Bulletin Issue 20 – February 1999

National Geographic is a worldwide known publication dealing with the diversity of landscapes and peoples in the world. According to a renewed vision of Geography, lately the magazine has been paying much attention to environmental issues.

We received a fax from the former President of the Environment Committee of the Venezuelan Congress, Dr. Lucia Antillano, thanking WRM for its activities in that country. The fax says:

"Tree plantations help alleviate pressures on natural forests, thereby contributing to halt deforestation." The wording may slightly differ from forester to forester and from plantation company to plantation company, but the above is repeated over and over again to convince the public that tree plantations are good and should be further supported and promoted if we wish to save the world's forests.

Last January Prof. Wangari Maathai, one of the most inspiring ecofeminists and pro-democracy advocates in all of Africa, and other Kenyan activists were attacked by thugs while they were peacefully demonstrating outside Nairobi against the privatization of the Karura Forest. On February 2nd Hon. James Orengo, Hon. David Mwenje and Dr. John Makanga were arrested by the police. The day before, President Moi had spoken in favour of the privatisation of the forest. The three men were arraigned in Court by the end of the day and charged with incitement and released on personal bonds of Ksh. 100,000 each. They were ordered to appear again before the same Magistrate on February 16th.

On January 12th the Penans of Long Sayan and Long Belok set up blockades at strategic road points to prevent Lajung Lumber S.Bhd from conducting logging activities in their communal forest, after the company refused to meet their demands. In October 1997 Lajung Lumber had signed an agreement with the Penans to log pre-established areas of their communal forest. However the company violated the terms and conditions stipulated in the agreement trying to log undesignated areas even without paying compensation. This abuse provoked the reaction of the indigenous communities.

An accelerated process of plantation of oil palm is going on in Indonesia. The present area of 3.2 million hectares is expected to increase at a rate of 330,000 hectares a year. Since these monocultures invade lands originally occupied by forests and generally inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities, their expansion means a significative environmental and social problem. Many cases of conflicts regarding the use of the territory and natural resources have been denounced (see WRM Bulletin nr. 14 and 15).

Indonesian forests suffer periodically from huge fires. In 1982-83 severe fires destroyed 3.5 million hectares of forests in Kalimantan. Still fresh in our minds are the late 1997 huges fires that devastated millions of hectares of forests in this country, with consequences affecting the whole of South East Asia. Even if presented as “natural disasters” or “accidents” such fires are in fact the consequence of the overexploitation of forests by logging accompanied by the activities of plantation companies and the negligence of the authority to control them. While forest fires represent an economic loss for the country’s economy it means something much more tragic for the indigenous peoples and local communities that inhabit them.

A number of indigenous peoples' and NGO networks of Indonesia are organizing the “Congress of the Indigenous People of the Archipelago – Challenging the positions of Indigenous Peoples and the State” to be held on March 15-22, 1999 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Members of Indonesian and international NGOs, and representatives of indigenous peoples from the region will discuss about this topic and will set the basis for a future alliance among IP groups. A workshop prior to the Congress is also to take place. According to the information we have received, due to budget constraints the organizers are not able to cover the participants’ expenses. Nevertheless, all interested people are invited to participate. For more information, please contact Titi Soentoro.

For years, environmental and Human Rights groups have harshly criticized Freeport -a huge US-based mining company- for its polluting operations for the extraction of copper and gold in Irian Jaya (Indonesia) and in Bougainville and Ok Tedi (Papua New Guinea). The company has been also involved in cases of violence against local Ekari peasants, with the complicity of the authorities (see WRM Bulletins nr. 7 and 8).

In different countries of the world conflicts have arisen between the protection of national parks and the conservation of wildlife on the one hand, and the defense of the rights of people that live in those areas on the other. The hegemonic official model of conservation has a vision of nature as composed by beautiful –but empty- spaces, ignoring that the sustainable use that most local communities practice in these areas is the best guarantee for conservation. The problem is especially important in countries with a high density of rural population. Besides, generally the same governments which declare protected areas open them up for mining, dams, industries, tourism, roads, and other “development” projects.

Mangroves are wetlands rich in biodiversity that are suffering a severe depredation worldwide. In Sri Lanka mangroves are associated with 22 brackish water bodies, locally known as lagoons. Even if mangroves area in that country is limited to 12,000 hectares, it is of much value since it includes very rare species and types of plant associations in different climatological zones. Fishing in these lagoons is the livelihood for over 120,000 coastal people.

In the imperial times Japan invaded China to expand its power in the Far East. Nowadays, when war time in that region is over, a new kind of invasion is up to affect the Chinese territory: that of tree plantations associated to the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol.

While Japanese investors are ocupying the Chinese territory with tree plantations, China is doing business in the paper sector abroad. Kunming Electro-Chemical Plant (KECP), with headquarters in the Chinese province of Yunnan, signed a contract last December with the Myanmar Ministry of Industry to renovate the caustic soda and chlorine plant of the Sittoung Paper Mill No.1 in Mon state. The factory was built in 1992 and production began in 1994.

According to information received from the Costa Rican National Front for the Forest (Frente Nacional por los Bosques) –a coalition of social and environmental NGOs- a peaceful demonstration that took place on February 19 at the crossing of the Puerto Jimenez and Interamericana highways was violently repressed by the rural guard of Osa. The demonstration was organized by the Front together with local communities of Osa to defend the remaining forests of the Pacific region menaced by logging activities.

Considering its high standards in Human Development indicators, Costa Rica is an exceptional country in the Central American region. The country has also assumed a leader’s position in international environmental fora. In January this year, the Government of Costa Rica hosted the Global Workshop on Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Nevertheless -as the above article and this one show- not all that glitters . . .

During the decade of 1970 the destruction of natural forests in El Salvador was accompanied by the set up of coffee plantations under forest cover and some tree plantations. Nowadays coffee plantations under cover, conifers and broad-leaved forest areas are rapidly decreasing as a consequence of urbanization, while mangroves in the south-western coast are being destroyed by shrimp farming and tourism activities.

The opening of Papua New Guinea’s economy has promoted the exploitation of natural resources at an unsustainable level. The dominant vegetation in the country is equatorial rainforest, but it is undergoing a severe process of deforestation due to indiscriminate felling. After having repeated many times that export-led logging should end in Papua New Guinea by the year 2000, in early 1998 the Government announced a moratorium on new export logging projects. The moratorium was agreed to by the Department of Finance and PNG Forest Authority officials, considering that log prices were down, the tax-take was low, and forest management was difficult,

The Venezuelan subsidiary of the Dublin-based Jefferson Smurfit pulp, paperboard and packaging transnational has been finally forced to halt its deforestation activities in the State of Portuguesa. Although the company has huge plantations of fast growing tree species (see WRM Bulletin 18), it had been extensively using wood from the few remaining tropical forests, both from its own land holdings and from third party woodlands. The reason for this illegal - in some cases "legalized"- activity is simple: raw material from forests is cheaper than from plantations.

The ex-congressman and vice-governor from Mato Grosso state Marcio Lacerda is the new president of the Brazilian Indian Foundation (FUNAI). He succeeds in this post Sullivan Silvestre, who died on February 1st in an air crash while he was on duty. Mr Lacerda is one of the chief proponents of the system of waterways, including the Tocantins-Araguaia Hidrovia which would negatively affect the territory occupied by 10,000 indigenous people. During his first public declarations he defended gold mining, and biodiversity and timber exploitation in indigenous lands.

In April 1998, forest activists and scientists from Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Scotland and the U.S. met in Santiago and Pucon, Chile to launch the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign, the goal of which is "to protect, reconnect and restore the life of Gondwana by creating an international sanctuary of Earth's southernmost forests."

On March 9th, the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) will consider providing political risk insurance for a natural gas pipeline that will cut through 200 km of primary tropical forest and 100 km of pristine wetlands in the Bolivian Amazon. The proposed 630-kilometer pipeline starts in Ipias, Bolivia, where it branches from the main Bolivia-Brazil pipeline (already under construction), runs northeast to San Matias, and then to Cuiaba, Brazil. It will bisect the world's largest intact tropical dry forest.

The Court of Rio Negro province in Argentina accepted a petition signed by citizen Jorge Ronco against EDERSA (Empresa de Energia Rio Negro S.A.) and DPA (Provincial Department of Waters) for the environmental damages caused by the hydroelectric project undertaken by both companies in El Bolson area, in the Patagonia region.