SOUTH AMERICA

• Brazil: The Alert Against the Green Desert Network demands a change in the forestry model
• Chile: Forests for people or monoculture plantations for companies
• Paraguay: Uncontacted Indians in danger
• Venezuela: Tourism development causes serious impacts on mangroves

LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS

- Brazil: The Alert Against the Green Desert Network demands a change in the forestry model

One hundred organizations from Espirito Santo, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais gathered on 28 and 29 June in Porto Seguro, Bahia, at the Second National Meeting of the Alert Against the Green Desert Network. These organizations prepared a letter which shall be sent to President Lula, parliamentarians and to the World Bank, demanding that greater attention be paid to the problem we describe here below.

"We the undersigned, representatives of Quilombola,* Tupinikim, Pataxo, Guarani, fisher-people and peasant communities, and tens of organizations present at the II National Meeting of the Alert Against the Green Desert Network, a movement that struggles against the expansion of monoculture eucalyptus plantations for the production of cellulose and charcoal in Espirito Santo (ES), Bahia (BA), Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and Minas Gerais (MG), denounce the serious violation of economic, cultural and socio-environmental rights committed by this exporter agro-industrial complex.

Over the past four decades, this complex has destroyed the local communities' way of life. The companies in this sector continue to invade their lands and have caused rural exodus with the consequent dispersion of many communities. In such regions, the rivers have been degraded by pollution caused by wide-spread use of pesticides and a process of desiccation, linked to large-scale plantations, compromising fishing and the quality and quantity of drinking water. The Aracruz Cellulose Company diverted the Doce River to ensure the abusive consumption of 248 thousand cubic metres of water per day, free of cost, by its three pulp mills.

With their development discourse, the companies have encouraged an enormous migration of workers seeking the promise of employment. Today, the results are thousands of former workers, many of them mutilated by unhealthy work, dismissed as a result of a violent and noxious process of automatisation and out-sourcing. These peoples' loss of dignity is manifest through the existence of a high rate of child prostitution in the neighbourhoods where the abandoned former workers now live. In the midst of eucalyptus tree monoculture plantations, people opposing and resisting them are loosing their cultural identity and wealth and are literally suffering a process of deep isolation. Those who oppose this inhuman project are exposed to attempts at co-option and even threatened with death.

Unfortunately, the State has been an accomplice to these companies' practices. For four decades now, it has been granting loans through the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) and illegal permits for plantations --not respecting permanent preservation reserves-- and factories, one of them built on a former indigenous village. Furthermore, the exporting companies have debts with the Social Security (INSS in Portuguese) and benefit from the Kandir Law, giving rise to dramatic situations such as that of Espirito Santo, where the government of this State owes the Aracruz Cellulose Company over 100 million reales on credit from the ICMS (Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services). At the same time, the State has not given the local population any options, on the contrary, it is increasingly showing its complicity with company interests to the detriment of its social responsibility and in view of this vacuum, the companies have taken on some State functions, generating a perverse relationship of dependency and de-structuring the local communities' social organization.

The signatory organizations consider that the consequences of all these problems are related to the present development model funded by the central government and by international organizations whose only objective is to profit from funding in detriment to the way of life of these populations.

Attempts to revert damage caused by perverse company strategies, for example the introduction of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Green Seal for sustainable management of monoculture tree plantations, have not been able to revert such negative impacts and, what is worse, have been insufficient to reorient the rationale of this agro-industrial model. We recall a recent publication, prepared by a group of Alert Against the Green Desert research workers, showing the flagrant lack of sustainability of the Plantar and V&M Florestal Company eucalyptus plantations in Minas Gerais, both of which have been certified by the FSC.

Furthermore, the Network states its opposition to the application of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), to the large-scale plantations of these same mining companies, because it considers that such a mechanism continues to favour the countries of the North, insofar as they would not have to reduce their release of pollutants contributing to global warming and because, by increasing the area of plantations, CDM is worsening the impoverishment of the populations of the South.

We affirm that there are contradictions between investment in this agro-industrial complex and the Central Government's Zero Hunger Plan. On the one hand, considerable investment, such as that of the factory Veracel Celulose plans to build in Bahia, continues to favour monoculture tree plantations that are mainly aimed at production for export to rich countries, creating very few jobs, legitimising large-scale land-holding, preventing agrarian reform and further increasing rural exodus and the despair of thousands of families that will be left with no land and no subsistence. On the other hand, the Government has launched a Zero Hunger Plan, attempting to encourage food production, while the best arable lands continue to be occupied by tree plantations. Macro-economic policy goals cannot be achieved by sacrificing the living conditions, health and work and the way of life of workers and communities that need water, land, fish and hunting in order to avoid becoming part of the growing contingent of the unemployed in the cities.

It is not enough to come up with provisional ways out of the present economic model. The route taken by a model revolving around capital accumulation and unrestrained consumption must be radically changed. Another development rationale must be built, in which the central aspect is the human being --men and women-- as a whole, and the way in which the planet's natural resources are being used is changed. Aware of the lack of sustainability of the present model, the movements and communities members of the Alert Against the Green Desert Network have discussed and implemented new production experiences that value biodiversity and local knowledge and therefore, build up a different relationship with the environment.

In view of the dramatic and unsustainable socio-environmental picture we have drawn and which directly affects many thousands of people, we, the communities and organizations signing here below consider the proposal made by the sector to increase plantations from 5 million hectares to 11 million hectares over the next 10 years to be unacceptable. Furthermore, we consider that it is an imperious and urgent necessity that the preparation of the new Pluri-Annual Plan (PAP) and the government's industrial policy should contemplate the suspension of the expansion of fast-growing monoculture tree plantations in Brazil. Porto Seguro, 29 June 2003 (signatures follow)"

* From the word "Quilombo": a refuge for slaves running away from their masters. (Translator's note)

By: Rede Alerta Contra o Deserto Verde, e-mail: winnie.fase@terra.com.br

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- Chile: Forests for people or monoculture plantations for companies

Lying to the population is one of the tools most commonly used by governments and forestry companies all over the world to impose the model of large-scale monoculture tree plantations. Chile has wide experience in this type of deception. However, increasingly people are becoming organized to struggle against the unjust government policy which favours the companies and to defend the true Chilean forests.

For the third time now and supported by the Timber Corporation, the deceitful campaign "Forests for Chile" has been launched. This campaign appears on television and in the mass media, showing the importance and value of forests, but with pictures showing alien radiata pine plantations. The government also continues to give its support to this deceit. In a local newspaper, with reference to this advertising campaign, one may read "The Ministry of Agriculture considers that this initiative represents an interesting opportunity to highlight one of Chile's most relevant environmental and productive resources, as are forests and their related activities. Additionally, with this initiative, Chilean society is being invited to get to know and to value our forests, to make them part of our daily lives and our action as a society."

The article goes on to state that "due to their wide distribution throughout a considerable part of our geography, to the rich diversity of forest types and species, to the fact that they host a considerable part of our biodiversity and that they are a source of water and soil conservation as well as spaces for recreation and tourism, forests are a substantive part of our social and economic reality."

Reading these first two paragraphs, anyone could believe that this is a worthy initiative, if it were not for the fact that what is really being promoted is monoculture pine tree plantations, as from then on, the article continues to refer to forests and plantations without differentiating which are the ones that provide the benefits referred to earlier on.

This confusion does not arise at the time of deciding who should be supported. As analysed in detail in our Bulletin No. 70, plantations of alien tree species continue to be subsidised, while the government is still considering what type of support should be given to forests.

Motivated by the injustice of this situation, on 26 June 2003, some 450 representatives of indigenous communities and small forest landowners from the Ninth and Tenth Regions met in the city of Temuco at the First National Meeting of Small Forest Landowners of Chile, with the aim of sharing needs and proposals to promote forest conservation and sustainable management and to inform the country of the situation. A good starting point for what they have called Social Movement for the Chilean Forests.

As a result of this meeting, a declaration was prepared which we have published in our web page at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Chile/gente.html (available only in Spanish). We have extracted some of the basic ideas of the communities' feelings, regarding forests and the support they are demanding from the authorities:

The native forest in the south of Chile is an economic, cultural and biological heritage of tremendous value, both for the country and for the world. However, small forest landowners, some 90 thousand families in the Ninth region alone, are presently suffering from a very deteriorated economic situation and have no access to public programmes or resources to conserve their forests, which cover over 1.5 million hectares.

This contradiction is mainly due to the lack of policies and strategies supporting and promoting indigenous and peasant economies, or forest conservation and sustainable management, and to the absence of a Native Forest Law in the country, a law that has been waiting for 12 years now to be adopted. This is also a consequence of economic policies giving priority to the exploitation of natural resources and large scale private investment geared to export. Added to this, are the lack of understanding and sensitivity regarding the Mapuche, Huilliche and peasant peoples, turning them into an underprivileged sector, weakly integrated to the national economy.

Small forest landowner organizations are demanding that the Native Forest Law be promoted in Chile and propose giving priority to a subsidy for small forest landowners and to the promotion to the payment of compensation by transnational forestry companies to the small landowners, as a way of repairing the effects of forest substitution.

While opposing subsidies granted to companies or large landowners, they also demand the promotion and practice of appropriate management of the specific situation of forests, culture and forms of traditional management and that an opportunity be given to peasants and Mapuche and Huilliche communities to conserve their forests. Finally, they demand the implementation of educational activities at all levels in order to achieve respect for the values and contributions of the forest in all its meanings, for the benefit of people.

Faced by these demands, the government will have to decide between continuing to encourage the monoculture tree plantation model, promoted during the Pinochet dictatorship (for the almost exclusive benefit of large economic groups) or to support indigenous and peasant communities in sustainable forest management. An essential step in this respect is the acknowledgement that plantations are not forests. When this happens, the slogan "Forests for Chile" will start to have some meaning.

Article based on information from the Declaration "Bosques Nativos para la Gente" sent by Rodrigo Catalán from the "Fondo Bosque Templado" , e-mail: fondobt@telsur.cl ; Angélica Hernández M., Agenda Regional de la Araucanía (Grupo AGRA), e-mail: agendaregional@terra.cl ; El Mercurio, 22 June 2003, http://www.agricultura.gob.cl/opinion_subsec.php?cod_opinion=666

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- Paraguay: Uncontacted Indians in danger

The last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin are being squeezed from all sides. With their last refuge being gradually overrun, they have nowhere left to hide. But if the Paraguayan government acts, the Indians can keep hold of their land and avoid the diseases that threaten to decimate their population.

The Indians are members of the 5,000-strong Ayoreo tribe which once occupied much of north Paraguay and south-east Bolivia. This region is part of the Chaco, a sparsely-populated expanse of scrub forest, grasslands and swamp. The Ayoreo are hunter-gatherers, living off the abundant natural resources of their homeland; they hunt wild pigs and armadillo, collect wild honey, and plant squash, corn and beans in the rainy season.

During the last century most of the Ayoreo's land was taken over by outsiders. In Paraguay ranchers cleared the forest of valuable timber, and set up vast cattle ranches. From the 1920s, thousands of European Mennonites established colonies in the Chaco; their ranches and dairy farms in turn attracted land speculators, whose companies now hold title to much of the Ayoreo's territory.

More recent arrivals to the Ayoreo's land are the fundamentalist missionaries of the American New Tribes Mission (NTM). The NTM has tried to convert many Ayoreo, and established a colony at a place called Campo Loro.

In 1979 and 1986 'evangelised' Indians, with the backing of the NTM, went into the forest to bring out uncontacted Ayoreo, from a group known as the Totobiegosode - 'people from the place of the wild pig'. At least five of the 'evangelised' Ayoreo died during these expeditions, as the uncontacted Indians tried to defend themselves from capture. Several of those brought to Campo Loro died soon after through ill-health. Campaigns by Survival and others brought a halt to these 'manhunts'.

An unknown number of Ayoreo-Totobiegosode remain in the forest, actively resisting contact with outsiders. From evidence such as footprints and abandoned huts, there are known to be several distinct family groups living in a wide area.

In 1993, those Ayoreo-Totobiegosode who had been forced out of the forest submitted a land claim to the government on behalf of their relatives still in the forest. With the assistance of a local NGO, the Totobiegosode Support Group, the Indians requested title to, or protection over, 550,000 hectares of their land - less than a fifth of their ancestral territory of 2.8 million hectares.

Since the claim was submitted the government has titled 67,400 hectares to the Indians, with another 116,000 hectares promised. Injunctions have also been placed on the whole 550,000 hectares, preventing landowners, ranchers and other settlers from clearing forest or carrying out any other work on the land. But despite these injunctions, there has recently been a frightening wave of incursions, some of them causing the Totobiegosode in the forest to flee, abandoning their huts, which have been found empty.

In June, bulldozers cleared paths into forest in the south-east of the Indians' territory on land owned by the Veragilma and Falabella companies. The paths were cut to give access to stands of palo santo, a valuable hardwood. At the same time, the authorities in the regional government of Alto Paraguay are pushing for new colonisation of these lands. A huge track has also been bulldozed by Mennonite settlers on an estate called Yvy Pora: this disturbed the Totobiegosode in the area, who fled. Still other paths have been cleared on the Nieto and Gorostiaga ranches in the south and west of the Ayoreo territory.

The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode have been fleeing incursions onto their land for decades, and have made it abundantly clear they do not want contact: in 1994 and 1998 arrows were fired at bulldozers operating on their land. The clearing of their land is illegal - and if it continues, puts the isolated Ayoreo at great danger of being caught up in violent conflicts or again falling victim to disease.

Article reproduced from E-news from Survival International, 23/7/03

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- Venezuela: Tourism development causes serious impacts on mangroves

Over the past 15 years, the Colina municipal authorities backing tourism development have granted lands bordering the De la Vela Mangrove. The consequent building of housing and shops has implied that these lands were filled with rubble at the expense of the ecosystem and the space necessary for mangrove growth.

As a response to this situation and concerned over the impact of tourism activities on the fragile ecosystem, representatives of Voluntary Environmental Monitors (Vigilante Voluntarios Ambientales) and the Ecologist Association for Environmental Preservation (Asociación Ecologista para la Preservación Ambiental - AEPA-Falcon) have lodged a series of complaints. An eye inspection of the De la Vela Mangrove (la Salinita) with the presence of authorities from the Municipality and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, the owner of the land and a representative of the AEPA-Falcon NGO was carried out, resulting in a stoppage of land-filling activities in the zone near the bridge accessing Vela de Coro until such time the owner of the land submits a project for tourism development which he intends to implement in the wetlands.

The mangrove is a fundamental ecosystem for coastal protection against climatic inclemency. It is also the refuge, home and source of food for many species of fauna and flora and provides a series of goods and services to the people who inhabit its vicinity and who largely depend on the mangrove for their subsistence.

The development of the tourism industry, implying the construction of highways, roads, large buildings, mangrove felling or land-filling, will generate major impacts insofar as it will substantially modify this ecosystem.

Today, over a year after these complaints were lodged, there are people who are still determined to promote this tourism development in the Municipality of Colina at the expense of the mangroves, without questioning the environmental and social costs involved. No Environmental Impact Assessment of the De la Vela Mangrove, evaluating the damage caused to the ecosystem has yet been made.

While awaiting a valid decision by the national authorities, lands close to the mangrove are being filled to build housing with permits granted by the Colina Municipal authorities.

With the support of the Latin American Mangrove Network and Greenpeace International, in defence of coastal ecosystems and community life, those who are affected by tourism activities are demanding greater protection of mangrove systems. They also demand from the authorities the implementation of an Environmental Impact Assessment and, according to the results obtained, that the damage caused to the environment be repaired. However, more important is that the final results should be made known to the institutions and organizations involved in the environmental conflict and to the community in general.

Local inhabitants continue to wait for the preparation of a "plan for the sustainable environmental management of the De la Vela Mangrove."

AEPA-Falcon demands that the Colina Municipal authorities and the authorities guaranteeing environmental and human rights in the country, prepare regulations or decrees protecting the mangrove ecosystem and that they come up with a valid solution for this environmental conflict, guaranteeing protection of mangroves, their diversity and respect for Human Rights and fundamental liberty of the affected communities.

Article based on information from: Anelis Teolinda Moya, e-mail: aepafalcon@hotmail.com "A un año del conflicto AEPA-Falcon exige mayor protección al Manglar de la Vela"