- Liberia: Unique forests threatened by logging

The last two blocks of continuous tropical rainforest subsisting in the Upper Guinea forest in West Africa, are to be found in Liberia. The Upper Guinean forest, recognised as one of the twenty-five hot spots for world biodiversity, comprises a belt of fragmented forests located along the West African coast. It totally or partially covers some ten countries, starting at the west of Guinea and ending at the southwest of Cameroon. Of the world's twenty-five hot spots, this one hosts the greatest diversity of mammals. The Upper Guinean forest contains 551 different species of mammals and half the known species of mammals of the African continent. In addition, it is among the regions with the highest degree of priority regarding conservation of primates, thus forming part of the priority zones for conservation of world biodiversity.

It is considered that the Upper Guinean forest has lost 12.7% of its initial extension, that is to say 727,900 square kilometres. Some 45% of this forest is to be found in Liberia. The Liberian forest serves as a habitat for much endemic flora and fauna and represents a unique ecological niche for some of the world's rarest species. The zone has its own flora and fauna and conservation of its biological diversity has been recognised as a world priority, for although Liberia has a profusion of biological wealth, this wealth is not very common.

Unfortunately, the Liberian rainforest is seriously threatened, mainly by logging operations. Between 1997 and 2001, the production of roundwood increased in a spectacular way (over 1300%). As could be expected, this had an enormous impact on indigenous rural communities and the local population, whose means of subsistence came from the land and the forest. Their cultural and spiritual practices depend so closely on the forest that, with its rapid disappearance, the survival and growth of such communities are seriously threatened. The present level of poverty in these communities makes it possible to see what will happen if nothing is done to control the present trend towards forestry exploitation.

In the year 2000, the Save My Future Foundation launched an investigation on forestry industry activities. The first results revealed that an overwhelming majority of Liberians, in particular rural inhabitants, were in disagreement with the way that logging companies operate. They also expressed their major deception over the way that the Liberian government is spending income from the timber trade, neglecting to make the necessary investments of part of this income to improve the communities' living conditions.

The research team also reported on the existence of extremely dangerous and unsustainable development practices and the inhabitants of some regions declared that the militia of some logging companies had harassed them and attempted to put pressure on them.

These results also showed the need for more exhaustive research on the logging industry. For this reason the Campaign to Save the Liberian Forest and Respect Liberia's Human Rights, was launched to carry out a more detailed investigation on the activities of logging companies in Liberia. The objective of the present campaign is to protect the rainforest and promote respect for the indigenous peoples' individual and collective rights, working in close relationship with them for this purpose. The project also aims at monitoring forestry exploitation activities, with the objective of illustrating and revealing infringements made regarding forests and facilitating public debates on these issues.

Article based on the introduction to "Pillage: La destruction silencieuse de la forêt pluviale du Liberia" (Plundering: the silent destruction of Liberia's rainforest), SAMFU Foundation, September 2002, http://www.forestsmonitor.org/reports/plunder/pillage.pdf

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- South Africa: Nearing one million hectares of FSC certified plantations

South African activists have for years been campaigning against the spread of industrial alien tree plantations. Wally Menne, from the Timberwatch Coalition says that "certification of monoculture timber plantations as 'sustainably managed forests' by the Forest Stewardship Council makes an absolute mockery of the concept of sustainable environment and ecosystem management."

The above statement becomes a dramatic call for action when learning that some 900,000 hectares of monoculture tree plantations --mostly composed of alien species of eucalyptus and pines-- have already been given the FSC stamp of approval and that many more will be certified unless something is done to stop it. How can this be possible?

To begin with, it needs to be stressed that the natural vegetation in the areas where these plantations have been established was originally highly bio-diverse grassland or woodland. After conversion to plantations, these areas stand little chance, if any, of being able to revert to the natural climax vegetation type.

But that is only the starting point. As a result of this activity, both people and the environment are subjected to a terrifying range of harmful impacts, among which the following:

* As a first step, the natural vegetation is either bulldozed or killed with herbicides to prevent competition with plantation trees for water, light and nutrients.

* Tree saplings are artificially fertilised to speed up their rate of establishment and other chemicals that absorb moisture are added to the soil to prevent the young plants from drying out.

* Alien invasive plants --including plantation species such as ecualyptus, pines and acacias-- become established in neighbouring ecosystems.

* Animals and birds that are disturbed by the plantation establishment activities either flee the area or are hunted and snared as food for the plantation contract workers.

* Surface water in the vicinity of new plantations is soon depleted and people have to turn to the use of boreholes and wells that often are saline or polluted.

* The establishment of timber plantations upsets the natural balance of species. These plantations create barriers that disrupt the normal migration and breeding patterns of birds, animals and insects.

* Local people who would have had access to the area if plantations had not been established, could have used the area to graze their cattle and sheep, harvest thatch grass for roofing their homes, and collect food and medicinal plants for their own limited use. They are now deprived of this resource and are forced to move into previously undisturbed areas in search of these commodities. This often leads to conflict with the management of protected natural areas.

* Contract workers are poorly paid and have little choice but to build makeshift homes within areas of natural forest near the plantation sites where they work, causing substantial ecological damage in the process.

* Community food security is one of the first victims of timber plantations. Areas used traditionally for growing fruit and vegetables become too dry or are shaded out when plantations are established too close to the fertile areas along streams and rivers. The remaining residents are left in a position where they have to use their limited financial resources to buy processed food from trading stores.

* Transport systems, especially roads, are subjected to high levels of usage for which they were not designed. The cost of upgrading or maintaining rural roads is usually borne by the state, which means that the timber industry benefits from an indirect subsidy.

Large-scale timber plantations destroy entire ecosystems and rural economies. For some strange reason this calamity is virtually ignored by governments and research institutions. The onus should be on an organisation like FSC to insist that thorough, impartial research is conducted before certification can be considered.

There is no doubt that a consumer commodity like paper, or pressboard, has great value in modern society. What is not acceptable is that the rate of consumption of paper products is increasing whilst the living standards of poor communities where the timber is produced do not. The growth of the throwaway culture of so-called developed countries has a direct correlation to the eroding natural environment, and standards of living in the countries that have been colonised by the tree plantations of the multinational corporations concerned. In the case of South Africa, the FSC must take a large share of the responsibility for this social and environmental injustice.

Article based on information from: - South Africa: Quo vadis FSC? by Wally Menne, member of the TIMBERWATCH Coalition, e-mail: plantnet@iafrica.com

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- Tanzania: Improving forest management through joint management with communities

Many independent states have shown little interest in revitalizing local level systems of authority, which were purposely destroyed by past colonial regimes. The new independent governments, just like past colonial regimes do not like very much the idea of local political forces challenging its legitimacy. Thus, many forests became the property of the state, as in the case of Tanzania. This responsibility was assumed by the Tanzanian state despite other pressing problems like: governance, economic development, self reliance and political stability. As such meager resources were mostly directed towards these causes and managing forests was not accorded priority and they were left to deteriorate.

Much attention to reform management of natural resources like forests has focused on either increasing powers and responsibilities on the government or privatization. Rarely has attention focused on management of resources by communities or managing them as common property, been considered. Communities can achieve this aim with the help -rather than control- from the government. This is the idea being proposed in the new forest policy: making communities responsible for managing forest resources as common property, in Tanzania whenever possible.

Widespread people's participation in forest management, owning the forests as common property, is the current thinking towards forest management. Common property refer to a particular property rights arrangement in which a group of resources users share rights and duties toward a resource. This term therefore refers to social institutions, and not to any inherent natural or physical quality of the resource.

In this arrangement, a particular group of individuals share rights to a resource, e.g a forest. User rights are common to a specified group of individuals, not to all. Thus, common property is not access open to all but access limited to a specified group of users who hold their rights in common. When the group of individuals and property rights they share are well defined, common property should be classified as a form of shared private property. The property rights in a common-property regime can be very clearly specified, they are by definition exclusive to the co-owners (members of the user group), they are secure if they receive appropriate legal support from the government.

It can be noted that while the Tanzanian government and international agencies have overestimated their own capabilities for forest management, they have underestimated the value of local governance over those resources. Local communities who depend on forests for many commodities and services not just timber, are more sensitive to their protective functions and the wide variety of goods available from them in sustainable harvest. But when the governments overrule traditional use rights to forests, local communities and individual households are unable, and less willing to prevent destructive encroachment or overexploitation. In effect, these de jure state forests are turned into de facto open access. Environmental degradation can occur where there is an increasing lack of synchrony between the community and its natural environment, and the implied solution is to restore harmony to environment-society relations.

Restoring or awarding such rights to local groups would induce them to attend to the possibilities of sustainable long term production from the forests. Sustainability of forests depends on local rules, use patterns, and incentives created by international, regional, national and local institutions. Indeed, if ecological conditions are the same, major structural and biological differences between local patches of forests may be almost completely the consequence of human rules and use patterns.

Statements of intent on global environmental problems issued in the 1992 Earth Summit, including Agenda 21 and the Desertification Convention, strongly advocate as solutions a combination of government decentralization, devolution to local communities of responsibility of natural resources held as commons, and community participation.

According to the new forest policy, to abolish open access in public lands, covering more than 19 million hectares in Tanzania, clear ownership for all forests and trees on those lands need be defined. The allocation of forests and their management responsibility to villages, private individuals or to government will be promoted. Central, local and village governments may demarcate and establish new forest reserves.

Communities are best suited to manage and regulate resource use because of four main reasons, which are:

1. Empowering a community to manage and regulate the use of a resource will reduce the pressure on the resource because by the mere fact that it is owned by a certain community it will not be an open access. Potentially, there are many users of a resource e.g. a forest and if one group retain exclusive use of a resource there is high possibility that more sustainable practices are likely to be implemented.

2. A community living near a resource and depending on it for livelihood, and knowing that it will enjoy the benefits of the resource for a long time, is more likely to refrain from misusing it. People rooted in one locality which they call home, will use a resource more careful because if they deplete it they have nowhere else to go. They are different from a commercial corporation which is always on the move, and depletion of a resource in one place means moving to another place and continue with the same trend.

3. The limited resources of governments in terms of personnel and finance to police resources means that this task is better placed in the hands of local people which will do it for their own benefit with no burden of payment on the part of the government.

4. Traditional users of a biotic resource like a forest are more likely to have developed techniques which will enable them to use the resource sustainably. Other groups or companies with less knowledge of the resource are more likely to exploit the resource to extinction with the aim of short term gains.

Extracted from: "Forest policy changes in Tanzania: towards community participation in forest management", Vincent B.M.S. Kihiyo, Sokoine University of Agriculture, e-mail: isinika@sua.ac.tz , http://srdis.ciesin.org/cases/tanzania-009.html

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- Uganda: Bujagali dam project comes back under a new disguise

As we have already informed in previous bulletins (see WRM bulletins 36, 42), the $550 million Bujagali hydroelectric dam project on the Victoria Nile proposed by the US-based AES Corporation --counting on loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)-- has encountered strong opposition by local groups supported by international action. The detrimental impact of the project has been acknowledged by the Inspection Panel, the World Bank's independent investigative body (see WRM bulletin 59).

The construction of the 200-megawatt dam was due to start early this year. However, the World Bank has postponed a decision on whether to approve a $215 million guarantee to fill the funding shortfall left by the withdrawal of skeptical Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish export credit agencies, apparently worried that the Ugandan government would not be able to repay the project costs.

Now, a new thrust to build the dam has come up as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project which would be considered by Price Waterhouse Coopers for its validation. The Clean Development Mechanism is one of the so-called flexible mechanisms of the Climate Change Convention's Kyoto Protocol and allows industrial countries to "compensate for" their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by implementing emission reduction projects in other countries.

CDM Watch, an Indonesian-based NGO which seeks to monitor CDM projects and to provide a clearinghouse for information on CDM projects and CDM related issues and developments, has argued that the Bujagali project fails to meet key validation requirements relating to baselines, additionality, and stakeholder consultation under the following grounds:

* Bujagali is not an additional project

The project is additional only if the emission reductions achieved by the project will not occur if it is not registered as a CDM project. In this case, for example, in the absence of Bujagali being registered as a CDM project, will the dam still be built and the reductions occur? Bujagali was first proposed in 1991, with a Memorandum of Understanding between AES and the Ugandan Government being signed in 1994, three years before the Kyoto Protocol was agreed. Subsequently, these parties signed an Implementation Agreement and a Power Purchase Agreement in which they committed themselves to developing the project. Furthermore, a number of export credit agencies have approved funding for Bujagali, while a MIGA guarantee is being considered. There is overwhelming evidence that the project proponents have every intention of completing Bujagali whether it is registered as a CDM project or not.

* Stakeholder consultation is inadequate

The Bujagali project fails to meet one of the key validation requirements of the CDM, since it has been notable for its lack of transparency and persistent allegations of corruption during its development. For years now, civil society representatives in Uganda and internationally have unsuccessfully sought access to crucial project documents. This failing was echoed in criticisms made by the World Bank's own Inspection Panel, which noted that by refusing to release the Economic Review of the Bujagali project, the World Bank was violating its own Policy on Disclosure of Operational Information.

* Bujagali's baseline lacks credibility

Bujagali relies on a study by Acres International that examines the different options for expanding Uganda's power sector. The study's conclusions, based on the cost data it presents, are that in the absence of Bujagali, the replacement technologies are most likely geothermal and/or additional hydro units. In its baseline scenario, however, AES claims that if Bujagali is not completed it will be replaced by thermal units. There is nothing in the Acres study to support this, and no additional information provided. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this scenario was chosen for the simple reason that it yielded the most carbon credits.

The WRM has been denouncing that the CDM is just a trick of the Northern polluting countries to avoid commitments of cutting emissions at the source, making it easier and cheaper for them to meet the GHG emission reduction targets by implementing projects such as this in Southern countries. Once again, international agents --from consultancy firms to constructing companies and CO2 emitters-- take profit of the urgent needs of impoverished countries whose governments are easy prey to their commercial goals.

Article based on information from: "CDM Watch submission on the proposed validation of the Bujagali Dam project", Ben Pearson, CDM Watch, Sept 2002, http://www.cdmwatch.org/bujagali.html . "Uganda dam decision delayed", Probe International, http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/wb/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=4742