The Hoktek T’oi community of the Wichi People (Province of Salta, Argentina) has just won a resounding victory in the court action they brought against the Provincial government for the permit granted in 1996 by the Environmental Secretariat to the Los Cordobeses S.A. company, for the deforestation of 1,838 hectares of the community’s traditional territory (see WRM Bulletin 49).

Before the permit was granted, the Hoktek T’oi Community had contested it at administrative level. Three years later, when the deforestation company requested an extension of the permit, the Community again contested it.

At legal level, the case was stubbornly upheld by the Wichi. Following rejection of their administrative action, in 1999 they lodged an Action for the Enforcement of Rights against the Provincial Environmental Secretariat. This was rejected by three courts in the provincial context, and taken to the Supreme Court of the Nation. On 8 September 2003, the Supreme Court finally and in a strong and definitive manner, decided favourably on the case.

The Supreme Court sentenced that the Hoktek T’oi Community “had been ignored in the allegations it had made regarding custody of its rights.” It also emphasized that the authorization and extension of the deforestation permit were manifestly illegal as they had not respected the Indigenous rights set out in article 75, item 17 of the National Constitution, nor had they respected the prior Environmental Impact Assessment, required by the legislation in force. In this way, for the first time, the Supreme Court confirmed the Argentine State’s obligation to ensure “the participation of Indigenous Peoples in the management of their natural resources and other interests affecting them.”

Excerpt from the communiqué “Victoria Wichi” by the Hoktek T’oi Community, signed by Roque Miranda, José Neri Ruiz and Marcos Elias, sent by John Palmer, e-mail: johnpalmer@fastmail.fm

- Ecuador: Sharing experiences against monoculture tree plantations

During the second half of September this year, the Ecuadorian NGO Acción Ecológica organized a national meeting in Quito on the subject of “Plantations are not forests.” On 20 and 21 September, approximately 40 organizations representing Ecuadorian Indigenous movements, peasants, people of Afro-Ecuadorian descent, NGOs and parliamentarians, together with representatives from Brazil, Chile and Uruguay analysed the issue of plantations and exchanged experiences. The gathering took place in the framework of the on-going discussions in Ecuador regarding the government’s forestation plan that may imply the promotion of large-scale monoculture tree plantations in wide areas of the country.

Paulo Cesar Scarim, in representation of the Network Alert Against the Green Desert in Brazil, shared the experience of struggles in resistance against the expansion in his country of what they call the “green desert” – enormous expansions of commercial eucalyptus plantations. He visited communities in the Province of Esmeraldas, a region that originally had abundant tropical forests and mangroves, and the communities of Muisne and Daule, where companies – such as in the case of Eucapacific, a Japanese consortium that has bought up much land for the plantation of eucalyptus – arrive with the promise of jobs in a jobless environment. However, deforestation, settlement projects and more recently, shrimp farms and the plantations of oil palm, teak and eucalyptus have left the region bereft of its original wealth. The result is that unemployment is rife and there is increasing rural exodus towards the suburbs.

Sergio Alcaman, an Indigenous Mapuche delegate, shared experience from Chile with monoculture pine and eucalyptus plantations, not only involving impacts on the soil, water and biodiversity, but also the appropriation of wide areas of Mapuche territory by plantation companies during the Pinochet dictatorship. In spite of this, Mapuche resistance increases day by day.

In turn, the representative of Uruguay (Ricardo Carrere, from the WRM Secretariat) told of the experience of his country and of many other tropical and subtropical countries, where the social and environmental impacts of monoculture tree plantations have given rise to struggles against them and, which, little by little are becoming united on an international scale, thus widening and strengthening the opposition movement.

The meeting in Ecuador provided an opportunity for the exchange of experience among countries that already have hundreds of thousands (Uruguay) or millions of hectares (Chile and Brazil) of monoculture tree plantations, with a broad group of Ecuadorian organizations, where the area covered by plantations threatens to be increased. Both in these and in other countries, it has been shown that homogeneous tree plantations for commercial purposes end up in traditional communities losing land, a radical change in the economic and social structure of the zone, deforestation and intensive land use and use of chemical products that destroy soils, rivers, mangroves and the biodiversity of very rich tropical ecosystems.

It was also concluded that present world strategies such as certification, environmental services and wildlife corridors, should be observed with caution to avoid falling into a trap.

Movements of resistance with diverse tactics and rhythms are arising everywhere and the solidarity and search for the organization of resistance in its multiple stages, has led to various agendas and the prospects of working as a network. With this aim, the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de Arboles – RECOMA) was created in January 2003. Accion Ecologica, the Alert against the Green Desert Movement and WRM are all participants in this network. A few days before, RECOMA had held a meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, in order to prepare common strategies to face the threat of plantations. The exchange of experience during the Ecuadorian meeting is an important component of these strategies and the positive assessment of this meeting augers the continuation of this type of exchange.

Article based on information from: Report by Paulo Cesar Scarim – Association of Brazilian Geographers- ES / Red Alerta Contra el Desierto Verde, sent by the author, e-mail: pscarim@hotmail.com ; with complementary information by Ricardo Carrere.

- Uruguay-Argentina: Joint struggle against a pulp-mill

Like so many other countries in the South, Uruguay has been convinced (by FAO, the World Bank and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, among others) that it should promote large-scale tree plantations. From the start, it was very clear that the objective was to produce sufficient raw material for pulp production and for this reason, fundamentally, the plantation of eucalyptus was promoted.

The abundant direct and indirect subsidies that were channelled to the plantation sector (estimated at over 400 million dollars), had the expected result: over 600,000 hectares were planted. Now the time has come to start harvesting the wood and the country has no plan for the development of the timber sector. It is in this context that the Spanish National Cellulose Company (Empresa Nacional de Celulosa de España – ENCE) arrived with a project for a pulp-mill to be installed on the River Uruguay and the Government has received it with open arms.

ENCE is not a new actor on the Uruguayan stage. The company installed itself in 1990 in Uruguay, purchasing land and planting 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus to supply their pulp-mills in Spain, where in turn they have 100,000 hectares of eucalyptus. Their history is shady, both in Uruguay where it is registered as Eufores, and in its country of origin.

In Spain it was taken to court for crimes against the environment after decades of contaminating the Ria de Pontevedra. After many years, it was finally condemned and its executives sentenced to fines and prison sentences. However, its environmental “legacy” is still being suffered by those who live near its three pulp-mills. It is interesting to highlight that in Pontevedra (where there was and still is, greatest opposition to ENCE) it now produces TCF (totally chlorine free) cellulose, while in Huelva and Navia it applies the ECF process (using chlorine-dioxide). Of course, the process it intends using in Uruguay is not the cleanest, but the one using chlorine-dioxide.

In Uruguay, Eufores (ENCE) has never been fined or sentenced, not because of insufficient merit, but due to the lack of controls, in particular regarding compliance with labour regulations. Those who work or who have worked for Eufores tell terrible stories about the working conditions in force among the outsourcing companies that work for the company.

With this background, it is not surprising that a movement has arisen to resist the installation of the pulp-mill, to be located on the River Uruguay, up-river from the city of Fray Bentos, in the Department of Rio Negro. What is a novelty is that the resistance movement is not limited to Uruguay, but also includes environmentalists from Argentina, a country sharing the River Uruguay and that might therefore be affected by contamination from the mill.

On 4 October, environmentalists from both countries carried out a joint action, originally to take place in the middle of the international bridge joining both countries near Fray Bentos. The Uruguayan citizens were prevented from crossing the bridge by the security forces, while on the Argentine side, only a small delegation was authorized to cross (headed by the mayor of the neighbouring city of Gualeguaychú, Emilio Martinez Garbino), preventing more than 800 people who had congregated there from taking part in the demonstration.

Once they had crossed the bridge, they joined the Uruguayan activists and all marched to Fray Bentos, where mayor Martinez Garbino gave the mayor of Rio Negro, Francisco Centurion, the “Gualeguaychu Declaration,” prepared by a citizen assembly of bodies from that city, stating their opposition to the installation of the pulp-mill.

The action became so notorious that the main Uruguayan governmental actors (from the Vice-President to the Minister of Foreign Affairs) found themselves obliged to forestall criticism by appealing to the traditional “defence of sovereignty” and “non-interference in internal affairs,• that are never applied when dealing with the United States ambassador or the representatives of the International Monetary Fund. On the Argentine side, President Nestor Kirchner entrusted his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rafael Bielsa, with formally stating his concern to the Uruguayan government over the possible contamination of a shared watercourse, which he did a few days later at a meeting with the Uruguayan President, Jorge Batlle.

The commotion caused by the “crusade” opened up doors that hitherto had been closed to the Uruguayan environmentalist movement. For the first time, radios, newspapers and even television newsreels gave citizens the opportunity to be informed by the mass media of the reasons of those who oppose large-scale monoculture tree plantations (and the associated pulp-mills) and who struggle for an environmentally healthy and socially just country. The official schizophrenia caused by the “crusade” of a group of citizens from a sister country had the opposite result from that sought: the mass media opened up on this so far silenced issue.

The crusade was a success and the struggle goes on. Environmentalists from both countries, grouped in the Socio-Environmental Network since 2001 are now considering the implementation of further joint actions to prevent the installation of the ENCE plant. While the governments talk about integration, the people have effectively started to integrate.

Further information (in Spanish) is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/guayubira/mbopicua/index.html

- Venezuela: Government plan endangers the Imataca forest

The Imataca Forest Reserve’s native forest, located in the extreme east of the country, of imposing scenic beauty and rich biological diversity, fulfils a fundamental role in soil and water protection – of the rivers Yuruan, Cuyuni, Orinoco, Brazo Imataca, Rio Grande, Botanamo, Barima, Orocaima – and is a cultural and sacred reserve for the Indigenous Peoples.

Imataca covers an area of 38,219 square kilometres, of which over three million hectares, that is to say 80% of its surface, are rainforests. Six out of each ten square metres of the territory are legally under some kind of environmental protection, but will now be affected by the Bill on the Imataca Land Planning and Use Regulation, prepared by the Ministry of the Environment.

According to the authorities, this plan limits mining activities up to (a maximum of) 11% of the area, against 38% foreseen in the previous 1997 decree. However, its critics argue that it is a frontal legalization of mining, authorizing prospecting, exploration, exploitation, processing, transformation and transportation of metallic and non-metallic minerals in a zone that – due to its extreme ecological fragility and low regeneration capacity – once intervened will be placed in the category of “forests in danger of disappearing.” Alexander Luzardo of the College of Sociologists, considers that this new regulation will affect the “right of Venezuelan society to preserve its forests in pristine conditions perpetually,” with a higher value to future generations than the immediate economic benefit.

The Final Report for Land Planning of the Imataca Forest Reserve, carried out by the Institute of Tropical Zoology of the Central University of Venezuela and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, recognized in December 2002 that “forestry and mining produce impacts on soils, water, the micro-climate, vegetation, fauna, human communities and biological diversity in general.”

Furthermore, the water-forest relationship is indivisible and the deforestation inevitably accompanying mining, interrupts protection of water and its continuous flow. This protection is vital for the future of life on the planet.

The ecologist organization Amigransa is demanding President Chavez to enforce the commitments taken on during his electoral campaign, when he publicly stated that if to remove gold, the forests had to be done away with, then they would keep the forests. This organization submits the following points:

1) Ratification of the Global Vision of the Bill for Land Planning and Regulation of Use of the Imataca Forest Reserve

2) To propose that the Ministry of the Environment should designate a considerable area of the Imataca Forests as Imataca National Park.

3) To request that mining use should be excluded from the Plan for Land Planning and Regulation of Use of the Imataca Forest Reserve.

4) To request that Imataca should be free of mining centres and that areas that have been degraded by mining should be rehabilitated. Mining concessions and/or contracts should be rescinded and the granting of new concessions and mining infrastructure in Imataca should be prohibited.

5) To request a moratorium on forestry exploitation in Imataca.

6) To exhort the Ministry of the Environment to promote with time, a broad national discussion, with real interactive participation.

7) To exhort the government to conclude the Demarcation of the Habitat and Land of the Indigenous Peoples, prior to any land planning and allocation of uses in Imataca.

Amigransa states that the sustainable development of the country must be seen as an overall issue and not as a harnessing of isolated resources, asking: “do we need to destroy the Imataca forests in order to survive?” “Would it not be better to leave this extractive profit-making policy behind once and for all, as with this Plan Imataca would be subject to savage mining and forestry exploitation? The handing over of this Territory covering nearly 4 million hectares to national and transnational logging and mining companies, warrants a broader national discussion, active and protagonist participation, much analysis regarding the kind of development we want, how we want it and where we want it.”

Article based on information from “La reserva forestal de Imataca. Un bosque insustituible en peligro de desaparecer,” declaration by the Sociedad de Amigos en Defensa de la Gran Sabana-AMIGRANSA, 16 October 2003, sent by Amigransa, e-mail: amigransa@cantv.net ; “Abrirán reserva a explotación minera”, Humberto Márquez, IPS, published in Tierra América, http://www.tierramerica.net/2003/1018/acentos.shtml