Bulletin Issue 35 – June 2000

Facing strong opposition from civil society representatives, the World Bank recently approved a controversial oil and pipeline project led by Exxon-Mobil, that will link oil fields in Chad to Cameroon's Atlantic coast. The project sponsors also include Chevron and Petronas, the Malaysian state company. The total cost of the megaproject will reach U$S 3.7 billion and it will be one of the largest of its kind ever undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa.

After the tragic floods in Mozambique, the time is ripe for people to start asking questions on what went wrong. What turned those floods into an epic disaster? What can be done to reduce the likelihood of it happening again?

South Africa boosts an area of 1.5 million hectares of tree plantations, mostly composed of eucalyptus and pine trees, as well as a lesser area of Australian wattle. These plantations have resulted in an important number of social and environmental impacts, most of which were highlighted during a symposium held last June 10 in Pietermaritzburg, organized by the local NGO coalition Timberwatch.

Decentralization policies regarding forest management is being considered in the last decade an alternative to the centralized model in use in most countries, which has proved to be unable to assure forest sustainability. Many countries have given municipal and provincial governments additional forest-related responsibilities, in the hope that authorities closer to the ground will understand their local conditions better, have greater capacity to monitor what goes on, and make decisions that reflect local needs.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic -the only landlocked country in Southeastern Asia- occupies an area of 236,800 square kilometres with a still large coverage of forests. These forests hold high levels of biodiversity, and provide the livelihoods for much of the 80% of the population that lives in the countryside.

The concept of nature without -and in most cases excluding- people, which fed natural areas conservation theory in the past decades, is still being applied in as different countries as India (see WRM Bulletin 20) and Brazil (see WRM Bulletin 28). Even though the principles of sustainable forest management internationally adopted recognize the importance of the full participation of local communities in all levels of forest management, in several cases local dwellers are seen as a threat for nature conservation. Reality counters this vision, since they are generally directly responsible for keeping protected areas -which are their home and source of livelihoods- alive and functional.

Dam megaprojects have been and are being strongly resisted in Thailand due to their adverse effects on local villagers' livelihoods and lands. One paradigmatic example is that of the Pak Mun Dam, which has negatively affected 3,080 families in the area, by causing a drastic reduction in the number of fish in the Mun River, fresh drinking water shortage, an increase in the incidence of intestinal fluke, and a potential spread of schistosomiasis from snail vectors inhabiting the reservoir (see WRM Bulletin 22).

On February 21st, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai approved the construction of a project to transform the historic Ho Chi Minh Trail into a 1,690 kilometres long National Highway, running from the capital Hanoi to the southern Ho Chi Minh City, former Saigon. According to the authorities, the new route would ease growing congestion on Highway 1, located along the coast, and consolidate national defence along Vietnam's western border with Laos and Cambodia. Cuban engineers belonging to the Cuban-Vietnamese joint venture construction firm VIC will participate in the project.

Local indigenous and peasant communities are usually accused of forest degradation and are either evicted from their lands, or repressed, or both. At the same time, logging companies which benefit from deforestation, receive support from those same governments that accuse local peoples of destroying the environment. The following two cases from Mexico constitute but a drop in a sea of many such cases occuring throughout the world.

Bolivia hosts 440,000 sq.km of rainforests, which represent 57% of the lowlands total surface in the country. Deforestation rate reaches 168,000 hectares/year, being the promotion of export crops and logging concessions wantonly granted the main causes of this problem. Environmental NGOs have frequently expressed their concern over the situation of the forestry sector in Bolivia, characterized by the disrespect to indigenous traditional territories and the inefficiency of the government to adequately address the problem (see WRM Bulletin 22).

The National Agricultural Council (NAC) -representing the interests of big landowners in Brazil- had been trying by all means to oppose any legal initiative to protect the country's forests, which they would systematically consider a limitation to their power on people and land. In fact, about 50% of the land in Brazil is in the hands of just 1% of the population.

Aerial spraying to control and eradicate illegal crops in Colombia are creating severe problems to rural communities and forests, similar to those provoked by the crops themselves and by the chemicals used in drug production. Coca and poppy crops in Colombia have increased in forests despite the eradication policy that began to be applied against marihuana cultivation in 1978. In 1980 an operation to combat marihuana crops at Guajira and the aerial spraying with glyphosate resulted in the worst ecological and sanitary disaster ever experienced in the region.

Following a recommendation of the Privatisation Unit's Board, the government of Guyana is considering a proposal under which Primegroup Limited and Matthews Associates would take over the Wauna Oil Palm Estate in the north west region of the country, on condition that they establish a local company. Primegroup Ltd. is a major investor in oil palm development in Malaysia, ranked as the first producer in the world.

During the past months, Peru has occupied the international news headlines because of the political and institutional deterioration that is affecting the country. In line with such situation, the Peruvian Amazon forest continues to deteriorate. Oil prospection and extraction (see WRM Bulletins 1 and 8) and logging by powerful Malaysian companies (see WRM Bulletin 34) are two main causes of such degradation. The depredatory activities of local loggers, as well as illegal coca cultivation aimed at supplying the international cocaine market, further add to the problem.

A 30-year campaign led by environmentalist organizations in New Zealand (see WRM Bulletin 30) has at last reached its goal, since the new government has recently introduced legislation to stop the logging of publicly-owned temperate rainforests at the West Coast, and to transform them into national parks and other conservation reserves. "These lowland forests are considered by many New Zealanders to be a unique and significant part of our natural heritage, too valuable for logging of any sort to continue," expressed Pete Hodgson -the Minister responsible for timberlands- addressing the Parliament on May 11.

A recent report on sustainable forest management in Cambodia, funded by the Asian Development Bank, has prompted the discussion of this important issue among stakeholders. The report states that the management of the country's forests is a "total systems failure" since "at the current level of cut every concession will be logged out within seven years", and recommends immediate reforms.

In May this year, the WRM held a meeting in the Mount Tamalpais area near San Francisco, California. Among many other important issues, the meeting addressed the increasing pressure to promote large scale tree plantations as a means to "offset" carbon dioxide emissions, and issued a Declaration detailing the reasons for opposing such approach.

Following an existing trend at the global level, oil companies in Argentina have enthusiastically embraced the idea of entering the carbon permits market, as an effective way to increase their profits and revamp their image to the eyes of public opinion: from the bad guys responsible for global warming to champions of forest conservation! Since 1998, the government has been making things easier for them by favouring investments in plantation projects, disregarding their impacts on the valuable grassland ecosystems that have been the natural and physical support of the country's economy (see WRM Bulletin 17).

The expansion of tree monocultures in Tasmania -which is paradoxically the centre of origin of Eucalyptus globulus, one of the most widely used species for establishing monocultures throughout the world- under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol is provoking widespread concern in Australia.

Forestry companies worldwide are enthusiastically trying to implement the idea of establishing tree plantations in Southern countries under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, allegedly as a way of sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere to mitigate the effects of global warming ... and of making good profits at the same time. Even if presented as "environmentally friendly", the whole idea of plantations as carbon sinks is based on weak scientific arguments and does not constitute an effective way of reducing CO2 concentrations in the air. Additionally, it enhances the detrimental effects of the hegemonic tree monoculture scheme at the local and regional levels.

As nearly everyone knows, the world is heating up, and one of the main causes of climate change is the use of fossil fuels. Under pressure, the industrialized countries most responsible for this state of affairs made some minimal commitments to reduce their fossil fuel emissions in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. However, some of the most polluting countries are trying to find ways out of their commitments, using potential loopholes in the Protocol which may allow them to plant millions of hectares of trees in Southern countries as a substitute for cutting emissions at source.