Bulletin Issue 39 – Octuber 2000

A number of tree plantation programmes were implemented in Cameroon in the 1950s, when the territory was under French colonial rule, allegedly to address the process of destruction affecting the country's rich rainforests. As a result, about 40,000 hectares of plantations were set up in a period of 50 years, 25,000 of which in areas formerly occupied by dense rainforest, and the remaining 15,000 hectares in the savannah. Indigenous species --such as dibetou, okoume, ilomba and iroko-- were used to reforest woodlands, while in the savannah both native and exotic species --among which eucalyptus and acacia-- were used.

The Tanzanian territory embraces a wide variety of landscapes, including mountains, savanna, bushlands and forests. Some 53,000 square kilometres of the country comprises lakes, being Lake Victoria the biggest one. With an area of 69,490 square kilometres Lake Victoria is the world's second largest freshwater lake. It is an essential resource for the life of the surrounding region, which has one of Africa's highest population densities. Farming, fishing and boatbuilding are the most significant economic activities that directly depend on the lake.

Foreign investment in mining, gas exploitation and dam megaprojects --identified with "development"-- in fact constitute a direct cause for human rights abuses and a threat to environmental sustainability in Burma. The country is governed by a military dictatorship since 1962, which has imposed a regime characterised by state terrorism.

In early 1999, the Phnom Penh Municipal Authority moved 99 families from a squat behind the Russian embassy in Phnom Penh to Monorom 1, a newly constructed village 150 kilometres away. With the promise of work on an oil palm plantation, new houses and two hectares of palm plantation each many of the squatters were willing to move. A billboard put up by the Phnom Penh authorities announcing that part of the squatters' area was to be made into a park further encouraged people to move. Monorom 1 consists of 99 wooden houses built in rows, half with blue roofs and half with red roofs, each on its own small plot of land. The Phnom Penh authorities also constructed a market and a school.

Some of the so called "natural disasters" --for example those related to floods-- actually result from the combination of natural and human-induced factors. Deforestation is one of the aspects more related to the vulnerability of affected areas in this respect. Lacking the natural coverage provided by the forest, hillsides become prone to landslides, thus increasing the effect of heavy rains associated to floods and their destructive potential (see WRM Bulletins 17 and 27).

Nicaragua is still considered the country having the largest forest cover in Central America, and that with the most extensive primary forests. During the decade of 1980 forest destruction was temporarily halted by the war which was taking place up in the mountains, which forced many indigenous and peasant communities to abandon the region. In 1994 the signature of the First Structural Adjustment Programme meant a boost for the commercial opening of the country. Concessions for the exploitation of natural resources were granted to foreign and national firms. With the excuse of promoting investments and generating jobs forest concessions were granted, and now the government is facing a lawsuit at the Interamerican Court for Human Rights presented by the indigenous communities.

The tropical rainforests of the departament of Beni in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia are suffering deforestation caused by the unscrupulous awarding of concessions to private companies by the government. While large landowners occupy more and more lands, indigenous property rights are not recognized. Now a new threat is pending on them: oil exploitation.

In response to the information published by Taiga Rescue Network in Taiga News Summer 2000 edition, issue 32, regarding the social and environmental impacts of Veracel's eucalyptus plantations in the state of Bahia, Antonio Alberto Prado --Public Affairs Manager of the company-- addressed the publishers to explain them that " . . . since its inception, in 1991, Veracel's land management and plantation development has been based on sustainable, ecologically sound principles". According to him, when Veracel arrived in the region the native Atlantic Forest ("mata atlantica") had mostly disappeared.

Since late August, Chilean forestry companies are carrying out an aggressive publicity campaign under the slogan of "Forests for Chile." Many of us Chilean people feel that we are being attacked by this campaign, which is being very strongly promoted through the mass media. According to the timber corporations' organization CORMA, which groups the large wood and pulp industries, this campaign will be implemented during five years and during its first phase it will cost one million dollars. The total cost of the campaign is estimated in 6 million dollars. The campaign will be carried by all the communications media (television, radio and press), accompanied by different opinion articles written by prominent executives from the more important forestry companies.

Scientific evidences questioning the effectiveness of tree monocultures as carbon sinks are increasing. In case tree plantations are included in the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol there is the risk that --as has happened in the past and is still happening-- vast areas of forests and grasslands in the South will be substituted by monocultures based on a reduced number of fast-growing tree species. This would mean a dramatic decrease in the biodiversity of such areas, both considering number of species and complexity of fluxes at the interior of the system.

A recent study of the Tellus Institute and Stockholm Environment Institute-Boston Center concludes "that while the CDM could induce some legitimate lower-emission electricity generation in host countries, it could also give rise to a considerable amount of spurious emissions allowances by crediting non-additional ("free-rider") activities --activities that would have taken place even in the absence of the CDM." The research finds "that under some plausible CDM regimes, the CDM could serve primarily as an instrument for generating spurious credits, and only secondarily as an instrument for economic efficiency or sustainable development."

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), based in Laxenburg, Austria. carried out a detailed study of Russia's biosphere, which contains a fifth of the world's forests. Its report puts in question the whole idea of using carbon sinks as a means of "compensating" for CO2 emissions. Anatoly Shvidenko, one of the scientists involved in the study, stated that under the Kyoto Protocol, Russia is likely to be able to claim credit for improving its biosphere's ability to soak up carbon, but that the uncertainties involved in calculating such credits are huge and "greatly exceed likely changes in industrial emissions."

During the climate change discussions, some have argued that, given that old-growth forests are carbon reservoirs --and not carbon sinks-- the world's climate would benefit from cutting them down, converting the wood into durable products and replanting the clearcut area. The existing carbon would be safely stored in wood products and the plantation trees would act as sinks for many years, until they reached maturity. This would enhance --so they say-- the carbon sink capacity of forest ecosystems.

Our intrinsic relation with Mother Earth obliges us to oppose the inclusion of sinks in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) because it reduces our sacred land and territories to mere carbon sequestration which is contrary to our cosmovision and philosophy of life. Sinks in the CDM would constitute a worldwide strategy for expropriating our lands and territories and violating our fundamental rights that would culminate in a new form of colonialism. Sinks in the CDM would not help to reduce GHG emissions, rather it would provide industrialized countries with a ploy to avoid reducing their emissions at source.

With just five weeks to go before climate negotiators flock to The Hague to hammer out the implementing rules of the Kyoto Protocol, forests are more and more in danger of being reduced to a single commodity --carbon-- to be traded away under the Kyoto Protocol's so called "Flexible Mechanisms". The resulting "Kyoto forests" are likely to be tree plantations --supposedly a substitute for reducing carbon emissions-- and the implications of these for forests, forest peoples, biodiversity and sustainable development could be grave.

To avoid real action at CO2 producing economies at home, the industrialised countries have come up with other ideas on how to decrease global CO2, e.g. by reducing CO2 elsewhere or declaring forests as 'carbon sinks' to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. 'Carbon sinks' reduce CO2 not by cutting emissions but by soaking it up: Grow a big forest and get rid of tons of carbon bound in the trees. But this CO2 could anytime be released again if the trees are burnt or cut down. Even worse, naturally grown forests, rich in biodiversity, might be replaced by monoculture plantations, which appear to be more effective in soaking up CO2.

Members of the Global Forest Coalition and other NGOs and IPOs that gathered in Lyon in September 2000 prepared a statement explaining the reasons for opposing to carbon sinks in the Clean Development Mechanism. Here there are some of the reasons: 1. Sinks are neither long term nor short term solution to mitigating climate change. The lack of verifiable ways of estimating the ability of forests and other ecosystems to 'compensate' for industrial emissions means that the inclusion of sinks in the CDM would destroy the Kyoto Protocol.

We, the undersigned non-governmental organizations, wish to express extreme concern about the role envisaged for tree plantations in helping industrialized countries meet their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Sixth Conference of the Parties, in November 2000 in the Hague, will likely determine the content of the so-called Clean Development Mechanism, which could allow many Northern countries to meet their emissions reductions targets by implementing projects in the South.

The sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change will take place in November in The Hague, The Netherlands. The public at large, increasingly concerned over the present and future effects of climate change, may well expect as a matter of course that their governments will have the good sense to take constructive action to solve the problem. Among those of us who have been participating in this international process, however, expectations are somewhat different.