ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: Do Cry for the Trees in Argentina

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 20 1996 (IPS) - The forests of Argentina, now only one-third the size they were 70 years ago, may disappear altogether unless the government adopts a coherent policy for its remaining trees, environmentalists warn.

The Wildlife Foundation of Argentina estimates that of the 106 million hectares of forest that existed here in 1914, only 35 million were still standing in 1985. Under present conditions the rest could disappear within the next 40 years.

“There is no policy for forest preservation in Argentina, and therefore there has been no sustainable management of the forests, but rather extractive exploitation of their resources,” said Wildlife Foundation spokesman Alejandro Serret.

In this sense logging operations, such as being carried out by the U.S. timber company Trillium, could be either sustainable or destructive, according to the Foundation. More should be known next month when the Trillium Coporation releases its blueprint for future operations in the lenga forests of Tierra del Fuego

Trillium is required to present a plan for the management of the forests where the transnational corporation plans to exploit 130,000 hectares of trees through a subsidiary company called Lenga Patagonia. The area to be exploited covers one-third of all the forests in Tierra del Fuego, on the southern tip of Argentina.

The lenga tree can grow to a height of 30 meters in its adult life, and is used in the construction of boards, wooden siding, agglomerate, and fax paper.

Since 1994, the Wildlife Foundation – a local environmental organization financed by large companies – has advocated the exhaustive evaluation of the Trillium project that incorporates the opinion of recognized forestry experts.

Trillium has been fined 20,000 dollars by a court in Tierra del Fuego for building roads and cutting down trees without presenting a management plan or a study on the environmental impact, two items required by the province’s timber laws.

Robert Manne, representing the U.S. company, assured the court that the project was sustainable and apologized for the error, which he said consisted ofn building roads wider than originally stipulated. He said company planned to invest up to 150 million dollars in the region – and generate employment for some 800 workers.

Manne explained that the potential market areas for the company’s products were the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia and buyers were the principal guarantors for sustainability. The company was required to present certification of the environmental conditions of the production of its merchandise.

The Wildlife Foundation and Finis Terrae – another environmental organization based in Tierra del Fuego – however were skeptical of those promises, due to the apparent lack of clarity with which Trillium has been operating in Argentina and Chile, where it has acquired 240,000 hectares of lenga forest.

Serret said that, in the case of the project in Argentina,”there are no guarantees of sustainable use” of the forests. In the first place, he mentioned the fact that the company had begun working without presenting a management plan.

Secondly, he noted that in Chile Trillium had claimed to have the support of professionals in forest sciences, yet the most well- known academics in the field said that they had never approved the project and harshly criticized the government of Eduardo Frei for authorizing it.

Trillium sought the approval of the World Fund for Nature and the Nature Conservancy – two of the largest environmental organizations in the world – but were denied support, according to Serret.

In Argentina, Trillium also failed to win the support of the Wildlife Foundation, he said.

“We are not against the exploitation of forests, as long as management is rational and sustainable. Rent can be extracted, as long as the capital is preserved,” Serret explained. “In this case, those conditions are lacking, and that is why we are demanding that the management plan be submitted to an academic evaluation in the main universities of Argentina and Chile, and that experts assess the viability of the project.”

If the project is approved by these experts, Serret said that the loggings should be controlled by the government and environmental organizations chosen by the residents of Tierra del Fuego, who would then be in charge of giving the final seal of approval for the project.

The timber and mining industries are currently two of the emerging sectors in Argentina that are attracting the most investments. The Trillium project, considered to be the largest in the history of the timber industry, has been tempting for authorities because of its potential for creating jobs, in a country where unemployment is around 17 percent.

This cut little ice with the environmentalists.

“The fact that this will bring employment opportunities is an important factor in the negotiations, but we cannot support something which is not viable just because it creates jobs,” Serret said.