Bulletin Issue 77 - December 2003

Since 1992, the world has had a Convention on Climate Change. The signing and ratification of this convention implies obligations, both legal and moral. Most governments have already ratified it. However, after all these years, governments have little to show except for tons of paper resulting from endless negotiations. The 9th Conference of the Parties (COP) recently ended in Milan, again without enough signatures being found to put the 1997 Kyoto Protocol into force. After six years, the Protocol, designed to curb industrialized countries’ greenhouse emissions, still awaits the signatures of the United States, the world’s main polluter, and Russia.

As the global economy expands, pressure on indigenous lands to yield up minerals, oil and gas is intensifying, posing a major threat on them, their lands, territories and the resources that they depend on. The World Bank has been an instrument of such process, supporting mining projects that have been even condemned by the United Nations.

On 28 November-4 December 2003, at Rasi Salai, Thailand, the Thailand-based Assembly of the Poor, USA-based International Rivers Network (IRN), and Southeast Asia Rivers Network (SEARIN) from Thailand, organized the Second International Meeting of Dam Affected People and their Allies, or Rivers for Life! The meeting was attended by more than 300 people from 62 countries throughout the world, peoples affected by dams, fighters against destructive dams, and activists for sustainable and equitable water and energy management. They met on land that is being restored to life after being flooded by a dam. The gates of the dam are now open, the river flows, the crops have ripened, the fish are starting to return, community life is becoming vibrant once more.

With a population generally estimated to number about 100,000 persons in Cameroon, "pygmies" constitute the best known and the most vulnerable of Africa’s forest peoples. Their lifestyle is closely linked to the forest, from which they obtain their food (meat, fruits, honey, roots, etc.) and the traditional medicinal products for which they are known to be great experts. The forest is their natural habitat in which they continue, for the most part, to be nomadic. Cameroon’s 1993 Forestry Policy and the 1994 Forestry Law and its implementation instruments have implied a negation of the customary rights of natives.

In a continent still ravaged by more than 20 armed conflicts backed by foreign interests and financed through pillage of the continent’s natural resources --oil, diamonds, gold, timber, copper, cobalt and coltan--, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, comes as a question mark for some. For others it is a "Marshall Plan" for Africa, expressing the imposition of capitalist neoliberalism: privatization, trade liberalization, export-led (de)-industrialization, structural adjustment programmes, encouraging Africans to pay unpayable debts, conservative fiscal and monetary policies and, indeed, the entire menu of the international financial institutions.

While Kenyans celebrate their forty years of independence, the Ogiek remember the forty years of dispossession and institutional marginalisation. They have suffered systematic oppression, suppression and brutality through a policy of assimilation leading to extinction.

A wide range of stakeholders from environment and community groups, research bodies and decision-makers from government and industry came together in Nelspruit, South Africa in mid-November to discuss a burning issue - the impact of timber plantations. The conference, on Timber Plantations: Impacts, Future Visions and Global Trends was hosted by GEASPHERE in coalition with TimberWatch S.A. on 13 and 14 November. It gave a chance for the growing number of environmentalists and stakeholders to vent their mounting concern, and to allow them to interact with representatives from government and the industry, to discuss issues, and search for common ground to develop a future "forest" vision.

Burma is famous for its rich deposits of gemstones which include rubies, sapphires, and jade. The town of Mogok, which is located in the eastern corner of Mandalay Division along the Shan State border, has been the centre for ruby and sapphire mining for eight-hundred years. The mining enterprises operating in Mogok were first taken over by British interests in 1888. They were later nationalized in 1962 following the military coup headed by General Ne Win. Until comparatively recently, however, these enterprises were relatively small-scale and caused limited damage to the surrounding environment. Since 1989, there has been a major shift towards large-scale mining operations which has transformed the industry.

With more than a year into its construction, the controversial US$1.2 million Ladia Galaska road network project will link the west coast of Aceh with the eastern coast of northern Sumatra. Over 90 kilometers out of the planned 505-kilometer-long road cuts through the relatively pristine forest of the central highlands at the Leuser national park, and this would have notorious permanent negative impacts on the environment. The debate around the project reignited when a huge flash flood on November 2, in Mount Leuser National Park, nearby North Sumatra province, took a toll of more than 150 dead and scores missing.

It is estimated that already 40% of the Philippines territory has been given away under the form of concessions to multinational mining companies. However, this process has not happened without opposition. From the Cordillera region in northern Philippines to the South Eastern region of the Palawan Island, the Subanen, Tagbunau, Pala'wan, Tau't bato and Batak indigenous groups (see WRM bulletins Nº 11, 28, 67) have struggled to defend their territories from the pervasive impacts of mining.

On 1 December 2003, SmartWood suspended the Forest Stewardship Council certification of two of Forest Industry Organisation’s teak plantations. SmartWood is accredited by FSC to assess whether forestry operations conform to FSC’s principles for well managed forests or plantations. FIO was established as a state-run logging company in 1947. When the government imposed a logging ban in 1989, many Thai NGOs demanded that FIO be closed down. Since then FIO has tried to reinvent itself as a plantation company. With the FSC certificate suspended, FIO cannot credibly claim that any of its plantations are well managed.

On the night of 26 November 2003, journalist Germán Antonio Rivas was shot and killed. He was the managing director of Corporación Maya Visión television station, which broadcasts from the western city of Santa Rosa de Copán, on the border with Guatemala. He was the director of the news program “CMV-Noticias,” known for its criticism of the installation of a mining operation within the Guisayote National Park in the department of Ocotepeque, questioning the activities of the mining company due to the impact they would have on the environment and the conservation of natural resources.

On 4 December, thousands of people from cities and villages in the Provinces of Chubut and Rio Negro again marched together with the neighbours of Esquel to say “NO to the Mine.” This reaffirmation by the people took place in the midst of a new mining encroachment, as personnel of these corporations are scouring the outskirts of Cholila (in Chubut, a few kilometres from the Los Alerces National Park). If mining activities continue, various lake systems and the Patagonian Andean forest will be endangered. The fear of the population is no longer over the initiation of exploitation, but over the very stage of exploration itself.

The Plantar forestry company located in the State of Minas Gerais has large eucalyptus plantations in the zone, established at the expense of evicting the local populations. They were also established at the expense of the typical forest in the zone (the “cerrado”), and the trees were converted into charcoal to supply the iron and steel industry and replaced by eucalyptus, planted for the same objective.

On 12 December, the Matte (CMPC companies), Angelini (Arauco) forestry groups and a number of Chilean and US environmental NGOs signed an agreement (see http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Chile/article2.html ) whereby the companies have agreed to conserve the areas of native forest existing on their properties – representing 2.8% of the total surface of the native forests in the country – and not replace them by tree plantations.

In 1998, the author Joe Broderick finished his research on the Smurfit Carton de Colombia company, publishing his book “El imperio de cartón: impacto de una multinacional papelera en Colombia” (The Cardboard empire: the impact of a multinational paper company in Colombia). In this book he provides details of the serious social and environmental impacts caused by the activities of a branch of the Irish transnational company, Jefferson Smurfit in that country.