Ferreira, the two Brazilian "mahogany kings". Using forged documents to make it appear that the logs were harvested legally, they export the logs to overseas buyers. The furniture manufacturing sector is the single largest user of mahogany and includes reputable companies such as LifeStyle Furnishings International, Furniture Brands International, Stickley and Ethan Allen, in the US; Gibbard Furniture Shops Ltd. in Canada; International Timber, Timbmet, James Lathams and Vincent Murphy in UK which supply furniture companies such as Rackstraw, Arthur Brett, Wood&Mott, Titchmarsh&Goodwin, Restall Brown&Chennell and Charles Barr. There have been several initiatives by official Brazilian agencies to clamp down on the illegal mahogany trade. In 1996 the Brazilian government put in place a two-year moratorium on any new Forest Management Plans (FMPs) for mahogany, which was later extended and will remain in place until June 2002. However, the ban on new mahogany FMPs appears to have consolidated control of the trade into the hands of the few, and the continued strong global demand and high market value for mahogany products creates a strong incentive for Pará’s mahogany kings to log illegally. Article based on information from: Greenpeace.- Partners in mahogany crime. Amazon at the mercy of 'gentlemen's agreements', October 2001, http://www.greenpeace.org/%7Eforests/forests_new/html/content/reports/Mahoganyweb.pdf
- Peru: Illegal loggers' invasion of indigenous community's territory Although the President has changed in Perú, the forest degradation process and the indigenous peoples' situation remains the same or even worse. As was denounced several times in previous issues of this bulletin (1, 8, 34 and 35), the Peruvian Amazon forest is being degraded by activities such as oil prospection and extraction and logging by powerful Malaysian companies. Illegal logging also adds a new menace to the material and cultural survival of the indigenous groups that live in the forest. This is the case recently denounced by Shinai Serjali, a non-profit volunteer group that works to support the Nahua people in the Peruvian Amazon. From May 2001, 16 logging groups from the town of Sepahua in Ucayali invaded the territory of a recently contacted indigenous group, known as the Nahua (or Yora). The Nahua are currently settled at the confluence of the Mishagua and Serjali rivers, within the Nahua-Kugapakori state reserve, which forms the western border of Manu National Park. The loggers, illegally working on those two rivers, have extracted more than 600,000ft of mahogany and cedar, threatened community members and depleted the wildlife on which Nahua livelihood depends. Until 1984, the Nahua lived in voluntary isolation in the headwaters of the Manu River in Madre de Dios. Their first direct contact was the result of the illegal activities of loggers from Sepahua working in the Nahua’s ancestral territories. In the year following contact up to half of the Nahua died from respiratory diseases introduced from the outside. Since this time, loggers have intensified their activities in Nahua territory, culminating in the full-scale invasion of this year. Shinai Serjali has being working with INRENA (the governmental Natural Resources Institute from the Ministry of Agriculture), with AIDESEP (a national NGO working on indigenous peoples issues), the loggers and the Nahua community to ensure the commitment of INRENA to stop the illegal logging and to recognise that the timber legally belongs to the Nahua. Since the loggers invaded them, the Nahua have had to face intimidation and threats to abduct Nahua women. A delegation from the community travelled for 14 days by balsa raft to Puerto Maldonado and helped by FENAMAD (Native Federation Madre de Dios) sent their denunciation to authorities in Lima. With no response to their protest and the loggers continuing to fell trees, a community delegation travelled to Lima to request responsibility from the authorities. An official commission visited the community, investigated the illegal extraction, confirmed the denunciation and ordered the immediate installation of two guard posts in the area in order to effectively control and immobilise the illegally extracted timber. Representatives of the Nahua and the loggers reached an agreement in which the loggers accepted they acted criminally and illegally, they guaranteed not to return to the reserve after this year and agreed that 25% of the revenue from the timber would be used to establish a communal fund for the Nahua. However, the validity of this agreement is contingent on the community being recognised by INRENA as the legal owners of the wood. On the 22nd November the community presented a legal case to INRENA that uses the law of the reserve and ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous Peoples to argue that the illegally extracted wood is lawfully theirs. Notwithstanding the above, substantial quantities of wood have been taken out of the reserve by several of the loggers and it is thus clear that the agreement is not yet ensuring the adequate control of the remaining timber and to avoid further infringements of the law the government needs to commit the necessary resources to effectively control the illegal timber. Article based on information sent by Shinai Serjali, email serjali@serjali.org , http://www.serjali.org
- Suriname: Logging and tribal rights Chinese logging companies are relatively new arrivals in South America. In Suriname, at least two have been operating since 1996; in neighbouring Guyana, the first arrivals surfaced in the year 2000. In both cases, the companies are operating on or near Indigenous and Tribal lands. Reports have also surfaced of Chinese companies operating in northern Brazil. According to Surinamese government statistics for the years 1999 and 2000, Chinese loggers were by far the largest producers of round wood and China was by far the largest export destination for Surinamese round wood, exceeding the next highest destination fourfold. This short article looks at one area of Suriname where the Chinese have set up operations and the impact of those operations on the Saramaka people, one of the six Maroon tribes living within Suriname’s borders. The Saramaka people are one of the largest Maroon tribes, amounting to around 20,000 persons living in over 70 villages located along the Suriname River, one of the main watercourses in the country. They have occupied their territory since at least the early 18th century when their enslaved ancestors escaped coastal plantations and moved into the forest where they established viable, autonomous communities. Their political and cultural autonomy and rights to lands and territory were recognized and reaffirmed during 18th and 19th centuries in treaties with the Dutch colonial government. The Saramaka qualify as Tribal peoples according to international definitional criteria and for the most part enjoy the same rights as Indigenous peoples under international law. Ownership of Saramaka territory is divided among a number of matrilineal clans. Members of the clans have rights to hunt, fish, farm and gather forest produce in the area owned by their clan, but ownership remains vested collectively in the clan. However, Suriname's government does not recognise indigenous rights to lands and resources over which it claims state ownership. On these grounds it issued logging concessions in Saramaka territory in 1990. After intense international pressure, the logging concessions were withdrawn and the government promised to observe the 150,000 hectare limit prescribed by the 1992 Forestry Act. In 1998, the Surinamese government --jointly with US-based Conservation International-- established the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, the largest area of protected tropical forest in the world. With a high press coverage, this move concealed that the reserve meant to the Maroons a loss of at least a third of their ancestral land, without being previously consulted or compensated. Meanwhile, vast areas of rainforests were granted to multinational logging and mining companies, circumventing the Forestry Act’s limits. The trick is to grant multiple 150,000 hectare concessions to several front companies of a big one --Indonesia's NV Musa, for example, called "the flying bulldozer brigade", was granted 800,000-1 million hectares in that way. The Saramaka only became aware of a concession in their territory when the employees of a Chinese logging company calling itself NV Tacoba Forestry Consultants arrived in the area and began operations. Also Chinese Jin Lin Wood Industries surfaced in the area in 2000. According to the Saramaka, Tacoba’s and Jin Lin’s operations have included damage to the forest and water quality, construction of a substantial network of feeder roads contributing to water pollution and further destruction of the forest, a reduction in game animals, destruction of subsistence farms, restrictions on community access to hunting, fishing and farming areas and intimidation from company employees. The Philadelphia Inquirer, a US newspaper, reported on the activities of logging companies in Suriname on its 20 May 2001 issue: "This was all too clear [environmental degradation] walking through the Jin Lin concession. The company had plowed large, muddy roads about 45 feet wide into the forest, churned up huge piles of earth, and created fetid pools of green and brown water. Unpended and broken trees were everywhere and what were once plots of sweet potatoes, peanuts, ginger, cassava, palm and banana crops --planted in the forest by Maroon villagers-- were muddy pits." Three complaints were submitted by the Saramaka between October 1999 and October 2000, none of which received any response. They concluded that Surinamese law was so stacked against them that resort to the courts would be futile. So they decided to seek the protection of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and filed a petition there in October 2000, which is presently pending. What is happening in Suriname is another example of the internationalisation of logging activities driven by an unsustainable consumption pattern. That is why the widely reported ban on domestic logging in China, in part prompted by devastating flooding related to forest loss, has translated in just a shift of scenario. Now the supply operations are carried out abroad and destruction won’t stop until also the other end of the process --demand-- is dealt with. Article based on "Logging and Tribal Rights in Suriname", by Fergus MacKay, Coordinator, Legal and Human Rights Programme, Forest Peoples Programme, e-mail: fergus@euronet.nl (The full article can be accessed at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Surinam/logging.html )
OCEANIA - Papua New Guinea: World Bank-funded Forestry and Conservation project without the people It is well known that the World Bank has been a major force in the destruction of the rainforests of the world by financing destructive projects. The decison taken yesterday of approving a controversial forestry project seems to show that the Bank is still far from truly embracing participatory forest conservation and management. According to the information posted in its web site, yesterday the Bank approved a loan for a Forestry and Conservation Project in Papua New Guinea that is supposed "to strengthen the capacity of local people, government and non-governmental entities to more sustainably manage and conserve PNG's forest resources." In spite of the nice wording, during the last days NGO’s from all over the world have been campaigning against the approval of this project. The reasons por NGO opposition stem in the first place from the fact that when Papua New Guinea’s government accepted the first Structural Adjustment Loan from the World Bank, it agreed to a moratorium on new logging concessions until the entire forestry sector was reviewed and properly reformed. The Government has not fulfilled their obligation under the first loan conditions and several logging operations commenced during the moratorium, violating the conditions established by the World Bank. In response, PNG landowners filed an Inspection Panel grievance with the World Bank, claiming they have lost their land and forests while the government was contractually bound to the World Bank to improve forest governance and not commence new logging. The Centre of Environmental Law and Community Rights Inc. has lodged the claim on behalf of landowners along the Kiunga Aiambak Road in the Western Province. The area is one of several areas that have been illegally logged during the period that the PNG government committed itself to the moratorium in exchange for loans. Illegal logging along the Kiunga Aiambak Road has caused severe environmental damage as logs worth millions of kina are unlawfully removed. Protesting landowners have been unlawfully imprisoned, beaten and tortured. On the other hand, NGOs oppose the recently approved World Bank project because by disbursing the final loan payment without maintaining the moratorium the World Bank is in violation of the contractual provisions of the loan, as well as in conflict with their own operational directives. Their failure to follow their own policies comes as they propose a forest sector reform project. The proposed Forestry and Conservation Project includes an important trust fund to support community-based projects that protect biodiversity, but does nothing to ensure their legal status. The project does not support policy-making for community based eco-forestry efforts that strive for ecological sustainability, local ownership and community development. NGOs have therefore stressed the need to strengthen those aspects in the project as a pre-condition to support it. The moratorium must be maintained and the forest project amended to include support for other types of forest management other than industrial logging for export. To date there is no information available on whether the Bank has amended the project to include those issues or on whether if it will or will not insist on the compliance with the logging moratorium agreed upon. Article based on information from: World Bank Fails to Enforce Logging Moratorium sent by Glenn Barry, e-mail: gbarry@forests.org ; http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/newprojects/lc2002163.htm#png
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