Since the Indonesian government wants this country to become the first world exporter of oil palm --overcoming Malaysia-- this industry is currently undergoing a boom. To face the negative effects that oil palm plantations are producing at the local level on the environment and on peasants and their livelihoods, last July a group of Indonesian NGOs created Sawit Watch (see WRM bulletin nr. 14). Several actions have since then been carried out.
Bulletin articles
Vietnam is currently involved in a large scale "reforestation" programme. According to offical sources 850,000 hectares of trees were planted nationwide between 1993 and 1995. Large areas of the country have been covered with monoculture plantations, often for export as wood chips to Taiwan and Japan. This scheme is not aimed at attending the needs of farmers, villagers, or even the Vietnamese economy in the long run. The Vietnamese paper business is currently suffering a severe crisis, since more wood is being produced than the country's pulp processors can handle.
Last February in the village of Rosita, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, representatives of the indigenous peoples Sumus and Miskitos, local and regional authorities, NGOs, community and religious leaders, met to consider the illegal activities of the Korean transnational company Kimyung, which operated through the subsidiary SOLCARSA, responsible for invading communal lands and destroying the forests and livelihoods of local people. The meeting approved a declaration demanding the inmediate suspension of the concession awarded to the company (see WRM Bulletin nr. 11).
Greenpeace has launched a virtual boat tour of Canada's endangered temperate rainforest. The site is intended to acquaint web surfers with this remote ancient forest and the impending threats it faces from clearcut logging.
We have received the sad news that a person was killed while trying to protect native forests being cut in Grizzly Creek by the timber company Pacific Lumber.
What follows are quotes from research carried out in the Bolivian Andes by Danish researcher Thor Hjarsen, who is one of our readers.
After a long struggle started in 1995, Brazilian NGOs and peasant organizations, with support from representatives of the Catholic church, succeeded in halting a megaproject of eucalyptus plantation in the state of Amapa in northern Brazil. The plan of Champion Paper and Cellulose. and its subsidiary Chamflora Amapa Agroflorestal Ltda to set up 100,000 hectares of eucalyptus, would have affected the lands and livelihoods of the peasants of the region.
Smurfit Cartons Venezuela --a subsidiary of the US-based transnational Jefferson Smurfit-- has been operating in Venezuela's Portuguesa state since 1986. Its extensive pulpwood plantations for the production of paperboard have resulted in equally extensive social and environmental problems. This situation has been analysed by the Venezuelan Senate's Environment Commission, which has recently produced a 120-page report documenting such impacts.
Mapuche and Pehuenche organizations of Chile are planning a visit to Europe to contact and lobby financial and state agencies involved in the controversial hydroelectric projects that are afecting the Bio Bio watershed (see WRM Bulletin nr. 11). The visit has been programmed for 2 to 20 November and will cover Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Organizations interested in cooperating to make it possible, please contact the Action Group for the Bio Bio (“Grupo de Accion para el Bio Bio”).
Source: Dario Jana. September 1998.
Boreal Forests of the World IV: Integrating Cultural Values into Local and Global Forest Protection. Tartu, Estonia 5-10 October 1998
Every two years (since its founding in 1992), Taiga Rescue Network has organised an international conference on boreal forests. This year it will be held in Estonia and will focus on: Integrating Cultural Values in Local and Global Forest Protection.
For many years the Australian environmental movement has chosen to "lay off" plantations as an issue, as it was seen that in the Australian context, they could be a useful alternative to native forest logging. This situation has now changed with the Tasmanian Greens, for instance, opposing the establishment of any further plantations.
Invited by GTZ, Alvaro González of the International Secretariat of the WRM, participated at the International Expert Consultation on the Six-Country Initiative “Putting the IPF Proposals for Action into Practice”, that took place in Baden Baden, Germany, from June 29 to July 3.