• The Greening of Corporations
• The International Monetary Fund: Funding deforestation
• World Bank: The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
• World Bank: At the forefront of carbon trading
• WTO: Who's common future?
• FAO's "forests" or how to cheat at patience
  

THE TROUBLE-MAKERS

- The Greening of Corporations

The profit-led corporate logic is determining our future, and that of generations to come, shaping the emerging international system which is today dominated by institutions that favour corporate rights. The outstanding outcome of present globalisation --privatisation and deregulation-- have allowed corporations to usurp the natural basis upon which all life depends.

As the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) approaches, conflicts intensify between North and South, civil society and industry. Northern governments defend corporate-led globalisation, including market liberalisation and privatisation of public services, as part of "sustainable development" --the catch-all phrase used by all parties to describe their responses, however inadequate, to the accelerating global social and ecological crisis. And their major plan is to undermine the United Nations as an institution to meaningfully address the twin crises of global poverty and ecological decline.

The deep contradictions between neoliberal globalisation policies on the one hand and environmental and social goals on the other are mainly reflected on conflicts over trade and finance issues, and on the attemps to rollback Rio by withdrawing from key outcomes such as the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities --those nations who played the biggest role in causing a problem should take the lead in addressing it-- and the Precautionary Principle --governments should err on the side of caution when there is the possibility of devastating and irreparable environmental harm.

For Johannesburg, talks concentrate on a Plan of Implementation/Action intended to develop national and global policies and programs, and a Political Declaration, in which governments are expected to recommit to Agenda 21 and the pursuit of "sustainable development": these are called Type I outcomes (obligatory). Type II (voluntary) outcomes are a new and controversial category: partnership projects aiming to implement "sustainable development", with a strong focus on participation of the private sector through private-public partnerships.

The current bias of the WSSD's Chairman's Text towards market-based delivery of services fits hand in glove with corporate campaigns in the run-up to the WSSD. Transnational mining company Rio Tinto's Lord Holme of Cheltenham, for instance, is vice-chair of BASD (Business Action for Sustainable Development), which is a joint campaign by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (a coalition of 150 large corporations, currently chaired by Shell's Phil Watts, created to provide business input into the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which has contributed to blocking attempts to regulate business) and the International Chamber of Commerce.

BASD'S recipe for "sustainable development" is a combination of corporate partnership projects and improved governance in the South. BASD's key representative in South Africa, Reuel Khoza, chairman of South African electricity company Eskom, referred to the UN's Global Compact (a voluntary partnership between the UN, the corporate sector and some NGOs around a set of social, human rights and environmental principles, and criticised by large sections of civil society because it lacks monitoring and enforcement) and the Global Reporting Initiative (a set of guidelines for reporting on the social, environmental and human rights performance) as guarantees of transparency in Type II projects. He announced that some of the partnership projects submitted by the BASD would also aim to implement the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). NEPAD, the "development path" crafted by the South African and other African governments, promotes the privatisation of water, electricity, transport and telecommunication services, as well as continued debt repayments and the further liberalisation of markets and international investment flows, and is widely opposed by African civil society.

Other plans of the WBCSD for Johannesburg include promoting six sectoral projects run by working groups made up of WBCSD corporations. Forestry is one of the most controversial.

The "Sustainable Forestry Industry" project of the WBCSD started in 1994, when a group of companies led by Brazilian Aracruz Celulose and Finnish UPM-Kymmene initiated a study focusing on paper production. The study was commissioned from an external body (the International Institute for Environment and Development or IIED). The report 'Towards a Sustainable Paper Cycle' was published in June 1996. The next step was the creation of the "Forest Dialogue", which included land owners, the forest industry, some NGOs and the World Bank. The goal of the dialogue, co-chaired by the WBCSD and the World Resources Institute (WRI), was to develop a consensus vision on the world forests and a range of concrete issues, such as mutual recognition of certification schemes for forestry industry practices.

The credibility of the self-proclaimed quest for sustainable forestry is seriously undermined by the shameful record of the two corporations that initiated the project. UPM-Kymmene is heavily criticised by forest campaign groups for its damaging activities in Indonesia, misconduct that continued after the launch of the "Sustainable Forestry Industry" project. In 1997, the Finnish wood products giant got a paper plant in Changsu, China, which processes pulp from PT Riau Anadalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP), the second largest pulp producer of Indonesia. RAPP's mill in Riau, Sumatra, was expanded with a $750 million investment package supported by the Finnish and Swedish export credit agencies. The Riau mill produces 750,000 tones of pulp each year by logging the natural rainforest, substituting over 50 species of tropical hardwood for acacia plantations. Local communities have suffered severe impacts, the river essential for their livelihood has been polluted, they have been evicted from their lands with no compensation and have faced physical violence when protesting. UPM-Kymmene pulled out of RAPP, but still uses RAPP's pulp for its paper production in China.

The other founder of the WBCSD forestry project, Aracruz Celulose, specialises in bleached eucalyptus pulp. The company is particularly infamous for its destructive social and environmental impacts in the Brazilian states of Espirito Santo and Bahia. Aracruz has flooded the regions with extensive monoculture tree plantations and uprooted indigenous peoples such as the Tupinikim and the Guarani from their lands. It has turned what used to be the Mata Atlantica rainforest into a green eucalyptus desert. The impacts on local communities and the environment has led to the creation of a broad opposition movement --the Alert Against the Green Desert Movement-- which groups indigenous peoples, afro-descendent communities, fisherfolk, farmers, the landless peasants' movement, environmental and social NGOs, among others. The existing contradictions between the company and local society were clearly shown at the beginning of August when the company's third pulp mill was opened in the presence of the President of Brazil, while people gathered outside in a demonstration against the company. That was only one of the many activities organized by the Alert Against the Green Desert Movement during its "1st Fortnight of Resistance against the Green Desert". Other actions included a demonstration against Aracruz in front of Parliament House, at the doors of the Safra Bank (a Brazilian bank that owns 28% of ordinary shares of Aracruz), and also in front of the office of Finnish consultancy company Yaakko Poyry --working for Aracruz-- in the state's capital city Vitoria. At the same time, Aracruz's Norwegian chairman -- Erling Sven Lorentzen-- failed to appear before the Parliamentary Investigation Commission of the State Parliament of Espirito Santo that is investigating irregularities of the company´s activities, under the excuse "that he was not the right person to be heard by the Commission, once he is not directly involved in the administration of the company."!

Those are the "green credentials" of the Sustainable Forestry Industry's two corporate leaders. Will the WSSD give further "sustainable development" credentials to a corporate sector which can only be portrayed as socially and environmentally conscious through their channelling of millions of dollars to public relations companies eager to "green" them?

Article based on information from: "Countdown to Rio+10: 'Sustainable Development' and the Public-Private Pantomime", Corporate Europe Observer, Issue Number 12, August 2002, http://www.corporateeurope.org/observer12/wssdlobby.html#02 ; "Social Responsibility and the Mechanical Bull: The International Chamber of Commerce Dresses for Success", http://www.corporateeurope.org/observer12/iccdenver.htm ; "Exporting Enron Environmentalism: The Bush Vision for Johannesburg", Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization, http://www.ifg.org ; Press Release of the Alert against the Green Desert Movement, Vitoria, 14 August 2002. Contact e-mail: fasees@terra.com.br

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- The International Monetary Fund: Funding deforestation

As compared to the World Bank --its sister institution-- the IMF's impacts on forests have been relatively underreported. However, International Monetary Fund loans and policies have caused extensive deforestation in countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Through the imposition of "structural adjustment programs", the IMF influences countries' economic policies and practices by conditioning loans upon the acceptance of a series of trade and investment liberalisation measures. Along with its partners --most notably the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation-- the IMF has been instrumental in promoting a regime of privatisation, deregulation, foreign investment, and export-oriented growth. Through these policies, the IMF imposes a one-size-fits-all prescription, allegedly for the purpose of economic growth by increasing Southern countries' access to hard currency. However, while meeting development objectives has proven elusive in most IMF client countries, the overall effect of these policies on forests globally has been devastating.

Although the architects of corporate globalisation claim that trade and investment liberalisation is the best strategy for improvements in environmental protection, the record shows that funding for environmental programs has been hampered by the significant cuts in government spending imposed by the IMF as part of its loan conditionalities. Government spending on important environmental programs has thus been substantially reduced in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Cameroon. IMF-induced budget cuts have impeded the following activities:

- Promotion of responsible forestry and sustainable development
- Enforcement of forest and wildlife protection measures
- Prevention of mining disasters
- Demarcation of indigenous lands

Additionally, inadequate funding for regulatory agencies has created conditions for:

- Widespread illegal logging, including in national parks and protected reserves
- Corruption in regulatory schemes
- The inability to respond rapidly to natural disasters
- Extensive poaching of imperilled species

Long-term economic prosperity must be based on sustainable development patterns. Instead the IMF prioritises economic liberalisation measures over key social and environmental objectives. The IMF's primary economic liberalisation mechanisms have included: reducing export taxes; relaxing mining and forestry codes; removing bans on raw log exports; offering tax holidays to foreign firms; lifting prohibitions on foreign investment, including land ownership; and otherwise eliminating barriers to trade. The implementation of such liberalisation mechanisms --clearly geared at benefiting transnational corporations-- has heavily impacted on forests and forest peoples' livelihoods. Absent real improvements in environmental safeguards, the IMF's formula has been a recipe for accelerated deforestation for too many countries.

Additionally, IMF policies have impacted on forests and wildlife indirectly through the worsening of poverty conditions in many tropical countries. Through displacement of communities, devaluation of currencies, elimination of social services, and other IMF-driven downward pressures on the living standards of local peoples, rural residents in many countries have been forced to exploit forest resources to fulfil their basic needs.

There is abundant evidence all over the world that the IMF's activities are destructive and are threatening forests and forest peoples. The consistency of forest degradation in countries where the IMF has had an important role calls into question the credibility of the IMF when it claims that its policies do not harm the environment, or that the environment concerns are outside of its mandate: concerns are certainly absent in its policies but impacts are clearly always present. From all available evidence, it is apparent that global protection of forests will not be possible without either fundamental transformation of the approach taken by the IMF, or the removal of its ability to promote and impose policies that harm forests.

Article drawn from the report: " The IMF: funding deforestation" by Jason Tockman, American Lands Alliance. The full report, including the case studies can be read at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/IMF/Jason.doc

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- World Bank: The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

The World Bank has a long history in forest destruction. From the 1960s onwards, the Bank has funded large-scale destructive projects in the tropics --ranging from massive hydroelectric dams to extensive road systems-- which resulted in widespread deforestation processes. Since the 1980's, the Bank's negative role was further increased through its structural adjustment programs --in partnership with the International Monetary Fund-- which opened up forests to additional destructive activities --ranging from mining to export-oriented large-scale monocultures-- for the benefit of transnational corporations and their local partners.

As a result of strong international campaigns, the Bank prepared a Forest Policy paper in 1991 to help ensure that its activities would promote forest conservation. This paper which contained a prohibition on direct Bank financing of industrial logging operations in primary moist tropical forests was well-received by the NGO-community. It was spelled out as an Operational Policy in 1993 with the promise of changing the Bank's approach to forests. However, the Bank failed to implement its own policy. That was the conclusion of an extensive review carried out during 1999 by the Bank's own Operations Evaluation Department (OED). In general terms, the OED concluded that the Bank had failed to implement critical provisions in the policy, such as using an inter-sectoral approach to forest which would have ensured that the impacts on forests of all types of Bank operations would be taken into account and avoided.

Although the policy was not implemented in practice, many Bank staff felt unhappy with the policy believing that it was too conservation-minded and pressed for the development of a new policy which would allow for the financing of large-scale forestry operations. However, given the previous controversies around World Bank Forest Policy, the intended policy changes required to at least give the appearance of a consultative process with stakeholders. During the period 2000/2001, NGOs on all continents accepted the World Bank's offer to participate in a series of regional consultations to help the Bank prepare its new Forest Policy (OP). In addition, the Bank established a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to provide the institution with further guidance in this important policy area.

However, the input provided by the consultations and the TAG has evaporated into thin air. The consultations were a sham. This is the conclusion we have to draw from the Bank's draft OP which was placed on the institution's website on June 10 for public review until August 2, 2002.

Letters sent to Mr. Wolfensohn by WRM/Environmental Defense/Forest Peoples Programme (endorsed by more than 200 NGOs worldwide) and by Russian NGOs which recently participated in a forest conference in Siberia, highlight some of the most disturbing elements of the draft OP:

- Although economic and trade policies have long been identified as driving forces of deforestation, the OP does not apply to the growing area of structural and programmatic lending;
- The Bank's private sector arms, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) are exempt from the OP;
- It opens the doors to extractive investments in all types of forests except those deemed to be "critical" by World Bank officials. There is no stakeholder participation in the definition of "critical forests;"
- Even "critical forests" may be logged or cleared where alternative locations are not "feasible" and as long as undefined "mitigatory measures" are proposed;
- It opens the door to Bank financing of plantations in forests, although it "prefers" these not be areas specially cleared for the purpose;
- It opens the door to rogue certification schemes since Bank funding of commercial logging is to be subject to third party certification or an action plan promising such, but without setting clear standards;
- The draft OP no longer requires that areas be set aside for indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers (this is a requirement of the existing Forest Policy);
- Similarly, the draft OP has dropped a previous requirement to set aside areas for conservation alongside forest exploitation.

There is universal agreement among the NGO-community that the draft OP is seriously flawed and represents a dangerous set-back for the world's forest ecosystems and the people whose livelihoods depend on them. What follows are brief excerpts from letters addressed to World Bank President Wolfensohn by major conservation organizations:

IUCN: "...the draft OP does not adequately safeguard the rights of forest-dependant people or the integrity of biologically important forests from the unintended negative impacts of Bank operations." (July 30, 2002).

World Resources Institute: "...the draft policy currently submitted for public comment is grossly inadequate to fulfill its intended objectives. It is inadequate to promote either a 'do no harm' or a 'do good' agenda, and is incomplete in its coverage of Bank Group instruments and institutions." (August 2, 2002).

WWF and Conservation International: "The current Bank draft falls short of several fundamental requirements on which virtually the entire conservation community agrees. If adopted in its current form, the draft OP may not only be bad for the world's forests, but will certainly expose the Bank to serious and warranted criticism for ignoring much of the advice it openly solicited on the subject." (July 17, 2002).

In the run-up to Johannesburg the World Bank is putting in extra efforts to portray itself as the global leader in environmentally and socially sustainable development. The proposed new Forest Policy, however, reveals an entirely different picture of an institution going backwards on previous commitments to protect the world's forests and the people who depend on them. The wolf in sheep's clothing is probably the most accurate way of describing it.

By: Korinna Horta. Environmental Defense, e-mail: Korinna_Horta@environmentaldefense.org

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- World Bank: At the forefront of carbon trading

To put a shine on its green credentials at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the World Bank plans to launch a new fund at Johannesburg, aimed at promoting the North-South trade in carbon credits in line with the so-called 'Clean Development Mechanism' (1). The 'Community Development Carbon Fund' builds on a three year experiment - the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund - but will be a separate initiative with its own statutes and governance structure with a specific focus on promoting small-scale projects which have a community development component. Although the focus of the fund will be on small-scale energy projects - biogas, mini-hydro, windfarms - the fund will also fund projects in forests, agriculture and plantations. The fund is being set up jointly with the International Emissions Trading Association.

In November, the World Bank plans to launch another fund with a more industrial orientation. The 'BioCarbon Fund' will focus exclusively on land use change projects. One window of the fund will finance projects within the current Kyoto Protocol framework but a second window will promote experimental projects in carbon sequestration through plantations, reforestation and averted deforestation that go beyond current international agreements. By adopting a 'learning by doing' approach, the Bank hopes to clarify the technical obstacles plaguing 'carbon forestry' and promote 'best practice'.

What does 'best practice' really mean? Best for whom? Whose interests are really being served? Much of the thinking behind the promotion of these 'carbon forestry' experiments emphasizes potential contributions to promoting fibre production to meet burgeoning consumer demand for paper and pulp, satisfying global demand for wood products and protecting biodiversity. Best practitioners are said to be large plantation companies, global retailers in forest products, large investment funds providing capital resources for these new forestry schemes. But what are the real implications of 'carbon forestry' for local communities?

Large-scale projects are likely to take over large areas of land and forests and are bound to have major impacts on forest dwellers. The 'best practices' that forest peoples have advocated, to give them a chance of dealing with these threats - recognition of their land rights and the right of free and informed consent - are just those that the World Bank has repeatedly refused to recognize in its redrafting of its policies on dams, resettlement, indigenous peoples and forests. What are the chances that the Bank will adopt stronger standards for carbon forestry than those it has adopted for its other development initiatives? If 'best practice' is not underpinned by mandatory requirements, we can be sure that 'worst practices' will result.

As for community-based alternatives, involving local communities in 'carbon forestry' is not just a cunning way of getting them additional funding for what they are doing anyway. Such activities fail the test of 'additionality'. 'Carbon forestry' projects will require communities to adopt new practices that will create long-term and additional stores of carbon. If these projects go wrong, failing to store carbon in as large a quantity or for as long as was planned, who will be liable to repay investors? There are real concerns that carbon forestry projects will expose the poor to additional risks they cannot afford to bear.

Pressures to select species that store carbon fast, may also skew carbon forestry away from a selection of the diverse and valuable multi-purpose tree species that underpin local livelihoods. Carbon forestry may thereby not only lessen biodiversity but may also jeopardize cultural and livelihood diversity.

Setting up a myriad of small-scale schemes and paying for the external certification required to verify the effectiveness of carbon-stores will also imply huge extra transaction costs both for the Bank and for communities but the modalities for providing grant funds to help communities meet these overheads are not yet in place. The Bank hopes to lessen its costs by working through 'intermediary organisations' - the risk is that these will not represent local views and concerns and the process may promote patron-client relations that perpetuate the marginalisation of the poor and powerless.

Sceptics worry that the Bank is setting up these initiatives to push negotiators at the InterGovernmental Framework Convention on Climate Change into accepting carbon trading as the main way to address global warming. They also fear that, by promoting all these funds the Bank is lining itself up as the obvious agency to have responsibility for implementing these agreements once they are made. Jobs for the boys or a real opportunity for the poor?

By: Marcus Colchester, Forest Peoples Programme, e-mail: marcus@fppwrm.gn.apc.org

(1) "No development mechanism can be clean, from our point of view, if it does not guarantee the rights of Indigenous Peoples including the right to free, prior informed consent of indigenous and local communities and the respect of our cultures, practices, sciences and knowledge." (Statement of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Caucus to the Seventh Session of the Conference of the Parties, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Marrakech, Kingdom of Morocco, October 29 to November 9, 2001)

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- WTO: Who's common future?

In November of 2001, trade ministers from 140 nations gathered in Doha, Qatar to give the World Trade Organization (WTO) a historic new mandate that could intensify logging of native forests, the depletion of fisheries, the burning of fossil fuels, the use of toxic chemicals, and the release of genetically-modified organisms.

Despite rhetoric about poverty alleviation and sustainable development, the ministerial's official statement (known as the Doha declaration) gives the WTO new powers to restrain governments from regulating the behavior of global corporations. By declaring itself the arbiter of planetary natural resource crises and the fora for determining the relationship between conflicting international agreements on trade and environment, the Doha agenda throws down a direct challenge to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The WTO's new mandate covers questions whose answers will ultimately define our common future. If left unchallenged, the question of global governance will have been resolved by the WTO's declaring itself the arbiter of all things. The global corporations shaping WTO rules will define the futures of countless small farmers, fisher peoples, forest dwellers, indigenous peoples, and others whose survival depends on access to, and control over, the natural resources that exist in local commons worldwide. Threats to these traditional peoples' sustainable livelihoods are inherent to the Doha agenda.

The Doha agenda has empowered the WTO to:

- increase corporate control over natural resources by allowing decisions about their use to be driven even more closely by the short-term demands of global financial markets;
- intensify export-based forestry, farming, and fishing, as well as fossil fuels burning, mining, and other natural resource exploitation;
- eliminate more conservation and community development policies as unfair "barriers" to trade;
- determine who captures the remnants of the world's collapsing natural resources;
- subordinate multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) to the rights of corporations enshrined in the WTO rules.

Furthermore, the WTO's market access agenda combines two dangerous impacts that undermine natural resource conservation and sustainable livelihoods: 1) the expansion of exports to wasteful consumers; 2) the elimination of legal protections that ensure sustainable natural resource use and local communities who depend on them. The forestry, fishing, and farming sectors are particularly impacted. Negotiations are broken down by the elimination of tariffs (import taxes) and so-called Non Tariff Measures, or NTMs.

Forest tariffs were an issue of great concern to protesters in Seattle, as ministers had prepared to finalize a deal that week. Popularly known as the "Global Free Logging Agreement," forest conservationists succeeded in getting the US Trade Representative to publish its first ever environmental assessment of trade liberalization, released just before the 1999 Ministerial. In the report, which was done by a timber industry-funded group, trade officials buried the real findings: tariff reductions would result in increased logging in some of the world's most threatened original forests inhabited by indigenous peoples. Cutting tariffs reduces wood prices for consumers, in turn stimulating more wasteful consumption, especially in the rich nations where tariffs are highest. WTO tariff elimination could undermine efforts to reduce wood and other resource consumption, a priority identified by the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit. Yet the Johannesburg preparatory report by the UN Secretary-General hails the WTO's Doha agenda a "success."

Non Tariff Measures (NTMs) are considered to be any government measure, policy, or practice that has the effect of "distorting" trade. Forest NTMs are broadly defined as any measure that "distorts" trade. Even measures that have a "potential" to impact trade, such as ecolabels, are under the WTO microscope. The NTM agenda is the final push to remove all government control from regulating natural resources, where any policy objective, such as conservation or community development, is made subservient to expanding trade.

The Doha deal may some day come to be known as a declaration of silent war against the rights of people and the planet. It threatens poor peoples' access to and control over the very resources upon which their survival depends, deepening the spiral of exclusion that drives so many into insecurity and desperation. There is talk in the WSSD preparatory process of striking a "Global Deal" in Johannesburg. Any meaningful deal would have to initiate a people-driven process to transform international economic institutions. Otherwise, decisions taken under WSSD will be undermined by the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the global corporations they serve.

While the cheerleaders of global free trade spin Doha's outcomes as a victory in the global war on poverty, and remain "convinced that trade and environment policies can and must be mutually supportive," the contradictions between the Doha and Johannesburg agendas become increasingly clear.

With the very real prospect of global governance being usurped by transnational corporations via the WTO, civil society must use the Johannesburg process as a vehicle to defy the Doha agenda and intensify challenges to today's global economic institutions. Regardless of the WSSD's official outcomes, the peoples' process, as in Seattle, will and must ultimately replace the WTO with a truly democratic system that values life over money, and the rights of people over the rights of corporations.

Far from being finalized, global civil society's response to the Doha agenda has already been launched: grassroots organizations around the world will be using the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development as an organizing vehicle to beat back the Doha agenda. The Johannesburg's "peoples' process" will be just one of a number of convergences required to replace the WTO's bid for a corporate utopia with an international citizen's agenda that protects the poor and the planet. If not, Doha will be known as a pivotal point in history where global governance was truly usurped.

By: Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization, e-mail: vmenotti@ifg.org

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- FAO's "forests" or how to cheat at patience

FAO is cheating at a game of patience. And pretends that nobody notices it. All over the world we are watching the alarming destruction and degradation of forests and in this process the rights of indigenous peoples are being violated, watersheds are being affected, whole regions are being altered, the climate is being de-stabilised and species of flora and fauna are disappearing.

However, FAO (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation), considered by many international bodies and by the forestry profession as the maximum authority on the subject of forests, is manipulating data on the true situation in such a way as to cover up the seriousness of the destruction process. Thus, in its report "Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000" (FRA2000) it introduces changes into its previous definition of forests, not to update it from its obvious obsolescence but to make it worse. Thus FAO manages to reach the conclusion that, in comparison with former assessments, an increase has taken place of the world forest cover. Nobody --not even themselves-- believe it, but at least they are trying.

This conclusion is reached through the manipulation of its definitions which, inter alia, state that "Forest includes natural forests and forest plantations. It is used to refer to land with a tree canopy cover of more than 10 percent and area of more than 0.5 ha.". This definition has been justifiably ridiculed on an international level, as it implies that a major part of the city of Asuncion (capital of Paraguay) should then be considered as a "forest."

With a stroke of the pen, applying this definition of forests, FAO has managed to lower deforestation rates and thus today there are 400 million hectares more of forests than the world figures for 1995. According to FAO itself: "Despite the high losses of the world's natural forests at the global level, new forest plantation areas are being established at the reported rate of 4.5 million hectares per year" and this results in a significantly lower net rate than that recorded in the previous FAO report, corresponding to the period 1990-1995. Although it does not use these same words, it may be inferred that insofar as plantations compensate for the loss of forests, there is no cause for concern, and the "forest cover" will have been maintained. So, FAO goes on cheating at this game of patience. Or is this its way of fulfilling its function in its capacity as Sectoral Co-ordinator for Chapter 11 of Agenda 21 (of the Earth Summit): "Combatting deforestation"?

What is behind this game? In the first place it should be noted that the plantations included are only industrial tree plantations, mostly aimed at wood production. Not included in this definition are trees for other purposes, such as fruit-trees or coconut plantations or agroforestry systems. And here we have an interesting case: why are the rubber tree plantations, formerly not considered as forests by FAO, now included as such? The reason is very simple: now rubber tree plantations have started to be increasingly used as wood and therefore acquire --for FAO-- visibility as forests. But they continue to be the same as before. Why can't plantations of other types of trees such as orange trees, banana trees or coconut trees be considered as forests? The answer is clear: because they are not intended for the production of wood. And this shows one of the concepts at the root of this definition and all it implies: a forest is not seen by FAO as what it is --a complete ecosystem including the human communities that depend on it-- but exclusively as producing wood.

Ten years after the Earth Summit, at the level of this "expert" organisation, not only has nothing changed for the better in this respect, but things have got worse. And this cannot be attributed to ignorance, as much has been said --and fully documented-- on the subject. Even when FAO tries to open up the umbrella by stating that it does not "intend to imply that plantations are equivalent to natural forests," and that "great care has been taken to keep the statistics for natural and planted forests separate" --though only in Southern countries-- what is true is that for FAO both categories continue to be just one and the same: forests.

It is illustrative to summarise here a written exchange which took place recently between a FAO staff member and a South African environmentalist regarding the area which --according to FAO statistics-- is covered by forests in that country. The FAO staff person finished his argument by saying "Forest plantations are areas with trees, and therefore a (kind of) forest." And the environmentalist replied: "by the same token, it could be claimed that locusts are a 'kind of bird' or that cornfields are a 'kind of prairie.'

Placing tree plantations on the same level as forests implies ignoring the various functions the latter fulfil: they are home to millions of people, they provide them with food, medicines, fibres, firewood, building materials, they regulate the local water regime and the global climate, just to mention a few of them. It also implies ignoring the long struggles taking place in many countries, both in the South and in the North (from Australia to Chile, from Spain and Portugal to South Africa and Brazil, from Thailand to India) against the invasion of large-scale monoculture tree plantations, so frequently carried out in detriment to forests. These struggles are not against the forests, but against the plantations, precisely because these do not have anything in common with forests and have a serious impact on local communities and their environment.

It is important to point out that within the orientation given to the approach towards forests, the promotion and legitimisation of industrial tree plantations are a perfect fit within the framework of the Green Revolution, promoted since decades ago again by FAO. All this is joined, and the various ramifications and connections link the deforestation process to cover industrial needs, with the invasion of monoculture tree plantations to feed the paper industry, with those who promote these processes --major transnational companies-- through an international web of organizations at their disposal, among which the WTO, the IMF and various international instruments.

In this process, the latest biotechnology findings are integrated into the technological package that has accompanied and continues to accompany agro-industrial production --weed-killers, pesticides, fertilisers, etc.-- first of all expressed in the already widespread techniques of selection and cloning of the most suitable genotypes for industrial purposes, with the intention of going on to use genetic manipulation. Presently, the major companies are involved in this, injecting money into academic research centres and attempting to take their dangerous experiments out to the field. FAO does not say anything in this respect, but will surely include plantations of transgenic trees --if we allow this to happen-- as "planted forests" helping to maintain the "forest cover" of the planet.

All this is serious. And even more serious coming from an organisation that has the mandate of monitoring how forests and their resources are used to improve the population's economic, environmental, social and cultural conditions, guaranteeing the conservation of resources to satisfy the needs of future generations. And furthermore, FAO is an active part of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, preparing official documentation, part of which is the assessment of progress made, including insufficiencies and deficiencies.

Once again we stress the imperious need for the eradication, once and for all, of productivist and reductionist conceptions of one of the most biodiversity-rich ecosystems --the forest. In order to analyse clearly what is happening with the forests, it is essential to establish a clear differentiation between plantations and forests. A plantation may be considered as positive or negative and it is good that the necessary conditions for it to be positive for people and the environment are discussed. But it can never be considered to be a forest. It is time that FAO's definitions on forests are definitively shelved --as part of the history of forest thinking-- and that it be explicitly recognised that a forest is much more than a collection of trees aimed at producing wood and that a plantation is not a forest. It would be an enormous contribution to the forthcoming Johannesburg summit meeting.

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