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ENVIRONMENT: New Forestry Law Sets Colombia Back Half a Century
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Dec 20 (IPS) - A forestry bill about to be signed into law by the
Colombian government will set the country back half a century in terms of
conservation of forests, according to environmentalists.
After a stormy passage through Congress, the bill, which had been promoted
with unusual enthusiasm by the ministers of the environment and agriculture,
was approved last week.
Activists warn that it will endanger Colombia's rich environmental
patrimony, which represents 10 percent of the planet's biodiversity.
And for communities in the jungles of the northwestern region of Chocó,
along the border with Panama, the new law will mean an increase in forced
displacement from their land, in the context of the country's four-decade
civil war.
As a result of pressure from the environmental movement, a small group of
legislators were able to drag the debates out during 11 sessions of
Congress. But their attempt to block passage failed in the end.
The bill replaces laws dating back to 1959, which created national parks to
protect glaciers and river basins in this South American nation, one of the
countries in the world with the most abundant freshwater resources.
The new law introduces a concept, "vuelo forestal", which separates rights
to land from rights to the forest cover. Thus, trees can be owned separately
from the land, "which means the concept of ecosystem is ignored,"activist
Juan Carlos Preciado told IPS.
Preciado is a legal adviser to Consolidation of the Amazon Region - Colombia
(Coama), 1999 winner of the Right Livelihood Award or Alternative Nobel
Prize.
Sandra Suárez, minister of the environment, housing and territorial
development, said the "vuelo forestal is a (bank) guarantee and only applies
to plantation forests."
She added that forests that are collectively owned by indigenous and black
communities, amounting to some 28 million hectares, will not be granted in
concession to logging interests.
But under the new law, the adjoining land, which according to former
environment minister Manuel Rodríguez, president of the National
Environmental Forum, "belongs to these communities as part of their cultural
and historical space," can be granted in concession.
A Ministry of Agriculture decree also states that indigenous and black
communities - whose collective land can neither be sold nor embargoed - can
now lease their property to agribusiness companies.
The environment minister said the new law prohibited replacing natural
forests with plantation forests, or clearing them for agricultural or
stockbreeding purposes. But she failed to mention that the prohibition
provides for an exception for "activities of national interest," while
defining forestry development as a "national priority," said Preciado.
Agriculture Minister Andrés Felipe Arias said he was pleased with the legal
stability that the new law will offer those who invest in "commercial
reforestation". He also said the legislation would help put an end to the
illegal logging of native forests. An estimated 100,000 hectares of native
forest are illegally cut down every year, a practice that Colombia's
previous forestry and environment laws had failed to curb.
The new law will also create new regulations for the forest reserves, while
setting a three-year deadline for the executive branch to redraw the limits
of the reserves, but "without providing precise, rigorous criteria," said
Attorney-General Edgardo Maya.
Another former environment minister, Juan Mayr, said the new law "opens up
native forests to logging." The country's megadiverse natural forests still
cover 44 percent of the national territory of 1.1 million square km.
In the past two decades, drug traffickers and paramilitary militias have
taken over some four million hectares, one-quarter of which has been
expropriated in the last four years alone, according to government agencies.
This "agrarian counter-reform" has led to the forced displacement of around
three million people, described by the United Nations as the worst
humanitarian crisis in the Americas.
One-fourth of the displaced are indigenous people or afro-descendants, who
make up 11 percent of Colombia's total population of 44 million.
"A majority of the displaced indigenous and black people lived in natural
forests that were protected by their communities rather than by the state,"
said Preciado.
Activists fear that the new regulations and limits for the reserves will
legalise the paramilitary takeover of land collectively owned by indigenous
and black communities.
Minister Arias said that in the resistance to the new forestry law, he
perceived "dark interests" on the part of sectors that do not want
competition in the exploitation of timber, while Minister Suárez said the
opposition to the bill "raised suspicions."
But critics of the new law have more concrete suspicions.
While the bill was making its way through Congress, the U.S. - based
international development company Chemonics International, a contractor for
the largely U.S.-financed Plan Colombia anti-drug strategy, extended
invitations to travel to Bolivia and Chile to the lawmakers on the
commissions in charge of submitting the bill to the legislature, said
Aurelio Suárez, an aide to leftist Senator Jorge Robledo.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to which
Chemonics International is a major contractor, also provided enthusiastic
support for the bill, through its Colombia Forestal programme.
Aurelio Suárez noted that Chemonics is the main beneficiary of the USAID
contracts in Afghanistan, and that in the past three years it has won
contracts worth more than 60 million dollars in Iraq.
Former minister Rodríguez said Chemonics brought experts "with close links"
to USAID to Colombia, who drafted parts of the new forestry bill "behind
closed doors."
Earlier this month, opposition lawmaker Juan de Dios Alfonso of the Liberal
Party, who promoted the creation of the Serranía de los Yariguíes National
Natural Park in the department of Santander in 2004, alleged that eight
million pesos (over 3,500 dollars) were offered to legislators who voted in
favour of the bill.
Leftist opposition legislator Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, said the new law had
been put at the service of drug trafficking by the Ministry of Agriculture,
which made Arias furious.
In the Chocó region, "the oil palm plantations expanded in the wake of the
rifles" of the paramilitaries, Catholic priest Napoleón García of the
diocese of Quibdó said in a press conference on Dec. 5, when the diocese was
awarded the 2005 National Peace Prize.
On the 101,000 hectares of land collectively owned by the "peace
communities" of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, which are located in the
diocese, the Ministry of Agriculture legalised the land titles claimed by
oil palm planters, who the local residents see as invaders.
"We saw the oil palm planters coming," said Nevaldo Perea, who founded the
Integral Campesino Association of Atrato 20 years ago.
In that area, the Interchurch Justice and Peace Commission has documented 13
forced displacements, the destruction of 14 hamlets, and 110 crimes against
humanity.
.
According to the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research
Institute, the extensive cultivation of oil palms not only fuels illegal
logging, but impoverishes the soil, causes serious harm to the flora and
fauna, and depletes water resources.
Yaila Mena was displaced in 1997 from Riosucio, a town on the Atrato river.
"A month after the collective land titles were issued to us, the
paramilitaries came and kicked us off our land. They started planting oil
palms, which do not form part of our culture."
"In Riosucio there are very few native residents left," she added.
According to a bill that is awaiting approval in Congress, people in
Colombia would lose their rights to their land five years after abandoning
it.
"It should be made very clear that it was the State that brought the war to
Chocó, in 1982, when it gave a logging concession to two companies - Maderas
del Darién and Triplex Pizano," said an illiterate elderly man, Saturnino
Moreno, considered a wise man by the community of Tanguí, which is also in
the diocese of Quibdó.
"After that, the armed conflict arrived, fuelled by the world powers that
want to get their hands on the immense riches of the Chocó region. If the
Colombian State had set limits on them, things would have been different,"
he told IPS.
Right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, has expressed "a
dream" of covering six million hectares with African oil palm trees.
Through ongoing negotiations between the Uribe administration and the
paramilitaries, more than 10,000 members of the right-wing militias have
demobilised. As part of their reinsertion into society, the government has
arranged work for them in "agribusiness alliances" with local communities.
But IPS has heard allegations that these "alliances" might be forged by fire
and sword. While several demobilised paramilitary chiefs have announced
their intention of dedicating themselves to agribusiness endeavours,
including oil palm plantations, the forced displacement of local residents
from the Chocó region continues. Between January and June, another 8,178
people were forced by violence to leave their land in the Atrato region.
(END/2005)
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