• Cameroon: What poverty means to the Bagyeli people
• Madagascar: Ilmenite mining in exchange for forests and people
• Tanzania: Privatisation or piratisation of our forests?
• South Africa: Following a road of impoverishment with monoculture tree plantations

LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS

 

Cameroon: What poverty means to the Bagyeli people

To outsiders, the Bagyeli may appear very poor. They have next to nothing in the way of material possessions, little or no money, and are still often without a permanent house. Yet one of the most important indicators of wealth for these peoples is the access they enjoy to the forest and its resources and the amount to which they are able to participate in decision-making processes relative to their livelihoods.

In 2000, Cameroon’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper was approved by the World Bank, making the country eligible for debt relief. However, Friends of the Earth Cameroon raised concerns that the voices of indigenous and tribal peoples such as the Bagyeli have not been heard, and that their perception of poverty and aspirations regarding development are not represented in the strategy.

The Bagyeli ‘pygmies’ living in the Campo Ma’an national park in southwest Cameroon have sustained themselves for centuries using their vast knowledge of the plant and animal life of the surrounding forest. They traditionally survived by hunting, fishing and gathering honey, fruit, wild yams, caterpillars and snails. When they track animals, they cover themselves with a powder made from the bark of the Moabi tree as camouflage. A nomadic people until recently, they sheltered themselves in temporary huts made of sticks and leaves.

Although a few Bagyeli still follow the traditions of their elders, intensive logging, agriculture and a pipeline traversing their lands have threatened their traditional lifestyles as well as those of other pygmy groups. For the Bagyeli, limited access to the forest affects their traditional livelihoods and leads to marginalization, discrimination and impoverishment.

Since the inception of the Campo Ma’an national park, which was created by the government as compensation for the environmental damage caused by the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, the food security and even the very survival of the Bagyeli people has been threatened due to restrictions placed on their hunting activities. This area is known for its remarkable biodiversity – nearly 390 invertebrate species, 249 fish species, over 80 amphibian species, 122 reptile species, 302 bird species, and around 80 species of large and medium-sized mammals – all of which have been conserved and sustainably managed by local and indigenous peoples for generations.

Since 2003, Friends of the Earth Cameroon, the Forest Peoples Programme and the Rainforest Foundation have supported the Bagyeli in the documentation of their use of the forest and its resources through a process called “participatory mapping”. Participatory mapping, widely used by indigenous communities in Latin America and Southern Asia, entails the collection of detailed information by community selected cartographers about the land, its features and its resources. The outcomes clearly highlight the importance of the forest and its resources for the subsistence strategies of indigenous populations in Cameroon.

For the Bagyeli, the creation of protected areas on their ancestral territories has infringed upon their individual and collective rights, marginalizing and impoverishing them. They believe that any poverty reduction strategy proposed by the government or by external funders must include their participation, and must be based upon their collective right of access to land and forest resources.

“If you do not collect fruits, you cannot have soap; if you do not go fishing, you cannot eat salt; if you do not cultivate plantains to sell you cannot buy clothes. I am dirty and without clothes because I do not do anything. I have already been forbidden from entering the forest.” (Indigenous Bagyeli person).

Adapted from “Nature: Poor people’s wealth. The importance of natural resources in poverty eradication”, July 2005, Friends of the Earth International, http://www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/poverty.pdf

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Madagascar: Ilmenite mining in exchange for forests and people

Mining giant Rio Tinto, the world's second largest diversified miner, has been given permission to open up an enormous mine on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar that will involve digging up some of the world's most unique forest on Indigenous territory.

The $775 million titanium dioxide mining projected to be carried out in the Fort Dauphin region of the island is being developed by QIT Madagascar Minerals, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, with 20 per cent owned by the government and support from the World Bank.

Up to 1,000 hectares of land and coastal rainforest bordering the Indian Ocean will be dug up in different phases to extract ilmenite, the mineral which can be used to produce the white titanium dioxide pigment used more and more to colour paint, paper, plastics and toothpaste as lead paint is discontinued due to health impacts. The huge economic growth of China has led to enormous demand for the white pigment, at a time when other ilmenite mines in Australia and South Africa are being exhausted.

The first production will begin in 2008, once a new port has been built, partly with $35 million of funding from the World Bank. The mining project is expected to have an initial capacity of 750,000 tonnes a year and the whole operation could last for 40 years.

Friends of the Earth has opposed the plans from the outset, and even one of their leading directors, Andrew Lees, died 10 years ago in the same forest while investigating the controversial plans for a mine. A botanist with a special passion for waterlands, he was investigating the effect it would have not only on its wildlife, but also on the Malagasy people, many of whom live in the forest.

Madagascar has more groups of unique animals that anywhere else on earth. There are 24 families of species that are found only on the island. Best known of Madagascar's animals are the lemurs, monkey-like creatures with large eyes, of which there are 32 different species. Other creatures under ecological stress are the ploughshare tortoise, the world's rarest tortoise, of which only a few hundred survive today, and the sideneck turtle.

Tony Juniper, head of Friends of the Earth, is aghast that the project has got the go-ahead. The day he got to know of the decision, he said: “This is a very sad day and very bad news for the people of Madagascar. Rio Tinto is exploiting natural resources in the developing world and, once again, it is the local people who will pay the price. This mine will not solve the terrible problems of poverty on the island, but it will damage its precious biodiversity”. He said that it was time international laws were introduced to protect the interests of people and the environment. “It is becoming increasingly clear that companies cannot be trusted to do so.”

Christine Orengo, Lees's partner said. 'There is terrible poverty in Madagascar, but this is not the best way to alleviate it. Thousands of foreigners will come in to take the jobs, and there are worries about the spread of diseases such as HIV. I fear it's going to destroy one of the most beautiful regions in the world.'

Rio Tinto has tried to preserve its image against criticisms and promised to replant the tropical forest they have to trash to get to the ilmenite working in areas of 50 hectares at a time. They would remove the ore from the sand and then replace the sand and replant it with trees. As if you can “plant” a thriving and biodiverse ecosystem like a forest!

Juniper said no company could guarantee that its plans would work out in the best way possible. 'You might have lots of plans for environmental protection, backed by lots of experts, but we are looking at a mine which will operate for 40 years.

“What are we going to do if, at the end of it all, there are species which become extinct and a habitat that is ruined and people who are still impoverished? Who's going to be held accountable for that? No one. It's the age-old story of multinationals getting exactly what they want, whatever the environmental cost.”

Article based on information from: “Madagascar's unique forest under threat”, August, 2005, The Observer, Guardian Unlimited, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1544101,00.html; Rio Tinto Mine Lifts Hopes of Madagascar Progress, Planet Ark, Mines & Communities Website, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press704.htm

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Tanzania: Privatisation or piratisation of our forests?

The privatisation mania has gripped us like an unpreventable plague. The privatisation list is being expanded inexorably. Whether we admit it or not, and whatever the language we may use to rationalise it, the fact remains that privatisation is thrust down the throats of African governments by the BWIs (Bretton Woods Institutions) and the dominant Western powers. Even the so-called debt relief by the G8 is predicated on privatisation as one of the conditionalities. And the BWIs have a peculiar way of arguing.

The failures of privatisation are used to argue for more privatisation of more resources. The argument goes, "if you don't privatise enough, you cannot reap its benefits". And, of course, the success of privatisation per force calls for more privatisation. Either way, the argument is self-fulfilling.

The first rationale was that loss-making parastatals were a burden on the taxpayer. Privatisation would ensure that they were turned into efficient, tax paying enterprises. Yet, of course, the first parastatals to be privatised, like the breweries, were not loss making. You have to be a genius to make a loss in a beer business. Their "quick successes" in terms of turnover and tax revenues were used to justify other privatisations.

Obviously, no private investor would want to buy a loss making enterprise. So they have to be sold at dirt-cheap prices without liabilities and losses. Liabilities have to be taken over by the state, which means the very taxpayer who was supposed to be rescued from the loss making parastatal in the first place. Invariably, one of the first casualties of privatisation is workers, thousands of whom are made redundant. The new owners refuse to pay retrenchment benefits. The government has to do it, if at all. So the taxpayer assumes another liability while at the same time some of the tax payers fall out of the tax payers list as they join the queues of job-seekers.

No private profiteer would want to put in his capital unless he makes profit, and, not just profits, but high rates of profit. Africa today offers very high rates of return on capital, what with its rich resources and dependent governments. As Mwalimu (Julius Nyere) once said, Africa attracts only missionaries and mercenaries: missionaries to console its poor, and mercenaries to oversee its pillage.

But profit-making assumes certain minimum conditions. It is the state which has to take on the burden of creating the enabling environment for capital to make profits: build the infrastructure and supply water and electricity and telecommunications at cheap rates; control recalcitrant workers; maintain law and order and facilitate various service providers -from the entertainment industry to catering to security companies- to service the new "community of expatriates". It is believed that Africa today has more expatriates than at the time of independence.

But then our water and electricity and telephone parastatals are not efficient. Their tariffs are high. Our markets are below standard; our meat is not hygienic and our tomatoes and onions and oranges do not meet the minimum size. So utilities too have to be denationalized, if not by outright sale, then via leasing and management contracts. Squatters have to be cleared to make way for supermarkets and expatriate villages to supply roasted meat from South Africa and cereals from Switzerland.

But it is not easy to turn around utilities into profit making ventures. Their plants and machinery are outdated. Their billing systems have lots of leakages. Since profits or commissions depend on revenue, more efficient water meters and electric meters have to be imported. Once again the state is called upon to provide enabling finance for rehabilitation. It is obliged to take loans from the World Bank and elsewhere to help the investor to import the necessary machinery. Of course, the loans have to be serviced and repaid from the taxpayer's money -whether the existent or yet-to-be-born. While public debts mount private profits rocket, all in the name of development.

But corporate profit making has to look for new terrains constantly. From producing commodities to turning pubic goods into commodities, the corporate capital moves from manufacturing to public services, education and health and water and energy and from commoditizing land to privatising forests.

Privatisation and commercialisation of forest products is the new trend. A recent story in Tanzanian newspapers reported the deal to lease out the Longuza Teak Plantation to Kilombero Valley Teak Company (KVTC) and is only a tip of the iceberg. Forests have become important to corporate capital not only for timber resources but for bio-resources. By the same token, the implication of delivering forests to corporate capital goes beyond the issues of deforestation, as corporate capital turns them into producers of raw material for their veritable workshops of genetic engineering.

Privatisation of forests and forest products has elicited a lot of resistance in Latin America and Asia and even some developed countries including Canada and the United States. The implication and effects of privatising forests are far reaching. These have been debated and discussed in other countries.

We need to learn from the experience of others and re-assess our own. Let the Longuza incidence open up a wide ranging debate on the issues of privatisation generally, but more particularly, the implications of privatising - in whatever form -one of the most important resource and heritage, our forests.

Let us not deliver our future livelihoods into the hands of corporate pirates.

By Issa Shivji, Pambazuka News, http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29614

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Like other countries invaded by monoculture tree plantations (or the “green cancer”, as some South Africans call them), South Africa shows that those schemes have not been aimed at ameliorating local peoples’ quality of life. On the contrary.

Adding to the information delivered by the report on the impacts of outsourcing on forestry (see WRM Bulletin Nº 96), shocking statistics came out of the first forestry sector empowerment charter workshop held in East London on September 12.

"The issue of labourers getting paid between R20 and R22 [3-4 US dollars] per day is of major concern to us," said Thami Zimu, a South Coast sugarcane and timber farmer, who spoke on behalf of contractors.

"The broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) charter should seek to give guidelines on how to avoid this."

She said the low labourers' wages were largely due to the very low rate at which sub-contractors were paid by major contractors.

One participant said it was unfortunate that the major contractors in the forestry sector were not part of the public hearings. "If they were here we would detail to them the great pain and abuse that we, including women and the youth, endure while working as labourers in rural areas. "A number of women are loaded on the back of trucks and are ill-treated, while getting low wages," said the representative of the ORTambo district.

Unequal power relations between sub-contractors and major contractors were denounced as a key cause of problems in the sector and related to the state's high outsourcing rate, estimated at about 90% of all forestry activities.

Adding to a legacy of social, economic and environmental devastation from the old colonial structures, monoculture tree plantations have nothing but followed a road of impoverishment, more inequality, exclusion and environmental degradation.

Article based on information from “South African forestry labourers are paid as little as R20 a day”, Zine George, sent by Phillip Owen, GEASPHERE, E-mail: wac@geasphere.co.za, www.geasphere.co.za