Colombia

Between 2001 and 2005, plywood panels manufactured by Pizano S.A., one of the largest timber companies in Colombia, could be purchased in the U.S. The panel was manufactured in part using timber from one of the plantations certified by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and in part from the natural forests in northeast Colombia, forests in which guerrilla organizations, paramilitary groups and the army fight for control of the territory and its natural resources. Consequently, these plywood panels were stained with blood.

As member of a group of international observers, invited by the Justice and Peace organization, we had the opportunity to visit an area in Colombia (Curvaradó) where ten years ago the local communities suffered from a violent eviction process and are now returning to their territories.

The Peoples’ Permanent Tribunal – Colombian Chapter met on 26 and 27 February 2007 in Lower Atrato to bring to trial transnational companies focusing on the issue of biodiversity and exploitation of natural resources in Colombia. The participating communities and social organizations – including environmental organizations – accused Smurfit Kapa Carton de Colombia “of violating human, environmental, social and cultural rights.

On 15 December 2006, the Colombian government made public its decision to reinitiate oil exploration activities in the Siriri and Catleya Blocks located in the Departments of Arauca, Santander, North of Santander and Boyacá, in the northwest of the country, in U’wa territory.

A few days ago, the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change – COP 12 – came to an end. The closing session confirmed the scant will of governments and parties in seeking real solutions to the climate crisis. However what did stand out was interest in promoting the use of strategies invented to solve the climate problem based on market mechanisms. Among these, the group of tree plantation projects as greenhouse gas sinks were the most notorious.

The Western world, and in particular the countries of the North, gave in to addiction to fossil fuels. This path has led to something that today nobody can doubt: climate change. Many solutions have been put forth to face it, but most of them let humanity’s race towards suicide continue as vigorously as before.

Press Release - September 1, 2006

We the undersigned wish to register our concern over the certification of tree plantations in our country by the FSC, which has granted a green label to monoculture plantations that have proven to be socially and environmentally destructive. We are aware that the FSC is carrying out a review of its plantation certification policy, and it is our hope that the result of this process will be an end to the certification of these types of plantations by the FSC in the future.

The Bari people, a minority belonging to the Arawak family known as the Children of the Forest, inhabit the Catatumbo Basin in the north of the Department of Santander. The Motilon Bari have a language known as Bari-ara and their own internal and external political and social organization. Their supreme authority is the Autonomous Council of Chiefs, comprising 23 Caciques (Chiefs) from the 23 communities of the Motilon indigenous people.

In 2003, WRM paid a field visit to Colombia to acquaint itself with the communities affected by Smurfit plantations and to gather evidence. At that time, we published the following in an article: “…The local people told us that ‘the plantations have finished off the water,’ that “spraying has finished with everything there was in the soil,’ that ‘there is hardly any fauna left,’ that there used to be ‘clouds of birds’ and that now ‘only in the summer does some bird appear, but not in winter time,’ and that ‘there are no fish left either.’

Colombia is involved in the same process taking place in several Latin American countries regarding the establishment of fast-growing monoculture tree plantations.

The Motilon Bari Indigenous Peoples have been settled for thousands of years in the basin of the Catatumbo River, in the Department of Northern Santander (Colombia). It is a forest zone, covering an area of approximately 126,600 ha and shares its frontier with Venezuela. Its humid forests, that act as a natural filter for Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), have considerable potential regarding biodiversity, wood and minerals, hydrocarbons and water resources.