The Venezuelan subsidiary of the Dublin-based Jefferson Smurfit pulp, paperboard and packaging transnational has been finally forced to halt its deforestation activities in the State of Portuguesa. Although the company has huge plantations of fast growing tree species (see WRM Bulletin 18), it had been extensively using wood from the few remaining tropical forests, both from its own land holdings and from third party woodlands. The reason for this illegal - in some cases "legalized"- activity is simple: raw material from forests is cheaper than from plantations.
Bulletin articles
The ex-congressman and vice-governor from Mato Grosso state Marcio Lacerda is the new president of the Brazilian Indian Foundation (FUNAI). He succeeds in this post Sullivan Silvestre, who died on February 1st in an air crash while he was on duty.
Mr Lacerda is one of the chief proponents of the system of waterways, including the Tocantins-Araguaia Hidrovia which would negatively affect the territory occupied by 10,000 indigenous people. During his first public declarations he defended gold mining, and biodiversity and timber exploitation in indigenous lands.
In April 1998, forest activists and scientists from Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Scotland and the U.S. met in Santiago and Pucon, Chile to launch the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign, the goal of which is "to protect, reconnect and restore the life of Gondwana by creating an international sanctuary of Earth's southernmost forests."
On March 9th, the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) will consider providing political risk insurance for a natural gas pipeline that will cut through 200 km of primary tropical forest and 100 km of pristine wetlands in the Bolivian Amazon. The proposed 630-kilometer pipeline starts in Ipias, Bolivia, where it branches from the main Bolivia-Brazil pipeline (already under construction), runs northeast to San Matias, and then to Cuiaba, Brazil. It will bisect the world's largest intact tropical dry forest.
The Court of Rio Negro province in Argentina accepted a petition signed by citizen Jorge Ronco against EDERSA (Empresa de Energia Rio Negro S.A.) and DPA (Provincial Department of Waters) for the environmental damages caused by the hydroelectric project undertaken by both companies in El Bolson area, in the Patagonia region.
This edition of the WRM bulletin is entirely focused on the NGO-led process, jointly organized with the government of Costa Rica and UNEP (with additional support and participation from an important number of governments and intergovernmental agencies) to identify and suggest measures to address the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation.
What follows is the synthesis report prepared as background document for the Global Workshop on Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Costa Rica,18-22 January), under the heading "An overview of the underlying causes identified, similarities and differences and possible ways forward."
What follows are comments by WRM's International Coordinator on the synthesis report, presentation made at the Global Workshop on January 18th.
Before making any comments, it is important to explain how the process leading to this synthesis report -and to this Global Workshop- was implemented. From the start it was decided that the process would be participatory (and stemming from concrete realities), solution-oriented (and not accusatory) and that it would include all regions of the world.
What follows is Mia Siscawati's (Focal Point for Asia) presentation during the final plenary session of the Global Workshop on January 22nd:
Given that the outcome of the workshop resulted in a lengthy document including an important number of recommendations, we have not included it in this bulletin. However, the report is available in the WRM web page (www.wrm.org.uy) in the Underlying causes section (Global Workshop). Most of the documentation produced for and by the regional and indigenous peoples workshops are also available in the same web page.
One of the main reasons which explains why large-scale industrial tree plantations can be promoted at the global level while they are being strongly opposed at the local level, is the manipulation of concepts and information to feed the uninformed public. Trees -any trees- are presented as sinonimous to forests and forests are rightly perceived by most people as good and necessary to humanity. The fact that plantations have nothing in common with forests is not that easy to be understood by the general -particularly the urban- public.
Not according to British researchers James Fairhead and Melissa Leach.
Their recent book 'Reframing Deforestation, Global Analysis and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa', published by Routledge Press, uses extensive historical evidence from archives, travelers' reports, and oral accounts for Benin, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Togo to show claims of massive forest loss in these countries have been greatly exaggerated.
Specifically, they find that: