The present scenario, where most countries have become mere markets for an increasingly reduced group of powerful corporations that share them between themselves while keeping up a network of commercial links --for which they want to have more and more elbow room--, has also been built up with language and the introduction of concepts that are imposed as truths.
Bulletin articles
Making clean white paper from trees is a dirty business. To make bleached kraft pulp, trees are chipped, cooked under pressure, washed and then bleached. Toxic chemicals are used in the cooking process to remove lignin, a glue-like substance that holds wood cells together and makes trees strong. As lignin causes yellowing of paper, any lignin remaining has to be bleached.
The Fourth meeting of the United Nations Forum on Forests took place in Geneva. Government delegates spent two weeks pretending to address the problems that affect forests, but the truth is that the few things that deserve mentioning happened outside the official meeting rooms (see section on UNFF below).
Since 1990, logging companies, rebel groups, criminal networks, various interim governments and the regime of former president Charles Taylor have colluded to plunder Liberia’s natural resources. During this period the timber sector witnessed a plethora of illegal activities and practices. Logging companies operated in rebel held territories without any form of regulation from the Forestry Development Authority; none of the revenue generated during this period benefited the Liberian people.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the US State Department’s 2003 human rights country reports earlier this year, he obviously hoped that the scandal of US forces’ systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners would never see the light of day. “President Bush regards the defense and advancement of human rights as America’s special calling,” Powell said.
The Vietnamese government responded brutally to peaceful demonstrations by Indigenous Peoples in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in April. Police used tear gas, electric truncheons and water cannons to prevent demonstrators from entering Buon Ma Thuot, the capital city of Dak Lak province. The police were helped by men armed with metal bars, shovels, and machetes. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds of people were wounded. Many people did not return to their villages after the protests and are still missing.
On April 17, more than 400 special troops of the Ecuadorian army entered the detachment of Tigre, on the South Eastern border of the Province of Pastaza, frontier with Peru, allegedly to "capture, neutralize and annihilate armed elements" in the area. This territory belongs to the Kichwa Yana Yaku community, where the Pastaza Indigenous Peoples Organization (OPIP) is based. On that same date, 80 soldiers unexpectedly occupied its premises, accusing it of being the “centre of logistic support” for allegedly subversive groups.
We have just received the good news that on Friday, 21 May, Floresmilo Villalta regained his freedom and immediately travelled to the community of Las Golondrinas to be reunited with his family and friends.
Representatives of the Ecuadorian NGO Acción Ecológica made know their gratefulness, on behalf of Floresmilo, for the “incredible response” to the international campaign organized in favour of the 63-year old peasant, whose only “crime” was to try to defend the forests of his region against timber exploitation by the powerful BOTROSA company.
The Twa were the first inhabitants of the equatorial forests of the Great Lakes region. Originally a high-altitude forest people, inhabiting the mountains of the Albertine Rift Area in Central Africa, they specialized in hunting and gathering. At present, the Twa of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa live in Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and southwest Uganda.
In many respects, there is very little difference between Swaziland and South Africa. Climate, topography, and geology are similar, so it is no wonder that the natural vegetation is much like that found in the South African Provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, that virtually enclose the Swazi Kingdom.
In September 2003, we informed about an exotic pest which had attacked eucalyptus trees in Western Kenya (see WRM Bulletin Nº 74), and reflected on the inherent risk of the monoculture pattern.
Now, the harm has reached neighboring Uganda, with Mpigi, Luweero, Masaka, Kasese, Mbarara, Bushenyi, Mbale, Kapchwora, Tororo, Lira and Apac being the worst hit districts.
Asia's forests are being destroyed at a staggering rate. China, which has become, virtually overnight, the second largest importer of logs in the world, trailing only the United States, has a lot to do with it. (The volume of uncut logs arriving in China has more than tripled since 1998 to over 15 million cubic meters.).