More than a year ago, the Pataxó indigenous peoples re-took an important part of their traditional territory located in the state of Bahia (see WRM Special Bulletin May 2000). Since then, they have been struggling to have their rights recognized by the government, with little support from environmental organizations, many of whom seem to deny them their capacity to manage the forest that rightly belongs to them.
Bulletin articles
In order to revamp its deteriorated image, the Chilean forestry sector launched in August the multimillion-dollar campaign “Forests for Chile”, consisting of propaganda in mass media aimed at convincing public opinion about the benefits of what it calls "forests" and which are in fact monoculture tree plantations (see WRM Bulletin 39).
For more than 10 years Uruguay has been implementing an unsustainable forestry model, substituting its natural prairie ecosystems with large-scale eucalyptus and pine tree plantations.
A coalition of non-government organisations is calling on the Government to make some fundamental changes in the forest industry. They are calling for the continuation of the current moratorium on new logging concessions until reforms are in place to deal with the many problems in the sector.
The Solomon Islands have been devastated by Australian and Asian logging companies; which have swept through the country's forests, leaving a trail of disintegrating communities, flattened and degraded forests and silted coral reefs from runoff of exposed fragile soils.
The Sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change is finally over and nothing much appears to have been achieved to address global warming. This doesn't come as a surprise, given that the majority of government delegates -- with a few exceptions -- focused more on how to obtain profits for their countries and corporations from the new carbon trade than on finding true solutions to the looming climate disaster.
The draft Forestry Law being discussed by the Gabonese Parliament encourages the industrialization of wood within the country. According to the Ministry for Waters and Forests, the new law will establish more strict rules concerning the exploitation of the country's forests. Concessions to private companies will be granted for a longer period of time, allegedly to favour the regeneration of the forest.
Even though indigenous peoples and rural communities are the ones directly bearing the brunt of the destruction of rainforests by intruders, most national governments portray them as squatters and responsible for the destruction of the forest and the extinction of wildlife, and threaten them with eviction or undertake direct actions to expel them from their homeland.
Shell is continuing its clever misleading propaganda orchestrated through advertisements circulating in the most influencial press media of the North, in order to revamp its tarnished image and convince public opinion that it is an environmentally friendly company. The campaign "Profits and Principles: Is there a choice?" is based on beautiful photographs of wild animals, lush forests, and tender faces of African people accompanied by texts like: "Time and again at Shell we're discovering the rewards of respecting the environment when doing business".
The Rufiji Delta in South Eastern Tanzania holds some 53,255 hectares of unspoiled mangrove forest. These mangroves are not only a key element for the environment in the region by stabilising the coastline, building land through accumulation of silt and the production of detritus, preserving the quality of water, and serving as windbreaks for the hinterland, but also constitutes the source of livelihoods for thousands of people living there (see WRM Bulletin 12).
The temporary work permit given to the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company (KIOCL) to continue the extraction of iron in the Kudremukh National Park, located in the Western Ghats region of the state of Karnataka, has given place to severe criticism from national and international environmental NGOs, which had been putting pressure on the authorities for the company's request to be denied.
On 7th November 2000 the formal opening of a US$2.9 million laminated-wood processing factory took place at Nabong Farm, 30 kilometres from Vientiane, the capital of Lao PDR. The factory will initially sell timber pallets to IKEA, the Swedish retailing giant, and in future will produce furniture under the trademark Vicwood. Financing came from a series of loans --US$550,000 from IKEA, US$800,000 from the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, and US$300,000 from Swedfund, the Swedish IFC counterpart.