ENVIRONMENT: Guyana Rainforests ‘Under Siege’, Activists Warn

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

WASHINGTON, Jun 28 1996 (IPS) - As multinational lumber companies maneuver to exploit Guyana’s rainforest, activists warn that the pursuit of short-term economic gains could result in long-lasting environmental and cultural destruction.

“Guyana will soon be under siege by lumber companies from Canada and Malaysia that want to get dibs on the fledgling republic’s virgin forests,” warns Action Alert, a monthly newsletter published by the California-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

Logging operations will not only disturb the delicate rainforest ecosystem, RAN says, but they will also displace indigenous people and destroy their culture.

Using leverage from Canada’s High Commission in Guyana, the Ontario-based Buchanan Group is trying to secure a three-year lease to log about 1.5 million acres of forests in Guyana’s Mazaruni region, a virgin area which is the ancestral home of Akawaio Indians.

Environmentalists and indigenous rights activists say logging will bring nothing but disaster to the Akawaio people whose indigenous land title claims have yet to be resolved.

The lumber industry officials claim that it will create job opportunities for native people who suffer from poverty and deprivation. But activists dismiss this argument.

“The lure of short-term logging jobs threatens to end their traditional agricultural practices and make them dependent on Buchanan to survive,” comments the Action Alert.

An independent report prepared for the Canadian Paper Workers Union in 1992 claims that Buchanan has “a long history of doing all it can do to avoid forestry, environmental, and labour legislation.”

Although the Guyanese government imposed a three-year ban on new logging concessions last month, activists say it is unlikely that the government will be able to effectively monitor the logging operations by foreign companies due to lack of resources.

Guyanese environmentalists note that the Forestry Commission has only six professional foresters to monitor 22 million acres of state forest.

But insufficient regulation is not the only reason for apprehension among activists. They say official corruption also poses a threat to Guyana’s rainforests.

A leading Guyanese newspaper, ‘Staebrock News’, recently raised questions regarding agreements between President Cheddi Jagan’s environmental advisor and a Malaysian company, Solid Timber Sandrian, which is seeking concessions to log one million acres of state rainforests.

The recent moratorium on logging operations by foreign companies adopted by Georgetown was a condition for receiving a loan from the British Overseas Development Administration to strengthen its Forestry Commission. The moratorium will expire by 1998.

But many Guyanese environmentalists and foresters say that it will take several years to make the commission an effective agency. Meanwhile, they say, the lumbering operations of foreign firms will be immune to strict monitoring and supervision.

In addition to potential environmental and cultural destruction, serious questions have been raised about the economic benefits of opening Guyana’s forests to exploitation by foreign firms.

Royalties, taxes, and other lumbering-related fees assessed by the government are the lowest of all tropical countries, according to a 1995 World Bank study.

The Bank report also warns about other limitations of lumbering, noting that this “kind of boom and bust development can be highly disruptive to employment levels, trade balances, and economic stability.”

Environmentalists add that foreign companies such as Sandrian and Buchanan have no stake in creating a sustainable economy in Guyana. “There is nothing preventing them from cutting and running,” a RAN activist remarked, “just as they have done elsewhere.”