Bulletin articles

In Malaysia, palm oil expansion goes hand in hand with deforestation –despite government officials claiming otherwise. A press release issued by Sahabat Alam Malaysia [SAM] Friends of the Earth, Malaysia, on August 6, 2008, reveals that some 2.8 million ha of largely forest land in Sarawak has been handed out for plantation concessions of mainly oil palm and fast-growing pulpwood trees.

The road linking Trang and Krabi in southern Thailand is an example of what economists call development. What used to be lush tropical forest has been converted into endless rows of either oil palm or rubber trees. The monotony is only broken here and there by a few houses and shops surrounded by a sea of tree monocultures. At the end of the road, shrimp farms occupy the place of mangrove forests, and only a thin row of mangrove trees bordering the river have been spared from destruction. The monoculture model appears to have defeated the rich diversity of the region.

The Patagonia region of Argentina accounts for only 4% of the country’s tree plantations. This limited development of the sector is viewed by the Argentine authorities and forestry industry as a source of vast possibilities: four million hectares of potential plantation land divided among the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Chubut.

Imagine an area the size of 500,000 football fields planted with a single species of tree. Is it a forest? No, it is a green desert: no people, no water, no other plants. A few years from now, this will be the landscape in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, where three companies are concentrating pulp production, leading to significant social and environmental damages.

In Latin America, the Chilean case is presented as a successful forestry model, in spite of the fact that many Chilean organizations – in particular Mapuche indigenous organizations – have for years now been denouncing the impacts of large eucalyptus and pine plantations in southern Chile. However, this has not prevented well-paid forestry consultants from repeating the same lies and from convincing governments of other countries (Peru and Ecuador are the most recent cases), to follow the “successful” Chilean path.

At a time when large corporate interests are gaining control over ever more land and resources, it is refreshing to hear news of victories won through the tenacious resistance of local communities.

For local communities that live in forested areas, the difference between a forest and a tree monoculture is very clear. Unfortunately, this clarity is not shared by many forestry professionals, whose training has been based on the concept that tree plantations are forests and carry out similar functions.

Welcome to this special edition of the WRM bulletin looking at Africa through the eyes of Africans. To many people in the world, Africa is an exotic continent filled with dances and songs of both people and birds. Africa is a big continent. Its land mass covers 31 million square kilometres and takes up 20% of the earth. It is the second largest continent in the world and has a population of some 900 million people, meaning that it is less populous than India and China.

“Mr. Chairman, Honourable Delegates;

Members of FoE Africa from Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Tunisia and Swaziland met for five days in Accra, Ghana reviewing issues that confront the African environment. A particular focus was placed on the current food crisis and agrofuels on the continent.

“Co-management: a situation in which two or more social actors negotiate, define and guarantee amongst themselves a fair sharing of the management functions, entitlements and responsibilities for a given territory, area or set of natural resources.” (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2000) [1] In the countries of Central Africa, numerous programmes have been undertaken since 1990 to demonstrate that protected areas can be more effectively managed through a participatory or “co-management” approach. There are three main reasons for the adoption of this approach:

It is difficult to analyse the question of indigenous rights in Africa without engaging with the question of statehood, and it is impossible to address the latter without considering its dubious origins. The colonial enterprise in Africa, marked by domination and annexation of territory, was masterminded by Leopold, the Belgian monarch, and Bismarck, the German chancellor. It reached its peak in the Berlin conference of 1884, which was convened ostensibly to regulate trading relations between European powers but ended by legislating for the partition of Africa.