Bulletin Issue 43 – February 2001

The Cameroonian Center for Environment & Development (CED) has sent out the first issue of "Inside Cameroon", a monthly electronic bulletin in English containing update information on environment, development, economics and Human Rights issues in that country. A French version will be available soon. This first bulletin provides detailed information and clear analysis on a number of crucial environmental and social issues, as detailed in the table of contents: Forests: - Forests and Forest Politics in Cameroon - Cameroon’s Dubious "Award for Rational Forest Management" International Finance Institutions: - The Donor Community and the Forests – World Bank causes concern - Economic and Financial Audit of the Cameroonian Forestry Sector

A study, published by IITA and CIFOR in 1997, on the production and consumption of firewood and the relationship between this use of wood and deforestation in southern Cameroon shows interesting results, which question some of the myths related to the responsibility of the rural poor in forest destruction as well as on the alleged benefits of plantations to counteract it.

The book written by Albert Kwokwo Barume recently published by the Forest Peoples Programme and IWGIA --"Heading Towards Extinction? Indigenous Rights in Africa: The Case of the Twa of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo"-- examines the fate of the Twa indigenous people in that country.

The Ogiek people of Kenya constitute an ethnic minority community, which has lived basically from hunting and honey-gathering since time immemorial in the highland Tinet forest area, which are part of the vast Mau Forests in Kenya, about 250 km west of the capital Nairobi. Some of them also practise subsistence farming and livestock breeding. Even though they consider themselves as the guardians of such forests and have managed them in a sustainable way, they have been forced to defend themselves against the arbitrariness of both colonial and post-colonial governments, who have ignored them and wanted to get hold of their lands. They resisted official arm twisting and threats, and several times went to court in the defense of their rights (see WRM Bulletins 24 and 33).

Oil companies are worldwide known for the negative environmental impact they produce both at the local and the global levels. While in the places where oil prospection and exploitation is performed, environmental destruction and social disruption is the rule, at the global level the burning of fossil fuels is one of the main causes of global warming.

Dam megaprojects worldwide have proved detrimental to the environment and to local communities, who directly bear the brunt of their consequences. Frequently corrupt practices are adopted by governments, consulting firms and companies --all interested in the realization of such projects-- to go ahead with them. This is what happened with the Dandeli dam project in India.

The growth of the pulp and paper sector in Indonesia since the late '80s has been based on the clearcutting of vast area of forests --estimated in at least 800,000 hectares a year-- the spread of tree monocultures, the violation of indigenous peoples' land rights, and the granting of official subsidies to the companies, which often hide corrupt practices (see WRM Bulletin 41).

Lao government officials, international aid agencies and forestry consultants are almost unanimous in claiming that large-scale reforestation is urgently needed in Laos to address the problems associated with deforestation. Yet, under the Asian Development Bank's US$11.2 million "Industrial Tree Plantation" project, forests are being further destroyed and replaced by monoculture plantations. The beneficiaries are private companies such as BGA Lao Plantation Forestry Ltd, which is currently establishing 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations in Khammouane and Bholikhamsay provinces. The timber from the plantations will be exported as wood chips to Japan via the deep sea port of Cua Lo near Vinh in Vietnam.

The struggle of the Penan and other indigenous peoples of Sarawak to defend their ancestral lands and culture, is a very long and hard one. A way through which the Penan have expressed their resistance is the construction of blockades to prevent logging companies entering the forest. Even though to the viewpoint of the authorities this kind of actions constitute the so called “Penan problem”, as a matter of fact the real problem is the official attitude, deaf to the claims of the Penan and friendly towards Malaysian and foreign logging companies that invade their lands and destroy the forest.

Much of the Belizean territory is still covered by forests, which host an enormous diversity in plant and animal life. Those forests have however been exploited for centuries in an unsustainable manner. What the forest hides is the fact that the most commercially valuable hardwood species have all but disappeared, particularly mahogany.

Private commercial tree plantations began to be implemented in Colombia in the 1960s. Long-fibre wood commercial plantations --pine and cypress-- are mostly located in the West of the country, in the Departments of Antioquía, Caldas, Quindio, Risaralda, Valle and Cauca, while in the central zone --in the Departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá-- there is a dominance of Eucalyptus globulus.

Industrial shrimp farming is one of the direct causes of the deforestation of mangroves in the tropics. In Ecuador the level of destruction caused by the 1970s and mid 1980s shrimp production boom continues unabated, even though a law for the protection of mangroves was approved in 1995. Nowadays there are in Ecuador 40,000 hectares of ponds which have affected 70% of the country's mangrove area and practically all of its estuaries in the Pacific Ocean shore. Local economies have been disrupted. The successive Ecuadorian governments have been supporting this destructive activity --trumpetted as the "Blue Revolution"-- by granting it land concessions, building infrastructure to favour the transport of the products, offering subsidies, etc.

Inner land in Guyana consists of a 150 kilometre wide tropical rainforest, mostly untouched. However, the official perception since the ‘70s of mining as essential for “development”, and the opening of the country’s economy --with the subsequent promotion of the exploitation of natural resources, especially timber and minerals-- to face the increasing foreign debt and satisfy the conditions of the 1991 structural adjustment programme imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, have paved the way to transnational companies. Thanks to the generous grating of huge areas for timber and mining exploitation, they are making big business and, at the same time, destroying the environment and causing severe problems to indigenous peoples (see WRM Bulletin 17).

The spill of 5,500 barrels of oil at the Marañón River that occurred on October 3rd 2000 in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, at Urarinas and Parinari Districts in the Province of Loreto, constitutes an ecological disaster, whose consequences are still provoking damages to the environment and to the indigenous population of the area. The spill affected the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, which is the biggest protected area in the country. Responsible for both the accident and the present situation is the transnational Pluspetrol based in Argentina.

What follows are extracts from the findings of an environmental and social impact assessment of logging operations in the west coast of Manus province, carried out in 1997 and during January 2000, which details the impacts of logging.

The World Bank's Forest Policy Implementation Review and Strategy process (FPIRS) is entering its final stages. After having received input from numerous stakeholders throughout the world, the Bank suddenly appears to be less willing to share its draft new policy for meaningful input from all those engaged in the process, before presenting the policy to the Bank's Board of Executive Directors for its final approval.

The World Bank has been drafting a new resettlement policy for the past three years. After a long period of external consultation, a revised policy has now finally been submitted to the Bank's 'Committee on Development Effectiveness', but it was not accepted and is now to be reconsidered internally. A leaked copy of the draft policy shows that it retains serious deficiencies: - it makes less secure provisions for people who lack recognised rights to land than the previous policy - it falls far below the proposed standards of the World Commission on Dams - it makes a questionable distinction between voluntary and involuntary resettlement - it does not require improvements to the livelihoods or standards of living of those displaced

One of the issues that has not been addressed in the discussions about the World Bank's future Forest Policy and Strategy is that of the Bank's position regarding genetically modified organisms. This needs to be urgently addressed, particularly because the following information is generating concern within the environmental movement: - Although the subject of genetically modified organisms has become one of the most visible environmental debates, the World Bank’s latest annual environmental report chooses to be silent on the issue.

For years the mainstream "experts" were wrong in the identification of the main causes leading to deforestation and they were thus equally wrong in the solutions they put forward to save the forests. According to them, one of the main causes of deforestation was the use of fuelwood by "the poor". Their solution was thus to put in place eucalyptus plantations to provide "the poor" with firewood. According to them, people living in the forests were responsible for deforestation and therefore needed to be removed from the forest in order to protect the latter from the former. People were thus expelled from their homelands under the pretence of protecting the forests.