- Bangladesh: The Mro resist eviction from eco-park

The Mro (also Mru) are one of the indigenous peoples inhabiting since long Chittagong Hills. They are totally dependent on the forest, where they not only hunt but also engage in local varieties cultivation, collective farming and gardening.

The dimension of their dependency on their forest reflect their ethno-botanical knowledge. According to a study from the Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, University of Chittagong, “conservation of the indigenous knowledge of the Mro tribe can conserve the forests as well, which may be a forest conservation tool” in Bangladesh.

However, official policies prefer to engage in projects --allegedly for economic development as well as preserving the environment-- that replace forests and their people for tourist gardens --so called 'Eco-parks'. Indigenous peoples know well that they will involve their eviction and clearing thousands of acres of forest by cutting off trees and levelling hills to construct roads meandering through the hills for passage of motor vehicles.

Some time ago, the Madhabkunda-Muraichhari Eco-park had also implied the eviction of hundreds of Khasia and Garo families living in the hills. On that occasion, the leader of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Reserved Forestry Protection and Land Rights Committee, Rang Lai Mro, had claimed: “In Bandarban alone, hundreds of hill families have been uprooted from their ancestral homes after 20,000 acres of land were acquired by the forest department in the name of Social Forestry.”

Now, the government is proposing another eco-park on land of the Mro community, in Chimbuk Range in Bandarban hill district. The Mro, whose essential role as guardians of the forest has been acknowledge even by academic research, are threatened of being thrown out from their home.

Rang Lai Mro, president of the Mro Social Council, said as many as 700 Mro families would be evicted if the government implements its plan to build an eco-park on a 5500-acre tract of land in Sadar, Roangchhari, Ruma and Lama “upazilas” (rural administrative subdivisions of a district).

As a result, local indigenous people have declared that they will resist any move to set up an Eco Park by displacing them. The call for resistance came from a rally held at Empu Para, 36 kilometres off the Bandarban district headquarters. The Committee to Protect Land and Forest Preservation organised the rally of 500 family heads of the Mro community. The next step will be to hold a meeting with all Headmen and Karbaries (grassroots level leaders) in the areas soon to chalk out a programme to resist the move.

Article based on information from: “ Indigenous people to resist eco-park in Bangladesh”, PraxisNews, sent by Zakir Kibria, E-mail: banglapraxis@yahoo.com ; “ Foundation of ‘controversial' Eco-park to be laid today”, Rajat Kanti Goswami, Moulvibazar, http://www.sdnbd.org/sdi/news/pages/eco-park/eco-park.htm ; “Bangladesh Hills Rumble With Discontent”, Sharier Khan, http://www.banglarights.net/marginalised/marzinalized-8.htm ; “Traditional forest utilization practice by the Mro tribe in Bandarban region, Bangladesh”, http://www.bnp2004.com/p/p219.pdf , “Planned Eco Park: Unrest brewing in Bandarban: Indigenous leaders held meetings, decide to resist”, Monirul Islam Monu, URL:http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/03/14/d50314070176.htm , distributed by PraxisNews, Zakir Kibria, E-mail: banglapraxis@yahoo.com

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- Laos : Nam Theun 2, the World Bank and corruption

On 31 March 2005, the World Bank's Board of Directors will decide whether to support a series of loans and guarantees for the Nam Theun 2 hydropower dam in Laos.

The World Bank has been involved in the Nam Theun 2 dam since 1989 when it funded a feasibility study. Without the World Bank's guarantees to cover investors' risks, commercial banks will not finance the project. At any stage in the last 16 years, the World Bank could have decided not to support this project and the project would have collapsed. The World Bank is therefore at least partially responsible for what has happened on the project during this time.

The World Bank argues that its involvement in the Nam Theun 2 project is important to make the project into a means of reducing poverty in Laos. In November 2004, Ian Porter, the World Bank's country director for Laos, told a meeting of the Bank's Executive Directors that "the rationale for the project rests on proper use of revenues for poverty reduction and environmental management."

Since 1989, the 450 square kilometre reservoir area has been logged and the livelihoods of the 6,000 indigenous people who live on the Nakai Plateau have been devastated. If the project goes ahead, 130,000 more people living downstream of the dam will see their fisheries and livelihoods destroyed. Additionally, it will have a severe impact on wildlife on the Nakai Plateau, including endangered Asian elephants and white-winged ducks. On 11 March 2005, Thai NGOs and academics wrote to the World Bank's Ian Porter explaining the impact that dams have had on elephants in Thailand and how Nam Theun 2 will inevitably lead to increased conflict between people and elephants. (find below the link to the letter)

The Lao military-run logging company Bholisat Pattana Khed Phoudoi (BPKP) started logging the reservoir area in the early 1990s. The company logged inside protected areas and even logged an area of forest which was supposed to be a community forest for the people who would be evicted from the reservoir area.

In 2002, Supalak Ganjanakhundee, a journalist with the Thai newspaper The Nation, estimated that logging earned BPKP about US$70 million a year. A year later BPKP was almost bankrupt and only survived because of government handouts.

Four years ago, I wrote to Helmut Schaffer, the then-German Executive Director at the World Bank to ask him what BPKP had done with the money they earned from logging the reservoir area. Neither Schaffer, nor the Bank staff that Schaffer asked to deal with my questions, answered the question.

It seems that no one at the World Bank particularly cares where BPKP's money went. In response to my question about BPKP, the Bank's Ian Porter told me in February 2005, "We don't have specific information on the collection and use of revenues from the logging you mention."

Italian-Thai Development Public Company has started drilling tunnels associated with the dam, in anticipation of the World Bank's decision to support the project. The Nam Theun 2 Power Company (NTPC), the project developers, awarded the dam construction contract to Italian-Thai without the benefit of competitive bidding. Italian-Thai is part of NTPC. Another NTPC member, Electricité de France won the head construction contract, also without competitive bidding.

On 15 February 2005, Christian Delvoie, regional infrastructure director for the World Bank, told Radio Free Asia, "In any project financed by the Bank, as soon as corruption is detected, we go to the government and we cancel that covenant immediately."

I asked Delvoie to explain exactly what the Bank is doing to detect corruption in the project. I asked him whether the Bank had commissioned independent, publicly available appraisals investigating how the dam developers had awarded themselves contracts on the project and into BPKP's activities on the project. And I asked Delvoie how I could obtain copies of these documents.

Eleven minutes after I sent my e-mail, Delvoie replied. He didn't answer any of my questions or tell me how I could obtain copies of any documents. "We have investigated most of the points you raise," he wrote. When I asked him what he meant by the word "most", he asked me not to read between the lines. "We did investigate, and properly document, the whole procurement contracts, and are satisfied that they meet our guidelines," he wrote. He did not tell me how I could obtain copies of the documents the Bank had produced in order to reach this conclusion.

In 1999, James Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank said, "A free press is not a luxury. A free press is at the absolute core of equitable development." He described a free press as a "searchlight on corruption and inequitable practices". Unfortunately, there is no free press in Laos.

In Laos the state controls all newspapers. Under the government's anti-corruption decree journalists must seek authorisation from the state before reporting on corrupt practices. The decree prohibits journalists from revealing official secret documents. Not surprisingly, corruption tends not to hit the headlines in Laos.

A while ago a World Bank employee rang me up. He wanted to talk about the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos on condition of anonymity. He mentioned something he'd heard the last time he was in Vientiane: the sound of Lao government officials flicking through new Mercedes-Benz catalogues. The gentle, fluttering sound of corruption.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

The letter to the World Bank is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Laos/NamTheundam.html

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- Malaysia : Fake logging certification on Penan lands

On 18 October 2004, Samling Plywood, the Malaysian timber corporation, was granted a Certificate for Forest Management under the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) for the alleged sustainable logging of one of Sarawak's last remaining contiguous areas of primary rainforest.

About 80 percent of the certified concession area is traditional Penan territory where they traditionally lived as nomads before becoming settled under British influence in the middle of the 20th century. Now there are in the area at least 410 households with a population of an estimated 2000 persons.

Although the Penan started with shifting cultivation of hill rice after becoming settled, they still largely depend upon the primary rainforest for hunting and gathering which provides for an important part of their dietary needs (proteins, fruits etc.). The primary rainforest is also the source of Penan culture and mythology and is home to many sites of great importance to the Penan such as ancestral graves, the ipoh tree providing poison for darts, sago palms, wild rattan plants, and sandalwood trees. Apart from the Penan, there are also an unknown number of other Dayak people living in the area.

“We have been living here in peace until the timber companies came to disturb our life and encroach into our forest.” On behalf of the Penan signing the letter, headman Bilong Oyau wrote, “Many of us have suffered due to the Samling logging operations: our rivers are polluted, our sacred sites damaged and our animals chased away by people who deprive us of our livelihood and culture. (...) We cannot accept that Samling is now awarded with a certificate to continue offending our native customary rights.” The Penan in these communities are also complaining about the substantial damage to their drinking water supplies as a result of the logging.

Even though the Penan have opposed resistance to the destruction of their lands and rainforests, setting up blockades to prevent the transit of logging machinery and trucks, the MTCC did not consult them prior to the certification of their forest. Furthermore, information obtained in 2001 by the earth imaging satellite IKONOS indicates that the forestry practiced by Samling in this particular concession is anything but sustainable. The severe destruction of the forest is visible even in low resolution.

Samling only gained access to the now certified area by relying on the use of police and military force, and it has only been able to extract timber from the area against the declared will of the affected communities in open violation of their human rights. The Penan communities appealed to the MTCC to immediately revoke the certificate.

This is one more example of a fake green stamp awarded to a socially and environmentally destructive activity such as industrial logging. For huge companies it is just another marketing tool to gain more markets, often that of well intentioned people from Northern countries who --far from the site-- believe they are thus contributing to forest conservation.

Article based on information from: “Penan protest against the certified logging of the last primeval forests of Sarawak (Malaysia)”, and “Report on the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) certification of the Sela'an-Linau Forest Management Unit in the Ulu Baram area of Sarawak / Malaysia”, sent by Lukas Straumann, Bruno Manser Fonds, e-mail: bmf@bmf.ch

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- Legal and illegal logging in Vietnam

Illegal logging is rampant in Vietnam. Vietnamese newspapers frequently report on new logging scandals. A few examples from last year illustrate the point. In January, the People's Army Newspaper ran a story about the arrest of "notorious timber trader" Nguyen Van Hung. In June, Labour Newspaper reported that railway guardsmen had stopped the transportation of illegally logged timber on a train. And November saw the conclusion of the biggest ever illegal logging case in the central highlands. Pioneer reported that Kon Tum People's Court convicted 19 people, including 10 government officials, of illegal logging and giving and receiving bribes.

Pamela McElwee, a PhD student from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has researched illegal logging in Vietnam for several years. In a recent article, "You say illegal, I say legal", she discusses some of the issues raised by illegal logging in Vietnam.

McElwee compares large illegal timber operations with the "small actions of hundreds of thousands of local loggers desperate for timber". She explains that although the state often blames local people for deforestation, in fact the state itself has "significantly contributed" to the problem.

When the government nationalised the country's forests (in the mid-1950s in North Vietnam and after the reunification of the country in 1975 in the south) it handed them over to State Forest Enterprises. "Vast stretches of Vietnam's highlands were logged by the state, not local people, until they were completely bare," writes McElwee.

McElwee refers to a 1989 review of the operations of the Easup Forestry-Agriculture-Industry Union. Formed in 1979 in Dak Lak province in the central highlands, the Union was intended to support 200,000 people, organised into villages with names like "Green Forest Town". More than 20,000 people moved from lowland areas to work for the logging company. The Union logged timber worth US$2-3 million a year and after ten years it had logged about half the standing volume of wood surveyed in 1979. McElwee concludes that the Union's logging caused major changes in the province, including "high rates of lowland-to-upland migration, loss of indigenous minorities' land rights, and expansion of wet-rice agriculture in areas more suited for shifting cultivation given low irrigation levels and highly variable soils and inclines."

In addition to having logged large areas of the country's forests, the state seems unable or reluctant to deal with illegal logging. McElwee describes how a gang of illegal loggers in Yen Bai, in northern Vietnam, used dynamite to build permanent roads into the forest and even marked the trees they wanted to log, apparently without fear of prosecution.

Illegally logged timber in Vietnam is transported on trucks, trains and even Vietnam Airlines aeroplanes. "These types of connections indicate that the people involved are not small-scale operators, but rather powerful figures with wide webs of smuggling networks," notes McElwee.

The Forest Protection Department, which polices illegal logging in Vietnam, is often involved with State Forest Enterprises in illegal logging. With salaries for Forest Protection staff as low as US$30 a month, corruption is widespread.

When Forest Protection Department staff try to catch illegal loggers they often find themselves outnumbered and outgunned. In February 2005, Labour reported that between 30 and 40 people attacked a forest patrol team in Bu Gia Map National Park after the patrol team discovered them transporting illegal timber.

Although the Forest Protection Department uncovered more than 50,000 violations of the Law on Forest Protection and Development in 2004, many of these involved small-scale offences. At a Forest Protection Department checkpoint between Cambodia and the Vietnamese coastal port of Nha Trang, McElwee saw government logging trucks loaded with timber from Cambodia using forged papers to pass the checkpoint unimpeded, while local farmers on three-wheeled tractors carrying firewood or timber for housing, but with no paperwork, were stopped and fined.

During a year's fieldwork in Ha Tinh province in northern Vietnam, McElwee interviewed villagers living near Ke Go Nature Reserve and Cam Xuyen State Forest Enterprise. Half of the 104 households she talked to received some income from selling forest products such as fuelwood, charcoal, rattan or medicinal plants.

McElwee found that the Forest Protection Department focuses almost entirely on the local market where villagers sell firewood, but does nothing to stop army and border police from logging and transporting timber.

A government radio campaign makes things worse by explaining that the Nature Reserve is government property and out of bounds to local people. A village headman commented to McElwee, "Why don't we stop people from going into the nature reserve? We could - they pass through our village every day. But the government tells us again and again, that is the government's property. Then the government ought to stop people from going in, not us."

Villagers see their use of timber as having a small impact on forests compared with the large-scale loggers, who use boats to transport wood from the Ke Go Nature Reserve. Villagers asked McElwee, "What's wrong with taking a tree now and then? It's just to build a house. Everyone needs a house.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

Article based on information from: Pamela McElwee, "You Say Illegal, I Say Legal: The Relationship Between 'Illegal' Logging and Land Tenure, Poverty, and Forest Use Rights in Vietnam," Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Vol. 19, No. 1/2/3, 2004 . http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JSF