China: Following the trite pattern of monoculture tree plantations

The Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution had thwarted in China the establishment of high yield timber plantations put forward in the late 1950s by the Chinese Ministry of Forestry. However, since 1980s, along with the implementation of the reform and open-door policy (namely China's entry to the global market arena), the existing imbalance between wood demand and supply was altered. This seems to be not very different from the process undergone by other countries which end up engulfed by the global commerce and its packaging demand. Apparently, the response to the gap has been also very similar to the one implemented in most of the free market economies: large scale monoculture tree plantations of high yielding species (generally alien) which are even mainly the same. That's how Australia's national tree is expected to become a new choice for China to ease the soaring pulp needs of its cardboard and paper industry.

The Chinese Government decided in 1988 that, in the next 30 years, fast-growing and high-yielding timber bases of 20 million hectares would be established. China's forestry scientists have developed eucalyptus varieties and created a plantation area dubbed Asia's largest "eucalyptus gene bank" in southwest China's Zhuang Autonomous Region, a subtropical region where the trees are widely planted to provide more cost-effective pulp material. New varieties grown at the base are generally "ultra fast-growing eucalyptus" which can be felled six years after planting with a yield of more than 60 cubic meters per hectare per year.

However, the pulpwood rush has been at the cost of food. Last year, China's tree plantations increased 1.53 million hectares from 2001, while farmland acreage decreased by a total of 1.68 million hectares since China turned 1.42 million hectares of farmland into tree plantations, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources in its "2002 China Land and Resources Communiqué".

As usual, the World Bank is meddled in. In order to boost State investment, the World Bank Forestry Development Project (Credit 605-CHA) had been introduced in 1985 to establish and transform commercial timber plantations, construct forest roads and procure accessory equipment. In 2002, the total area of tree plantations reached 230.72 million hectares, of which 3.4 million hectares were fast-growing and high-yielding timber plantations, with 980.000 hectares being established under the 1991 National Afforestation Project Financed by a World Bank loan of US$ 300 million and domestic funding equivalent to US$ 200 million.

Also foreign companies have sought to enter the coveted huge Chinese market. Since the late 1980s, a number of large foreign companies have invested in plantation development in China, especially in south-eastern coastal provinces that are characterised by a favourable investment climate and natural conditions. Singapore-based Asia Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd.; Thailand-based Soon Hua Seng Group; Hong Kong-based Sino-Wood Partner Co. Ltd.; Japan Princes Co. Ltd., have projects under way. Asia Pulp and Paper plans to establish 1.3 million hectares of fast growing Eucalyptus and Acacia plantations throughout China. By May 2000 it had 65,300 hectares of tree plantations.

The Swedish-Finnish integrated forest products giant Stora Enso has been also a major agent in research and development on this field. Together with the Government of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, it has conducted a pre-feasibility study for industrial-scale plantations and integrated pulp and paper operations. Stora Enso also signed in 2002 an agreement for co-operation with the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Beijing.

China has been entering the global economy at its own rhythm, no doubt. Restrictions on foreign investment and private land ownership mean that foreign companies have gained access to forest land by forming agreements with local communities, which are in turn approved by government. However, the process has eventually made room for the same pervasive elements of the western unsustainable pattern of production, consumption and commercialisation. In this case, the large scale plantations of monoculture trees with all their notorious harmful impacts on the people and the environment.

Article based on information from: "China Saw Less Farmland But More Forest in 2002", April 5, 2003, Community Forestry E-News No. 2003.05, April 17, 2003, RECOFTC, e-mail: info@recoftc.org ; "The status quo and trend of forestry development in China", http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/W7707E/w7707e04.htm ; "Improved Eucalyptus may Boost China's Paper Industry", January 14, 2003, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200301/14/eng20030114_110094.shtml ; Stora Enso Web page, http://search.storaenso.com/2002/default.asp?openpage=environment/plantations.asp ; "Development of the Fast-growing and High-yielding Timber Bases", http://www.forestry.ac.cn/zglyjs/3y.htm ; "Promoting company-communities deals letting the private sector take the lead", http://www.iied.org/psf/pdfdocs/publicgood/PSF_China_Sec5.pdf

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India: Adivasis shot for claiming their ancestral homeland

A longstanding land conflict by the Adivasi indigenous people gave rise in January this year to a toll of some 15-20 (unconfirmed) Adivasis killed and some 32 injured by armed police. The attack was allegedly a response to armed action by Adivasis on wildlife officials with traditional weapons such as bows and arrows. The authorities say they have cleared a wildlife sanctuary which was illegally occupied.

Over 1,100 Adivasi families had occupied 5,000 acres in the Muthanga forest, in Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary on January 4, 2003, declaring the region as a self-governing area --for them, their ancestral homeland. They demanded implementation of the agreement between them and the government, reached in 2001 after mounting a campaign for their landlessness situation and denial of the rights to resources and land.

The Adivasis have intimate knowledge about the forests since they are organically linked to them. However, as in other places in the world, the present "development" pattern throws indigenous people away. They are brutally dispossessed in the name of conservation, or they are deceived in the name of development.

Commercial logging, mining, road building, plantations, hydroelectric projects, irrigation dams and similar ventures have decimated the forest cover, much against national policies and even laws. While profits have flowed to the coffers of the urban, upper caste elites, the Adivasis, uprooted and impoverished, have nurtured the patches of forests they have been pushed into. As a general rule, they use the forests just enough for their survival. Like bees collecting nectar from flowers. They respect the seasons, the scarcities and abundance in nature and the patterns of animal population dynamics. They don't hunt a carrying doe, they don't trap a breeding fowl, they don't uproot a medicinal herb, and when they farm they use the principles of what we call ecology (albeit in areas that have remained out of reach of the green revolution).

Many Adivasi herbalists can identify more plant species than many university-trained plant taxonomists can do off-handedly. An Adivasi is organically linked to the forests in ways that we cannot easily comprehend. In contrast, the forest staff the government recruits struggle on a daily basis to find a posting outside the forests.

For some Indian people, handing back the forests to the Adivasis for their sustainable management is the most logical and pragmatic solution to protect what is left of the forests. When will the government accept this fact and begin to work with --and not against-- the Adivasis?

Article based on information from: "Return their patch of green", S. Faizi, http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=21943 , sent by Peter Jackson, e-mail: peterjac@indiatimes.com ; "Tribals cleared from elephant reserve", Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, BBC, Adivasi Tee Projekt, http://www.rkfrie.de/ATP/02-11/MAIL-04B.HTM

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Laos: Villagers Mount Unprecedented Protest Against Dam in Laos

Late last year, some 40 ethnic Hmong men from Ban Phou Khao Khouay marched to the Nam Mang 3 dam site armed with sticks and guns, and demanded to speak with project officials. The villagers were infuriated that they might be evicted from their lands for the project and yet had received no information about where they would be relocated, when they would be moved, or what compensation they would receive. They threatened the foreign contractors, telling them "to pack up and go home" if they failed to answer their questions about resettlement. The protest triggered a halt in dam construction that lasted five days.

The little-known incident, which occurred last November, marks the first time that a villager-led protest against a dam has been recorded in Lao PDR and the first time that a protest has stopped construction of a dam project in the country. The villagers who protested took great personal risks by voicing their concerns in a country where political freedoms are restricted and opposition is repressed. It is not known if the protest will result in a state backlash against the affected communities.

International Rivers Network (IRN) had already been receiving anonymous reports on the social, economic and environmental problems with Nam Mang 3 when the protest occurred. The incident prompted IRN to send a researcher to the site in January 2003 to investigate affected villagers' concerns. The results of that field visit can be found in a new report entitled "New Lao Dam Embroiled in Controversy. Report from a Fact-Finding Mission to the Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project." The report is available online at http://www.irn.org/programs/mekong/052003.nm3report.pdf

The US$63 million Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project, located 80 kilometers northeast of the Laotian capital of Vientiane, is being financed by the Government of Laos and the China Export-Import Bank. It will be owned and operated by the state-owned utility, Electricité du Laos (EdL).

The project, which is expected to be completed by December 2004, involves the construction of a 22-meter-high dam and 10-km2 reservoir on the Nam Nyang River. Water from the reservoir will pass through a 40-MW powerhouse before being discharged into the nearby Nam Ngam River. The power is expected to be used both domestically and exported to Thailand. Nam Mang 3 is also supposed to irrigate 2,900 hectares in the Nam Ngum plain.

Nam Mang 3 has been planned, approved and financed in a nontransparent manner. Construction began in late 2001 despite the fact that the project design had not been finalized and studies required under Lao laws had not yet been conducted. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank have expressed concerns about project implementation. Their concerns over the project approval process and procurement procedures, in particular, reportedly halted construction temporarily in 2002.

According to the World Bank, costs would have to be reduced by at least 20% to make the project viable. The World Bank and IMF are worried that Nam Mang 3 is undermining the Lao government's efforts to improve the transparency, accountability and fiscal health of its financial sector. They are concerned that the decision to build the project was made behind closed doors and that it will increase the debt load of the already heavily debt-burdened Lao government.

It is more likely that the World Bank's real concern is that poor implementation of Nam Mang 3 will cast serious doubts on the Lao government's capacity to implement the controversial $1.1 billion Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project, which the Bank is planning to finance.

At least 15,000 people are likely to suffer impacts to their livelihoods as a direct result of Nam Mang 3. Of these, about 2,700 people living in three villages will be impacted by inundation for the Nam Mang 3 reservoir. Many will lose homes, rice paddies, fruit trees, plantations, fish ponds, grazing lands and grave sites. They have not been informed of possible plans to relocate them or provide compensation for their lost assets. People living in the two Hmong villages of Ban Phou Khao Khouay and Ban Vang Hua are adamant that they do not want to be resettled to the lowlands. They want a compensation package that would give them the option of buying land on the open market and would adequately cover their loss of land and property.

Thousands of people living along the Nam Nyang and Nam Ngam rivers will face impacts to their livelihoods due to Nam Mang 3. Diversion of water from the Nam Nyang will dramatically lower water levels downstream of the dam. This will reduce fish populations, impact riverbank gardens and impair drinking and other domestic water supplies. Increased water flow on the Nam Ngam River will impact at least 1,100 households in seven villages who depend on the river for fisheries, irrigation and riverbank gardens.

Efforts to mitigate the impacts of Nam Mang 3 are likely to fail. The project's own environmental management and social action plan points out the difficulties in successfully mitigating the impacts of Nam Mang 3 due to the lack of adequate financial resources and problems with institutional capacity in implementing the program.

The experience with Nam Mang 3 thus far echoes that of other hydro projects in Laos. The Asian Development Bank-funded Nam Leuk and Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Projects were troubled by poor implementation, inadequate project studies and serious impacts to people's livelihoods, which remain largely unmitigated.

The concerns with Nam Mang 3, coupled with the experiences with Nam Leuk and Theun-Hinboun, point to the great difficulties in implementing large-scale infrastructure projects in Laos. The same problems have been repeated, regardless of which financial institutions, bilateral agencies or contractors are involved. This time, however, villagers have raised the stakes by speaking out against the Nam Mang 3 Dam and risking their own personal security.

The experiences with hydropower in Laos bring up fundamental questions regarding the Lao government's institutional capacity and political will to ensure that infrastructure projects are adequately monitored, that compensation is fairly and fully distributed and that environmental issues are properly addressed. As long as the Government of Laos does not have the institutional capacity and political will to implement such projects according to international standards, international financial institutions should not support the construction of any other dams in Laos.

By: Susanne Wong, International Rivers Network, e-mail: swong@irn.org

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-Thailand: Eucalyptus, encroachment, deforestation and pollution linked to pulp and paper company

Advance Agro, one of Thailand's largest pulp and paper companies, markets its "Double A" brand paper as environmentally friendly. The company's advertising explains that the raw material comes from plantations and thus relieves pressure on remaining forest areas.

The reality is that Advance Agro's plantations have displaced communities and are the final stage of deforestation in east Thailand. Kasem Petchanee, the Chairperson of the NGO Coordinating Committee, Lower Northern and Upper-Central Thailand, explained how deforestation started when companies like the state-owned Forest Industry Organisation started logging operations. "Fifty years ago this area was covered in fertile forest," he said.

During its war in Indochina, the number of US troops stationed in Thailand reached a peak of almost 50,000 in 1969. To link their bases in north-east Thailand with the port of Chon Buri the US built a network of major roads. Deforestation followed the road-building. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Thai government built more roads to access the forests of Cambodia.

The World Bank has played a key role in promoting cash crops in Thailand. Among the organisations set up at the Bank's recommendation is Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), which oversees all public investment planning. Since its establishment in 1959, NESDB has been a major promoter of cash crops grown for export.

Encouraged by NESDB's policies, companies started planting cash crops such as cassava and sugar cane in east Thailand. Conflicts developed over land as companies encroached on people's land and forests. Villagers were forced to grow cash crops and forced to sell their crops to a particular company.

Networks of influence, involving members of parliament, companies, army officers, and a local mafia were established and expanded. Mafia-style murders, land speculation and landlessness became common in east Thailand.

In 1982, the Soon Hua Seng Group (SHS), one of Thailand's leading rice and cassava exporters, started planting eucalyptus in east Thailand as an alternative to cassava. By 1987 SHS was planting eucalyptus on a commercial scale and set up the company Advance Agro to produce pulp and paper.

Today the SGS Group has 32,000 hectares of its own plantations as well as around 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus planted by farmers under contract. In 1996, Advance Agro opened its first pulp and paper mill in Prachinburi province and now has a total capacity of 500,000 tonnes of paper a year. Seventy per cent of Advance Agro's paper is exported, important markets being China, USA, Hong Kong and Japan.

Laemkowchan village is about 100 years old and is close to one of Advance Agro's mills. In the past, villagers grew rice, cassava and pumpkin. When SHS started to look for land to plant eucalyptus many villagers sold the land they had used for cassava planting to the company.

But villagers found that the eucalyptus plantations started to affect their rice fields as well. Suwan Kaewchan, a member of the Administration Council in Laemkowchan village, explained to researcher Noel Rajesh: "When the company came and started planting eucalyptus near the rice fields, the water began to dry up and people found they couldn't grow rice. One by one they began to sell their land and leave. They went to work as hired labour in other areas or with the company."

Villagers who kept their land but planted eucalyptus under contract faced another problem, as Kasem Petchanee pointed out: "After the first harvest, the soil is so degraded that villagers have to spend money to improve the soil. Removing the trees is difficult. Villagers have to hire expensive machinery to remove the stumps and roots of the trees. Agricultural communities are falling into debt to banks and money lenders. When villagers cannot pay, the banks take their land."

Waste water from Advance Agro's mill is poured onto the eucalyptus plantations. The filthy water lies in channels between the rows of the eucalyptus trees. Villagers point out that although the water is treated at the pulp mill this does not mean that the water is clean. Recently water released from the mill killed villagers' rice crops.

Villagers report that ash from factory chimneys is deposited on their houses and gardens. People have experienced skin problems such as itchy skin. The air sometimes smells and villagers are worried that the factory might be emitting sulphur as well.

The company has set up an environmental unit, and company officials tell villagers that they know about the problems. However, villagers have never received any compensation for any of the problems that the company has caused them.

Several international companies have benefited from contracts on Advance Agro's mills. Jaakko Poyry, the world's largest forestry and engineering consulting company, won contracts from Advance Agro for engineering design, project management and construction management of the Prachinburi mill. Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries provided machinery for Advance Agro's paper mill.

Finance for Advance Agro's mills was organised by Barclays de Zoete Wedd. The main backers were Bangkok Bank, Thai Farmers' Bank, Krung Thai Bank and the UK's Commonwealth Development Corporation. The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private lending arm, lent US$10 million and further financing came from export credits.

When Stora Enso bought a 19.9 per cent share in Advance Agro in 1998, it gained exclusive international marketing rights for Advance Agro's products and a secure market for 12,000 tonnes a year of long-fibre pulp from its European mills. Two members of Stora Enso are on the board of Advance Agro.

Advance Agro is a good illustration of how Northern and Thai companies benefit from the pulp and paper industry, while rural communities are left with the costs.

By: Chris Lang, email: http://chrislang.org

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