An accelerated process of plantation of oil palm is going on in Indonesia. The present area of 3.2 million hectares is expected to increase at a rate of 330,000 hectares a year. Since these monocultures invade lands originally occupied by forests and generally inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities, their expansion means a significative environmental and social problem. Many cases of conflicts regarding the use of the territory and natural resources have been denounced (see WRM Bulletin nr. 14 and 15).
Bulletin articles
Indonesian forests suffer periodically from huge fires. In 1982-83 severe fires destroyed 3.5 million hectares of forests in Kalimantan. Still fresh in our minds are the late 1997 huges fires that devastated millions of hectares of forests in this country, with consequences affecting the whole of South East Asia. Even if presented as “natural disasters” or “accidents” such fires are in fact the consequence of the overexploitation of forests by logging accompanied by the activities of plantation companies and the negligence of the authority to control them.
A number of indigenous peoples' and NGO networks of Indonesia are organizing the “Congress of the Indigenous People of the Archipelago – Challenging the positions of Indigenous Peoples and the State” to be held on March 15-22, 1999 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
For years, environmental and Human Rights groups have harshly criticized Freeport -a huge US-based mining company- for its polluting operations for the extraction of copper and gold in Irian Jaya (Indonesia) and in Bougainville and Ok Tedi (Papua New Guinea). The company has been also involved in cases of violence against local Ekari peasants, with the complicity of the authorities (see WRM Bulletins nr. 7 and 8).
In different countries of the world conflicts have arisen between the protection of national parks and the conservation of wildlife on the one hand, and the defense of the rights of people that live in those areas on the other. The hegemonic official model of conservation has a vision of nature as composed by beautiful –but empty- spaces, ignoring that the sustainable use that most local communities practice in these areas is the best guarantee for conservation. The problem is especially important in countries with a high density of rural population.
Mangroves are wetlands rich in biodiversity that are suffering a severe depredation worldwide. In Sri Lanka mangroves are associated with 22 brackish water bodies, locally known as lagoons. Even if mangroves area in that country is limited to 12,000 hectares, it is of much value since it includes very rare species and types of plant associations in different climatological zones. Fishing in these lagoons is the livelihood for over 120,000 coastal people.
In the imperial times Japan invaded China to expand its power in the Far East. Nowadays, when war time in that region is over, a new kind of invasion is up to affect the Chinese territory: that of tree plantations associated to the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol.
While Japanese investors are ocupying the Chinese territory with tree plantations, China is doing business in the paper sector abroad. Kunming Electro-Chemical Plant (KECP), with headquarters in the Chinese province of Yunnan, signed a contract last December with the Myanmar Ministry of Industry to renovate the caustic soda and chlorine plant of the Sittoung Paper Mill No.1 in Mon state. The factory was built in 1992 and production began in 1994.
According to information received from the Costa Rican National Front for the Forest (Frente Nacional por los Bosques) –a coalition of social and environmental NGOs- a peaceful demonstration that took place on February 19 at the crossing of the Puerto Jimenez and Interamericana highways was violently repressed by the rural guard of Osa. The demonstration was organized by the Front together with local communities of Osa to defend the remaining forests of the Pacific region menaced by logging activities.
Considering its high standards in Human Development indicators, Costa Rica is an exceptional country in the Central American region. The country has also assumed a leader’s position in international environmental fora. In January this year, the Government of Costa Rica hosted the Global Workshop on Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Nevertheless -as the above article and this one show- not all that glitters . . .
During the decade of 1970 the destruction of natural forests in El Salvador was accompanied by the set up of coffee plantations under forest cover and some tree plantations. Nowadays coffee plantations under cover, conifers and broad-leaved forest areas are rapidly decreasing as a consequence of urbanization, while mangroves in the south-western coast are being destroyed by shrimp farming and tourism activities.
The opening of Papua New Guinea’s economy has promoted the exploitation of natural resources at an unsustainable level. The dominant vegetation in the country is equatorial rainforest, but it is undergoing a severe process of deforestation due to indiscriminate felling.