The Steering Committee of the Joint Initiative to Address the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation will meet in Geneva on August 22nd. The meeting will be focused on strategic planning for the Global Workshop which will be held in Costa Rica on 18-22 January. At the same time, there will be presentations on the regional and indigenous peoples' workshops whose findings will form the basis of the discussions in Costa Rica.
Bulletin articles
As informed in WRM bulletin 11, the second meeting of the Conference on Central African Moist-Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC) took place in Bata, Equatorial Guinea from 8 to 10 June 1998. We include here the Indigenous Peoples' and NGO declarations presented at that conference.
Indigenous Peoples' Declaration
Declaration by the Indigenous Peoples of Central Africa to the 2nd Conference on Central African Moist Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC, or the ‘Brazzaville Process’).
Seven Dayak Iban natives from Rumah Bugah, Tubai, Ukong, Limbang are suing the Police for wrongful arrest and baseless imprisonment.
The ban on the activities of three environmental NGOs -LBBJ; Plasma and SHK Kaltim- in Kutai district, East Kalimantan has caused general concern. LBBJ (better known as PutiJaji) carries out community empowerment through legal rights education, Plasma is a forest campaigning organisation, and SHK Kaltim is a branch of a national network which promotes community-based forest management systems.
Oil palm (know as "Sawit" in Indonesia) is an increasing problem for people and the environment in that country. In May this year, the Minister of Forestry and Plantation Estates stated that the government had allocated 30 million hectares of forest for oil palm plantations. Indonesia has already 3.2 million hectares of oil palm plantations, mainly located in Sumatra (1 million ha). Every year 330,000 hectares of forest is targeted for conversion into new plantations and 650 investors --75% of which foreign companies-- are applying for converting forest into oil palm plantation.
On July 20 over 1,000 security forces arrived to break through a blockade set up by villagers and students at Indorayon's paper and rayon pulp factory (PT IIU) in Porsea, near Lake Toba in North Sumatra. Demonstrations have hampered production since mid-June. Hundreds of local people supported by university students and members of environmental groups had blocked roads leading to PT IIU's mill, forcing the factory to stop production since its supplies of timber and fuel have been cut off.
It seems amazing that tree plantations can be promoted all over the world as a profitable activity, while at the same time they need to receive a number of incentives to make it really profitable.
The increased activities of the "maquiladora" industry (installed within Mexico and based on imported inputs and external export markets), have resulted in an enormous deficit in packaging papers --which are currently being imported from the US and Canada-- used in the necessary packaging of the industrial goods for the supply of external markets.
We received the following message from Brazilian forester Jackson Roberto Eleoterio (from the University of Sao Paulo), which we can't but share with our readers:
We, the undersigned Non-Governmental Organizations, wish to express our concern with both the content and the potential consequences of the campaign lead by the WWF International, and supported by both the World Bank and the Brazilian Government, to protect some ten percent of the Amazon region through the establishment of environmental conservation areas of indirect use.
As in a number of other countries, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is now promoting the development of pulpwood plantations in Colombia. The bank has recently approved a "non-reimbursable" loan of 2 million dollars --through the Multilateral Investment Fund-- to support the creation of a Training and Technological Development Centre for the Pulp, Paper and Cardboard Industry (CENPAPEL).
31 July 1998. Ecuador's Minister of Environment has promised Greenpeace that she will take steps to secure a permanent ban on mangrove clearcuts by the country's shrimp farming industry and investigate evidence of illegal mangrove destruction in a protected national reserve.