Bulletin Issue 12 – May 1998

The Rufiji Delta in South Eastern Tanzania is one of the largest blocks of mangrove forests in East and Southern Africa. It covers an area of about 53,255 hectares of unspoiled mangrove forest, that support a large number of people, and is rich in aquatic as well as terrestrial biodiversity. The delta is linked to the interior of the river system by an extensive flood plain covering about 130 km long and up to 20 km wide. It is also linked to a system of ocean currents and coral reefs surrounding Mafia island in the East and it influences fisheries production in the island through the northerly flow of marine currents.

The Sophie Foundation, an organization based in Norway, has nominated the Nigerian NGO Environmental Rights Action, for the Sophie Prize 1998. The main purpose of the Sophie Foundation, is to award an annual international environment and development prize of US $ 100,000. This is an initiative of the Norwegian author and philosopher Mr. Jostein Gaarder -worldwide known by his book "Sophie's world", one of the world's best-selling novels- who donated a large sum of his private fortune, earned by selling his books, to this goal.

For the past five years, the small community of the village of Pang Daeng, in the mountainous northern province of Chiang Mai, Thailand, has been visited by lots of tourists seeking an exotic experience among exotic people. But now the hilltribes people in this picturesque hamlet want to keep as low a profile as possible. Why?

At a meeting held last February in Johannesburg, South Africa, a group of trade unionists from 14 countries announced the launch of an international campaign against the international mining company Rio Tinto. During the meeting Bob Hawke, former Australian Prime Minister, accused the company of “monumental hypocrisy”. Meanwhile, 51 Members of the House of Commons, in London, supported a motion that “condems the activities of Rio Tinto Corporation . . . probably the most uncaring and ruthless company in the world judged by its appalling record of human rights violations, community destruction, environmental damage and disregard for the lives of indigenous peoples.”

A land dispute between local farmers from Kuala Batee and the oil palm plantation company PT Cemerlang Abdi has erupted into violent conflict. After several months of attempts to negotiate over land rights, hundreds of angry villagers went to PT Cemerlang Abdi's base camp and told the staff to leave. They took away vehicles, heavy machinery and a generator before burning the base camp to the ground. A security police post was also burnt down.. No-one was killed, but six people were shot and injured (two seriously) and 49 were held in custody after security forces moved in.

Daishowa Inc. is a Canadian corporation with business premises in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, that operates in the paper, packaging and sawmilling sectors. Daishowa is a subsidiary of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co. Ltd., a Japanese corporation. Daishowa Canada Company Ltd, another subsidiary of the Japanese holding, negotiated a Forest Management Agreement ("FMA") with the Government of Alberta in 1988 and. built a large pulp mill in Peace River, that would be supplied with wood harvested from an area ancestrally occupied by the Lubicon Cree First Nation in northern Alberta. In 1992, Daishowa Canada Company Ltd. transferred its interest in the pulp mill and related logging rights to the Japanese owned Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd.

The following includes a description of the situation facing Yasuni National Park, a sign-on letter and an appeal to remain in contact with the campaign. If you or your organisation can sign on to the letter please respond to amazonia@hoy.net. A copy of the letter will be delivered to the President of Ecuador, the President of Petroecuador, the President of UNESCO and to interested oil companies. If you would like to send your own version please send a copy to us at the same e-mail address or at the following Fax Number 593-2-527-583 Sincerely, Gloria Chicaiza, Area de Petroleo, Accion Ecologica Ecuador's Yasuni National Park once again under threat from oil exploration

by Iwan Brave The Venetiaan administration sold the rainforest bit by bit. But the current Bouterse minded NDP government is having a sell-off. Over half the territory of Suriname is already in concession. A few people are getting very rich from this. The inhabitants of the interior are being ignored. Time to get together. Like in a village by the name of Pikin Slee.

Bolivian forests are among the richest in the world in terms of biodiversity, with more than 2500 species of trees. Protected areas include some 9,5 million hectares and Indigenous areas about 1 million hectares, while more than 21 million hectares have been granted in forestry concessions, in line with the Bolivian forestry law passed in 1996. The Chimane, Mosetene and Tacana indigenous communities of Pilon Lajas Indigenous Territories and Biosphere Reserve in northern Bolivia have joined forces with the Rurrenabaque municipal government and the French NGO Veterinarians Without Borders (Veterinaires Sans Frontieres - VSF), to ban the Berna logging company from the reserve. The company has a logging contract that enables it to remain in the area until the year 2011.

The Penon indigenous peoples of Venezuela are inviting to a meeting which will be held at Kumarakapay (San Francisco de Yuruani), la Gran Sabana, on June 25 - 28. The idea is to bring together all those wishing to defend the ancestral rights of indigenous peoples to their territory, cultural identity and self determination rights, and to protect the environment.

The situation in Uruguay, where Parliament unanimously passed a forestry law in 1987 to promote industrial tree plantations with almost no opposition from civil society organizations, has radically changed since then. In spite of almost total governmental and academic support to eucalyptus and pine tree plantations, NGO-led opposition has totally changed the scenario. As informed in Bulletin nr 3, the WRM secretariat facilitated the creation of an NGO coalition (the Guayubira Group), which has since been at the centre of a number of anti-plantation and anti pulp mill activities.

Representatives of the indigenous and local communities present at the meeting room of the Contact Group on Article 8j (*) of the Convention of Biological Diversity at the IV Conference of the Parties, that took place recently in Bratislava, Slovakia, declared their total disapproval with a decision of the Presidency of the Group on May 12th, that excluded them from the negotiation round. After the declaration they left the room.

The fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity took place in Bratislava from 4-15 May. Among its many decisions, we wish to highlight one related to forest biological diversity which "Notes the potential impact of afforestation, reforestation, forest degradation and deforestation on forest biological diversity and on other ecosystems, and, accordingly, requests the Executive Secretary to liaise and cooperate with the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change . to achieve the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity."

The Forest Peoples Programme addressed on May 12th the following letter to Mr. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, concerning the forest policy of the Bank: "Dear Mr . Wolfensohn,

The World Rainforest Movement is organizing a plantations campaign meeting which will be held in Montevideo on 20-22 June. The aim of the meeting is to discuss and decide a common strategy for the campaign and to agree on a plan of action. The campaign will be officially launched at the end of the meeting. The agenda includes presentations on countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Chile, which contain some of the more extensive plantations in the South. It will also include presentations on major actors, such as the Finnish forestry consultancy firm Jaakko Poyry, the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests.

The WRM international coordinator went to Bratislava, where the Organizing and Steering Committees of the Joint Initiative to Address the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation met in parallel to the meeting of the Biodiversity Convention's COP4. Committee members received full reports from the Global Secretariat (integrated by WRM and the Netherlands Committee for IUCN) and from the regional coordinators on the activies carried out until present. A decision was made as respects to moving the date of the Global Workshop in Costa Rica to 18-22 January 1999. A presentation of the initiative was attended by an important number of government delegates, many of which expressed their willingness to participate in the process and/or to support it through different means.

On May 12th we addressed the President of ENARGAS -the Argentinian national authority on gas energy- to express our concern regarding a pipeline projected by the company Norgas, that is expected to produce a negative environmental impact on the “yungas” ecosystem in the northern region of San Andres in the province of Salta. The yungas are a mountain ecosystem, holding high levels of endemism and biodiversity, and inhabited by the Kolla indigenous peoples. They strongly oppose the project. The WRM International Secretariat has asked ENARGAS not to allow the construction of the controversial pipeline

Joining a campaign launched by Global Response, a message was sent on May 27th to the Presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela, requesting the revocation of controversial Decree 1850 that permits mining activities in the area of the Imataca Forest Reserve, in Venezuela. The Decree has been severely questioned by environmental and academic Venezuelan organizations (see WRM Bulletins 4, 6 and 7)