- Argentina: The "forests of silence" or the pine plantations at the Yungas

The phyto-geographical region of the Yungas, or cloud forest, is a humid forest occurring in mountainous sectors linked to the cordillera of the Andes. It extends in a discontinuous way from Venezuela, through Ecuador, crossing Peru and Bolivia and reaching the north east of Argentina where its extreme remnants are to be observed in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Tucuman and Catamarca. In general, conservation of this zone comes under the National Park system: Baritú and el Rey in the province of Salta, Calilegua in the province of Jujuy and Campo Los Alisos in the Province of Tucuman. The Yungas is one of the environments containing the highest biodiversity in Argentina, and also one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world, mainly because of rapid fragmentation or destruction.

At an altitude ranging from 300 m to over 4000 metres, the Yungas may be divided into four zones of altitudinal strata: the Pedemontana Forest (foothills forest), which is transitional and of a subtropical nature, hosting 30% of all the biodiversity of this valuable ecosystem; Montane Jungle, Montane Forest, or Alder Forest (these two zones have been considerably devastated by the selective logging of their native timber species) and High Grasslands or Montane Range lands, relatively well conserved due to the difficulty in accessing them.

It is estimated that 67% of the original area of Argentine foothills forest has disappeared and the rest has been modified. Agricultural activities accompanying urban concentrations in this zone until the beginning of the twentieth century, which started replacing the forest, were characterised by the diversity of their production --mate tea, tea, cherymoya fruit, mango and coffee-- to supply local needs. However, as from the first decade of the twentieth century, with the inauguration of the railway line and the establishment of the tobacco and sugar industry --such as the Ledesma Industry in Jujuy-- a change took place in the model and the country entered a scale economy with marketing and industrial characteristics. Vast sectors of the foothills forest were replaced by large-scale monoculture plantations (sugar cane, banana, citrus) aimed at export. This process implied the concentration of land in the hands of powerful economic groups, in some cases multinational, in others national and provincial capital, set up as corporations or under the domain of families representing north-east Argentine agro-industrial capital (industries, sawmills, fruit and vegetable farmers). This appropriation was made to the detriment of the local population, causing social exclusion, rural migration and unemployment and disregarded the rights of the native communities, such as the Kollas, who had inhabited the area for centuries and carried out a leading role in defence of the Yungas (see WRM Bulletin No. 18).

Over the past few years, the alteration of the Yungas has become more serious because of a new factor of destruction: the large scale monoculture tree plantations, centred on exotic fast-growing species (pine, eucalyptus, Grevillea robusta, Melia azedarach). This type of plantation has been promoted and financed by multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, mainly to supply the powerful pulp and paper industry and to satisfy unrestrained consumption demanded by packaging of goods within the present globalisation of markets model. Lately, monoculture tree plantation has been presented as the "solution" to climate change as they are supposed to act as carbon sinks. For this reason, native forests are being clearcut! (see WRM bulletins 38, 39 and 52).

Jorge Baldo, a Biologist, Master in Vertebrates, Francisco Cornell, a Tourism Technician and Freddy Burgos, a Gamekeeper are linked by their passion for birds and the conviction that if something is not done to protect them, soon none will be left. The three of them live in the Los Perales neighbourhood in the Argentine city of San Salvador de Jujuy, an enclave of the beautiful Montane forest landscape, at between 1200 and 1500 metres. So far they have identified 240 species of birds, some of which are endemic to the Yungas region, such as Grallaria albigula, other are visitors from the Northern Hemisphere, such as Hirundo rustica, Riparia riparia, Elanoides fortificatus, Ictinia mississipensis, Vireo olivaceus. They are also witnesses of the threats and have reported the results of a census, showing 189 species of birds in a forest, while there were only 23 in a pine plantation covering the same area.

There is no room for biodiversity in these plantations. They are "green deserts" that have lost ecosystem multi-functionality, and the neighbours have perceived this situation, baptising them "the forests of silence." How long will silence continue to be imposed on peoples and forests?

Article based on information from: material sent by Freddy Burgos, e-mail nyctibius@yahoo.com.ar ; "Las Yungas, informe completo", Ing. Martín M. Herrán, Biol. Pablo G. Perovic, Dra. Patricia Marconi, Geol. Néstor Aguilera, http://www.jaguares.com.ar/yungas/informe.html ; "La biodiversidad, los bosques y la gente. Casos de Argentina , Brasil y Colombia", Ecoportal.net, http://www.ecoportal.com.ar/noti/notas452.htm

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- Brazil: Hope is born for peoples and forests

In 2002, hope overcame fear. In 2003, hope may result in a political agreement between the middle class voters who, devastated by unemployment and impoverished by the economic policy, lost their fear of change, and the worker voters who, hounded by poverty and violence, no longer fear being happy.

Intrinsically linked to the expectations of a change in the deteriorated social situation, is the possibility of environmental policy taking a turn for the better. According to the declarations of the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva: "It is clear that today the main pressure on natural resources is caused by the misery affecting part of the poorest population. The Workers' Party (Partido de los Trabajadores - PT) does not consider environmental protection to be set apart from other structural policies fighting against poverty, such as the agrarian reform, the agricultural policy, the restoration of rivers and springs, the national environmental sanitation policy. There is no doubt that many situations giving rise to human and ecological risks in our country would be avoided if the people who are obliged to emigrate to urban belts or environmentally protected zones, could remain in their place of origin, protected by suitable public policies.

For this reason, our proposals are aimed at reconciling environmental protection with generation of employment, based on the many experiences that have been developed by farmers' associations and cooperatives, municipal and state governments, social movements and NGOs. It is necessary to carry out a socio-environmental survey by zones in Brazil, to identify the most appropriate solution for each ecosystem and social sector. As is public knowledge, in general, the poorest population lives in areas at risk and ends up by causing more impacts on the environment in order to survive. In this case, we will have programmes for environmental restoration providing jobs for these people.

Regarding the Amazon, which is a strategic natural, cultural, economic and social heritage of Brazil and of the planet, it is important to make clear that we will change settlement and agricultural policies that so far have devastated without generating employment or income for the local population. The Amazon is seen as a frontier where rapid and easy profit can be made, without stopping to consider the consequences for the environment or the communities. When mention is made of 'Amazon occupation,' frequently the prevailing and erroneous idea is that this is a demographic void, a sort of no-man's land. In fact, no less than 20 million Brazilians live there, and there are many experiences reconciling environmental protection, social objectives, institutional and technological innovations and significant economic benefits."

As a first step, giving out promising signs, the new government appointed Senator Marina Silva as Minister of the Environment. According to the Minister, her arrival at the ministry is a result of a historical process, starting with the experience of the environmentalist and former leader of the rubber-tappers, Chico Mendes, murdered in 1988, and the PT governments in the State of Acre. The minister lived with the environmentalist from the age of 17 to the age of 28 and participated in all the actions undertaken against the devastation of the Amazon that Chico Mendes organised, and also those in defence of the Acre rubber-tappers. "What is happening today is only a demonstration that Chico Mendes' dream was not in vain and that the seeds he planted will certainly bear much fruit," she declared.

Marina Silva promised to follow a policy for rationalisation in the sector. She has stated that the new government cannot be bound to the "rationale of what is possible," but that it must adopt a different position to face challenges. According to her:"we must put the stage of 'it can't be done' behind us, and go on to a stage of how we are going to do it." She considers her appointment to be a "sign that the issue of the environment is going to play a strategic role in the Lula government, due to the fact that Brazil is an extremely diverse country and for this reason needs an ethical relationship between those who have the technology and the money and those who have the traditional knowledge and the natural resources."

According to Marina, the priorities of her Ministry are the Amazon, preservation of water resources, the struggle against deforestation and the problem of urban settlements. "First of all we want to get the environmental policy to act jointly with the other Government actions, and secondly, we must have an environmental policy giving priority to sustainable development," stated the minister.

She underscored the important of civil participation in decisions on environmental policy and criticised the lack of monitoring to enforce laws in the sector. According to Marina, institutions need to be "empowered to enforce the law."

Article based on information from: "Em defesa do meio ambiente", Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Linha Aberta. Brasil, 11 June, http://www.lainsignia.org/2002/junio/ecol_007.htm ; "2003 promete ser um ano "quente", Correio da cidadania, http://www.correiocidadania.com.br/ed327/editorial.htm ; "Para Marina, Lula mandou recado para Bush com anúncio de ministério", Ricardo Mignone, Folha Online, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u43391.shtml

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- Chile: Environmental organisation questions FSC standards for plantations

According to information available in FSC's web page, seven companies in Chile have certified "forests" covering a total area of 262,168 hectares. However, only one of these companies (Las Cruces S.A.) is actually managing a forest, covering an area of only 3,588 hectares. The rest (258,580 hectares) are monoculture tree plantations, which unfortunately continue to be considered as "forests" by FSC.

In its own web page (in the section "why we do it,") FSC establishes its objective of "providing a truly independent, international and credible labelling scheme on timber and timber products. This will provide the consumer with a guarantee that the product has come from a forest which has been evaluated and certified as being managed according to agreed social, economic and environmental standards." This affirmation is clearly false in the case of Chile, for the simple reason that FSC cannot give any guarantee to the consumer that the product being acquired comes from a soundly managed "forest" given that the forest does not exist, unless monoculture plantations of alien trees can be considered as forests.

It is important to stress that FSC promotes the establishment of national standards for certification, in conformity with its general principles and criteria. Chile is one of the countries where a "national initiative" exists (involving forestry companies and NGOs), aiming at this objective. However, the adoption of national standards is not an easy task, as will be seen from the following paragraphs, written by a Chilean activist, defender of forests (Malú Sierra) who has been deeply involved in the process. Malú describes a visit paid recently to one of the certified plantations (the El Guanaco holding: 4,138 hectares) that belongs to the Terranova Group's Forestal Millalemu company, in the Commune of Quirihue in the south of Chile, related to her perception of the problems concerning certification of plantations.

"After many months, indeed years, of discussions around the working table, with papers and slides projected, always in the cities of the South or in Santiago, Forestal Millalemu (with over 120,000 hectares of certified plantations in Chile) invited us to pay a field visit to one of its plantations, certified by FSC. The courteous company manager in Chile, Jorge López, sacrificed his beautiful maps so that the Plantation Committee knew where we were exactly. The rain did not stop, each time we climbed out of the 4X4 vehicles, full in the month of November --the 7th to be exact-- the El Niño phenomenon gave the present of rain to this zone of inland drylands, wetting us who were not entirely prepared. Neither were we prepared to see the hills shorn of trees in the Quirihue Cordillera.

The principle owner of Forestal Millalemu is the Swiss businessman, Stephan Shmidheiny, one of the first to join the sustainable development concept, and supposedly his plantations in Chile are the ultimate expression of the sustainable concept, from an economic, social and environmental standpoint. Supposedly…

The FSC green label ensures that Millalemu does not substitute native forest with plantations, but does not demand that where the forest is re-growing, it should be left to grow, making a more careful harvest of its plantations. We saw oak shoots under pine trees, planted 20 years ago and ready to be harvested. With the harvest, the oak trees testifying that in this location, long before 1994, forests had been substituted by plantations will also disappear. The FSC label also demands that measures be taken to mitigate the damage to the soil: they no longer burn the litter after the harvest --this is progress-- but grind it and leave it on the ground so that eight or ten years later it becomes soil.

FSC also imposes social conditions and we saw old buses go by, transporting the workers back from their tasks. In the old days, they used to travel in open lorries. In this zone, there are no indigenous communities, so the company has no problems over claims to the land by its original owners. They do have problems with the Mapuche in another property, and therefore it has not been possible to certify the plantations there.

So far, FSC has not recommended the method of harvesting. The method used in the Chilean plantations is clear-cutting, the same as in the United States, were the alien tree most used in Chilean plantations also come from. This is the Monterry pine (Pinus radiata). Among its principles, FSC establishes general criteria that must be developed in each country to adapt them to each situation. These have not yet been defined in Chile, due to the position of already certified forestry companies, some of which consider that there should be no limits, not even on the dimensions of clear-cutting. One of the justifications is that the large companies such as Mininco (which is not certified), harvest up to 2,000 continuous hectares.

It is important to note that Chile is a mountainous country and therefore clear-cutting, which always has a negative impact on soils, is twice as serious here, because most of the plantations are installed on slopes of over 35 degrees. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that clear-cutting of native forests is prohibited. Therefore, it is clear that from the environmental standpoint, that the clear-cutting method of harvesting is not acceptable in any plantation, and much less in a certified one.

In Chile discussions can go on for a long while yet, but the Defenders of the Chilean Forests (Defensores del Bosque Chileno) have resigned from the Technical Committee for Plantations but not from the board of directors of the Chilean Initiative for Independent Forest Certification (Iniciative Chilena de Certificación Forestal Independiente - ICEFI), nor from FSC. It is now irrelevant whether it is fifty or five hundred hectares that are clear-cut. We are absolutely against clear-cutting, and we have not seen any significant progress being made at the meetings. And what is more serious, and left to future precisions, is how the new forestry plantations that want environmental certification should be installed in order to ensure that the soil is covered, especially in sloping zones where in spite of all the mitigations, erosion continues to take place.

The consumer trusting in the FSC seal would not like to see these pictures. Unfortunately I saw them and still hold them in my memory."

Article based on the report by Malú Sierra, Defensores del Bosque Chileno: "Visita al Predio El Guanaco, Forestal Millalemu, Comuna de Quirihue". E-mail: gondwana@adsl.tie.cl

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- Ecuador: Oil palm and forestry companies in the Choco bio-region

In Ecuador, the Esmeraldas forests are part of the relict tropical forests on the Pacific coast of America. These forests are part of the Choco bio-geographical region, one of the planet's ten "hot spots", stretching from the South of Panama to the North of Esmeraldas. There are some 10,000 species of plants in this zone, of which some 2,500 are endemic. This is the home of the Awa, Chachi and Tsachila peoples and of Afro-Ecuadorian communities, which keep up traditional life styles.

However, these forests are being destroyed at an astonishing speed, due to deforestation caused by oil palm monocultures and the the timber industry, that have so far enjoyed the complicity of the National Government.

On 8 August 2002 the Ecuadorian President, Gustavo Noboa issued executive decree 2691, prepared jointly between the ministries of the Environment, Agriculture and Foreign Affairs. This decree designates a 50,000-hectare polygon in the San Lorenzo Canton, Province of Esmeraldas, for agricultural use. Of this area, 5,000 ha are Forestry Heritage of the Ecuadorian State, over 5,000 hectares are Afro-American ancestral lands, and over 1,000 hectares are Awa indigenous lands. Constitutionally and legally, the community lands are indivisible and un-transferable. The undeclared aim of this decree is to legitimise the systematic expropriation of ancestral and State Forestry Heritage lands, being undertaken over the past years by the palm-growing companies in the north of Esmeraldas. The palm-growers have taken the land away from the communities through illegal purchases and forced displacement of ancestral families. This decree is specifically dedicated to the palm-growers, among which are family members of the out-going President, Gustavo Noboa Bejarano.

Within this policy of dispossession, advantage is being taken of the situation generated by the Colombia Plan on the country's northern frontier. To mitigate the effects of the conflict, the Northern Development Unit (Unidad de Desarrollo del Norte - UDENOR) has been set up with funds to support the communities located near the Colombian border. However, these funds, under the protection of the above decree, are been usurped by the palm-growers and not reaching the affected communities.

The constitutionality of the decree has been questioned by CONAIE, Acción Ecológica and other local and environmental organisations, through a claim for unconstitutionality lodged with the Constitutional Tribunal.

Furthermore, the Ministry of the Environment has not complied with its responsibility in controlling the deforestation process in the State Forestry Heritage lands and the illegal awarding of these lands by the National Agrarian Development Institute (Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agrario - INDA) to the timber companies ENDESA and BOTROSA, members of the Pena Durini group, one of the most powerful groups in the country. In investigations carried out in the Pambilar plots, within Block 10 of the State Forestry Heritage (one of the many grounds being questioned) by the Ministry of the Environment in the year 2000, 2,000 hectares of the land in question were identified and found to have been illegally granted by INDA to the BOTROSA company. Based on this case, the Commission for Civil Control of Corruption showed that at least another 18,000 hectares of forests had been illegally awarded. The report by the Commission led to intervention by the General Comptroller of the State which, in July 2002, initiated a special examination of the Ministry of the Environment and INDA to identify the state of land granted in the grounds located within the Forestry Heritage and to establish the civil administrative responsibility and indication of criminal responsibility, committed both by officials and directly involved actors.

The minister of the Environment, Lourdes Luque, also a member of President Noboa's family, has turned a blind eye on this process and has acted at snail's pace, thus benefiting the palm growing and timber companies.

In October 2002, the Constitutional Tribunal issued a verdict in favour of constitutional protection submitted by the peasants deprived of their lands in the zone, and demanded sanctions to be taken against the officials involved in this illegal awarding, together with the restitution of the lands and compensation to be paid to those affected by the ENDESA and BOTROSA timber companies.

The Ecuadorian tropical forest, hosting an enormous cultural and biological diversity is about to disappear. There is no room in this process for the concept of certified forest exploitation, such as ENDESA and BOTROSA aspire to (they have submitted a request for certification of their exploitation to SMARTWOOD and to FSC). Neither is there room to believe that plantations or reforestation projects can substitute the original primary forest.

In this scenario, the in-coming government of Colonel Lucio Gutierrez faces a major challenge in the conservation of the scant remains of the primary forest. Perhaps the only thing that can save the forest is a declaration of an indeterminate moratorium on commercial forestry exploitation.

By: Ivonne Ramos, Acción Ecológica, e-mail: creativo@uio.satnet.net