The following includes a description of the situation facing Yasuni National Park, a sign-on letter and an appeal to remain in contact with the campaign. If you or your organisation can sign on to the letter please respond to amazonia@hoy.net. A copy of the letter will be delivered to the President of Ecuador, the President of Petroecuador, the President of UNESCO and to interested oil companies. If you would like to send your own version please send a copy to us at the same e-mail address or at the following Fax Number 593-2-527-583
Bulletin articles
by Iwan Brave
The Venetiaan administration sold the rainforest bit by bit. But the current Bouterse minded NDP government is having a sell-off. Over half the territory of Suriname is already in concession. A few people are getting very rich from this. The inhabitants of the interior are being ignored. Time to get together. Like in a village by the name of Pikin Slee.
Bolivian forests are among the richest in the world in terms of biodiversity, with more than 2500 species of trees. Protected areas include some 9,5 million hectares and Indigenous areas about 1 million hectares, while more than 21 million hectares have been granted in forestry concessions, in line with the Bolivian forestry law passed in 1996.
The Penon indigenous peoples of Venezuela are inviting to a meeting which will be held at Kumarakapay (San Francisco de Yuruani), la Gran Sabana, on June 25 - 28. The idea is to bring together all those wishing to defend the ancestral rights of indigenous peoples to their territory, cultural identity and self determination rights, and to protect the environment.
The situation in Uruguay, where Parliament unanimously passed a forestry law in 1987 to promote industrial tree plantations with almost no opposition from civil society organizations, has radically changed since then. In spite of almost total governmental and academic support to eucalyptus and pine tree plantations, NGO-led opposition has totally changed the scenario. As informed in Bulletin nr 3, the WRM secretariat facilitated the creation of an NGO coalition (the Guayubira Group), which has since been at the centre of a number of anti-plantation and anti pulp mill activities.
Representatives of the indigenous and local communities present at the meeting room of the Contact Group on Article 8j (*) of the Convention of Biological Diversity at the IV Conference of the Parties, that took place recently in Bratislava, Slovakia, declared their total disapproval with a decision of the Presidency of the Group on May 12th, that excluded them from the negotiation round. After the declaration they left the room.
The Forest Peoples Programme addressed on May 12th the following letter to Mr. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, concerning the forest policy of the Bank:
"Dear Mr . Wolfensohn,
Joining a campaign launched by Global Response, a message was sent on May 27th to the Presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela, requesting the revocation of controversial Decree 1850 that permits mining activities in the area of the Imataca Forest Reserve, in Venezuela. The Decree has been severely questioned by environmental and academic Venezuelan organizations (see WRM Bulletins 4, 6 and 7)
The second meeting of the Conference on Central African Moist-Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC) will take place in Bata, Equatorial Guinea from 8 to 10 June 1998. CEFDHAC meets every two years in one of the countries of the sub-region and is the result of the political will expressed by the Central African states in their 1996 Brazzaville meeting.
A group of NGO representatives from many countries of the region met in the Environmental Forum of the Peoples' Summit of the Americas held in Chile and analized the forest issue within the framework of the trade-related integration process being promoted by governments through ALCA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas).
There has been, over the course of the last decades in Thailand, many developments concerning the rights of the tribal peoples found throughout the country, but predominantly in the north. The difficulties faced by the entire country, stemming from bad environmental management, came to rest upon the shoulders of the tribal people as they now inhabit the last remain stretches of forested land. However, is the basic assumption made here valid?
A group of fourty community activists from around Asia and the Pacific have recently held a meeting in Baguio City to review the impact of mining in the Cordillera region in northern Philippines, home of the Igorot indigenous peoples.
The meeting, that concluded on April 21st., was organized by Friends of the Earth-Philippines and the Mineral Policy Institute of Sydney, Australia. The activists agreed to support each others' struggles for social justice in the wake of an explosion of new mining projects throughout the Asia-Pacific.