Charcoal sold in urban centres is usually illegally imported from Mozambique and Zambia, where charcoal has traditionally been produced. But this energy source is now being produced in Muzarabani District in Mashonaland Central Province close to the border with Mozambique, according to the Forestry Commission. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Jun 14 2021 (IPS)

Once a week a tonnage of fresh charcoal is dropped off at Sibangani Tshobe’s rugged, pit-stop stall by a hired, battered old Bedford lorry. Small, makeshift trolleys — nicknamed Scania’s — quickly cart off small loads and disappear into Old Pumula, the oldest suburb in the country’s second-largest city of Bulawayo.

Electricity blackouts have temporarily stopped in Zimbabwe, but higher power costs and an occasional cold spell still offer Tshobe a chance to make a few dollars.

“I sell a bag of charcoal for $7 and it is good business for me,” Tshobe tells IPS, indicating to a 50 kg polythene bag from other traders that is split into smaller bundles that he sells for $1.

High costs of electricity for cash-strapped Zimbabweans — the country has a poverty rate of just over 38 percent, according to the World Bank —  means that the demand for firewood for cooking, lighting and heating has increased.

And so too has the destruction of Zimbabwe’s fragile forests.

“With the high cost of electricity what does one do? This is a means to fend for my family. I am aware our business means destroying trees but we have to live,” Tshobe says.

Felling forests to keep warm

Each year, Zimbabwe loses about 60 million trees — some 33,000 hectares of forests — thanks to illegal deforestation, according to the the Forestry Commission, a body mandated to protect state forests.

Charcoal making is increasing the loss of indigenous forests and also increasing land degradation, says Violet Makoto, spokesperson for the Forestry Commission.

“Charcoal is happening and is a worrying trend necessitated by the energy challenges the country is facing. Yes, a few months back we had an issue of no electricity, so charcoal was coming in handy for cooking, especially in urban areas. Now, in most parts, electricity is available but beyond the reach of many due to the high tariffs,” Makoto tells IPS.

Charcoal production is depleting indigenous forests in Zimbabwe where hardwood trees are preferred to make charcoal. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Charcoal – favoured for burning hotter and longer than wood – is made from heating wood without oxygen. The practice is taking root across swathes of the country, dominated by native forest hardwoods such as the mopane hardwood species (Copaifera mopane J), Makoto says.

Charcoal sold in urban centres is usually illegally imported from Mozambique and Zambia, where charcoal has traditionally been produced. But this energy source is now being produced in Muzarabani District in Mashonaland Central Province close to the border with Mozambique, according to the Forestry Commission. The Midlands province, Mashonaland West Province and Matabeleland North province were also hot spots for charcoal production, says Makoto.

In Matabeleland North province charcoal producing areas include Hwange Colliery Concession, Gwayi River Farms and resettlement villages along the Bubi-Nkayi boundary, says Armstone Tembo, the Forestry Commission Chief Conservator of Forests. 

“We have been carrying out raids and confiscating the charcoal but our problem is that we are aware that even if we confiscate the charcoal people still go to those areas and cut down more trees and produce charcoal,” she says.

Last year, more than 30 people were arrested and fined for trading in charcoal with 1,9 tonnes of charcoal confiscated.

This year, more than 1,000 bags of charcoals were confiscated and 10 people arrested and charged for making and selling charcoal.

“We need a lasting solution that can completely eliminate charcoal making in the country. Maybe crafting new laws to directly address the issue of charcoal production in Zimbabwe would help.”

The production, marketing and even consumption of charcoal are crimes, unless one is buying charcoal made from exotic trees, according to Abednego Marufu, the Forestry Commission’s General Manager. Marufu says that there was an exception for timber companies who harvested exotic tree species, such as wattle, for charcoal making.

Charcoal from hard wood trees is wiping out forests in most part of Africa because of rising energy needs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Tighter laws for culprits

The Forestry Commission is pushing for tighter laws to curb the practice, proposing a mandatory jail term, instead of fines, which are proving not sufficient deterrent. Currently anyone caught selling firewood and charcoal can receive a Level 7 fine for $59 or a year in jail.

“The Level 7 fine for people in communal areas is deterrent enough what is required by us is enforcement and we are working with the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Rural District Councils and the Environmental Management Agency to curb this activity,” Marufu says.

“We envisage a mandatory jail term rather than optional fines so that people can go to jail for three months. We feel it will be painful enough for people to understand that environmental crimes are serious.”

However, stricter fines are not necessarily the answer to issue, some activists note.

“The constant rise of electricity is unsustainable not just for consumers who are poor and unemployed but also for businesses because electricity is a key component of both the domestic and household economy,” Effie Ncube, a civil rights activist, tells IPS. He adds that high costs of electricity are also pushing up the costs of basic goods and services.

Last September, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), the holding company of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), increased charges by 50 percent. These were increased by a further 30 percent in May. The increases were attributed to the high costs of importing electricity.

Soaring prices of basic food stuffs, food, fuel and energy are driving Zimbabweans to poverty, says Comfort Muchekeza, Southern region Manager of the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, arguing that government needs to restore economic production for consumers to afford electricity.

“Energy is a really a sensitive issue,” Machemedza tells IPS by telephone. “It is high time the government comes up with alternative sources of energy and invites other players into the energy sector.  The cost of electricity today has gone beyond the reach of not only the ordinary consumers but even the middle class. Since September last year we have seen more than three increases in electricity and that is worrying.”

Wood fuels represent significant economic value in many countries, accounting for approximately $ 6 billion for the whole of Africa, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). More than $1 billion of this amount was made up by charcoal.

“Zimbabwe needs to invest in wide scale alternative energy sources like wind and solar so that people have access to affordable and clean energy at a time when firewood and charcoal are widely use but these have a serious environmental impact,” says Ncube.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated deforestation pressures and heightened the urgency of action to support sustainable forest management. The pandemic has the brought the importance of forests to global well-being into sharp focus. Pictured here forest in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 28 2021 (IPS)

A new global report on forests says that while the COVID-19 pandemic is the latest threat to achieving ambitious forest protection goals, it has brought the importance of forests to global well-being into sharp focus, and that this recognition must now be met with collection action.

The inaugural Global Forest Goals Report was launched on Apr. 26, as part of the 16th United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) session which runs until the end of this week. It is based on data and information submitted by 52 member states, representing 75 percent of the world’s forests.

The report concluded that while countries have taken action to protect their forests, those efforts must be accelerated to achieve ambitious global goals.

It tracks the progress of countries in meeting the ambitious goals set out in the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2030. Under that plan, countries vowed to accelerate the pace of forest protection by upgrading an initial focus on achieving net-zero deforestation to increasing global forest area by three percent by 2030 and eradicating extreme poverty for all forest-dependent people.

While it acknowledged the work done by countries in areas such as poverty reduction for forest-dependent people, initiatives to increase forest financing and cooperation on sustainable forest management, it stated that there is a lot more to be done. Noting that Africa and South America lost forest cover during the reporting period, the publication stated that forests remain under threat.

“Every year, seven million hectares of natural forests are converted to other land uses such as large-scale commercial agriculture and other economic activities. And although the global rate of deforestation has slowed over the past decade, we continue to lose forests in the tropics – largely due to human and natural causes,” it stated.

United National Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said the report is being launched at a crucial time for the world’s forests.

The report cites growing concern by some countries that the economic fallout from the pandemic will lead to reduced donor funding for forests. It states that Africa, the Asia-Pacific Region and some countries in Latin America are facing dwindling forest financing, as scarce public funds are being prioritised on immediate public health needs.

Mohammed said while the COVID-19 crisis has dealt a blow to poverty alleviation and sustainable development goals, it is presenting an opportunity to make peace with nature through a green recovery, with healthy forests as a solid foundation.

“We are at a make or break moment. 2021 provides us a unique opportunity to halt the rapid loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation, while addressing the climate emergency and desertification and making our food systems more sustainable, with the sustainable development goals as our guide,” the deputy UN chief said.

UNFF Secretariat’s Officer-in-Charge Alexander Trepelkov presented a note on COVID-19’s impact on forests and the forest sector. It concluded that the pandemic has aggravated hardships for forest-dependent people and exposed systemic gaps and vulnerabilities.

It called for the integration of forest-based solutions into pandemic recovery, accelerated implementation of international forest-related targets and adequate resources for forestry.

Meanwhile, on the fringes of the event, a group of 15 international organisations launched a joint statement on the challenges and opportunities involved in halting deforestation. The Collaborative Partnership on Forests event was chaired by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Director of the FAO’s Forestry Division Mette Wilkie told IPS that as ecosystems that are home to the vast majority of land biodiversity and 75 percent of freshwater, without forests, climate goals cannot be met.

“Forests also provide numerous products for everyday life – from the traditional use of wood to the masks, gloves and hand sanitisers that we all use during the current COVID-19 pandemic. They provide more than 86 million green jobs and support the livelihoods of many more people worldwide,” Wilkie said.

“As we increasingly encroach on forests and wildlife habitats to expand agricultural production, settlements and infrastructure, the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to people rises exponentially. It is evident that we cannot achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the future we want unless we halt deforestation and forest degradation and increase our efforts to protect, manage and restore our forests.”

Wilkie, who chairs the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, told IPS that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated deforestation pressures and heightened the urgency of action to support sustainable forest management.

“Lockdowns have led to disruptions in markets and supply chains and caused job losses, triggering reverse migration into rural areas and increasing pressure on forests to provide subsistence livelihoods,” she said, adding that, “on the other hand, investing in forest restoration and the sustainable management of forests can create green jobs and livelihoods, and at the same time create habits for biodiversity and mitigate – and adapt to – climate change.”

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Tapantí National Park lies east from the capital San José covering more than 50.000 hectares of forest, which in turn provides valuable watershed protection. Picture: Diego Arguedas Ortiz / IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Jul 26 2016 (IPS)

While Latin America keeps expanding its agricultural frontier by converting large areas of forest, one country, Costa Rica, has taken a different path and is now a role model for a peaceful coexistence between food production and sustainable forestry.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) flagship publication The State of the World’s Forests revealed that commercial agriculture was responsible for 70 percent of forest conversion in Latin America between 2000 and 2010.

“What FAO mentions about the rest of Latin America, clearing forests for agriculture or livestock, happened in Costa Rica during the 1970s and 1980s,” Jorge Mario Rodríguez, the director of Costa Rica’s National Fund for Forestry Finance (Fonafifo), told IPS.“Agricultural development doesn’t necessarily require the expansion of croplands; rather, it demands the coexistence with the forest and the intensification of production by improving national farmers’ productivity and competitiveness" -- Octavio Ramírez.

At its worst moment, during the 1980s, Costa Rica’s forest cover was limited to 21 to 25 percent of its land area. Now, forests account for 53 percent of the country’s 51,000 square kilometers, with almost five million inhabitants.

The country has managed to hold and even push back the advance of the agricultural frontier while strengthening its food security, according to FAO, which says that Costa Rica’s malnutrition rate is under 5 percent, something the organisation accounts as “zero hunger”.

“Here’s a learned lesson: there’s no need to chop down forests to produce more crops,” FAO Costa Rica director Octavio Ramírez told IPS.

Despite the increase in forest cover, FAO states the average value of food production per person increased by 26 percent in the period 1990–1992 to 2011–2013.

FAO attributes this change “to structural changes in the economy and the priority given to forest conservation and sustainable management” which were seized upon by Costa Rican authorities in a specific context.

“It has to do with the livestock crisis during the 1980s but also the priority given by Costa Rica to forest management,” said Ramírez, born in Nicaragua but Costa Rican by naturalisation.

In The State of the World’s Forests report, launched on July 18, FAO explains that Costa Rican forests were regarded as “land banks” that could be converted as necessary to meet agricultural needs.

“To keep the forest intact was looked upon as a synonym of laziness and unwillingness to work,” Ramírez explained.

But there were two key elements during the 1980s that led to better forest protection, the environmental economist Juan Robalino told IPS.

José Alberto Chacón weeds between bean plants on his small farm in Pacayas, on the slopes of the Irazú volcano, in Costa Rica. The terraces help control water run-off that would otherwise cause soil erosion. Picture: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

Meat prices plummeted while eco-tourism became a leading economic activity in the country, explained the specialist from Universidad de Costa Rica and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center.

“This paved the way for very interesting policy-making, like the creation of the Payments for Environmental Services (PES) program,” said Robalino, one of the top experts in Costa Rican forest cover.

FAO states that a big part of Costa Rica’s success comes from PES, a financial incentive that acknowledges those ecosystem services resulting from forest conservation and management, reforestation, natural regeneration and agroforestry systems.

The program, established in 1997 and ran by Fonafifo, has a simple logic at its core: the Costa Rican state pays landowners who protect forest cover as they provide an ecosystem service.

From its launch until 2015, a total of 318 million dollars were invested in forest-related PES projects.  64 percent of the funding came from fossil fuel tax, 22 percent from World Bank credits and the remainder from other sources.

After studying PES impacts for years, Robalino explains the challenge for 2016 is to look for landowners with less incentives to protect their forests and bring them on board with the financial argument.

“The goal is to always look for those who’ll change their behavior because of the program,” Robalino stated.

Because of budget limitations, the program must decide which properties to work with, as applications exceed its capacity fivefold, according to Fonafifo director Rodríguez.

Priorities for PES funding include ecosystem services like watershed protection, carbon capture, scenic beauty and biodiversity conservation.

“Costa Rica learned that forests are worth more for their environmental services than because of their timber,” Rodríguez pointed out.

Fonafifo is now looking for new partnerships with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock to launch a new program focused on small landowners who require more technical support, a road also favoured by FAO.

“Agricultural development doesn’t necessarily require the expansion of croplands; rather, it demands the coexistence with the forest and the intensification of production by improving national farmers’ productivity and competitiveness,” said Ramírez, FAO’s local representative.

Both FAO and local experts interviewed by IPS agreed that PES seized upon a national and international crossroads to launch a program that despite its success, is not the only cause for Costa Rica’s recovery.

“Costa Rica’s success cannot be exclusively attributed to PES since other policies, like the creation of the National Protected Areas System and its education system, also played a major role,” Rodríguez explained.

Beyond this program, the country has a longstanding environmental tradition: close to a quarter of its territory is under some type of protection, the forestry law bans forest conversion, and sports hunting, open-air metallic mining and oil exploitation are all illegal.

The country’s Constitution declares citizens’ right to a healthy environment in its article 50.

“I remember my school teacher telling us students that we had to protect the forest,” Robalino recalled.

However, Costa Rica’s forest recovery didn’t reach all ecosystems in the country and left mangroves behind. Their area has diminished in the past decades.

According to the country’s 2014 report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, mangrove coverage fell from 64.452 hectares in 1979 to 37.420 hectares in 2013, a 42 percent loss.

This ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to large monoculture plantations on the Pacific coast, where the local Environmental Administrative Tribunal denounced the disappearance of 400 hectares between 2010 and 2014, due to human-induced fire, logging and invasion.

By Matthias Yeanay and Roland Harris
MONROVIA, Oct 22 2015 (IPS)

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently affirmed her commitment to the land rights of Liberia’s local communities, who rely on the forests for their livelihoods and have cared for them for generations.

“Any successful paradigm shift for forest management in Liberia must have local communities at its centre,” Edward McClain, Minster of State for Presidential Affairs, said in a speech delivered on the President’s behalf. A draft Land Rights Act would make this possible, but the current session of Parliament ended without the Act’s adoption.

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

Such developments benefit large corporations but fail to deliver on the promise of shared economic development. Over half of Liberia’s territory has been sold to logging companies by the government, threatening the life-line of the communities that rightfully own Liberia’s forests.

These conflicts are not unique to Liberia. Around the world, contested lands fuel violence and threaten the commitments made by governments and companies. New research shows that out of eight fragile states in Africa, the governments of six claim ownership of nearly 100 per cent of the land in each country. Weak community rights also contribute to mass deforestation, as communities are generally better equipped than governments to care for their forests.

Despite growing attention around the world to these issues, the gap between how much land governments recognize as belonging to communities and the amount of land that communities govern in practice remains substantial.

As Ebola recedes, unsustainable demand for timber has returned to Liberia’s forests, but President Sirleaf’s comments give us hope that the government will side with local communities moving forward.

The President signed an agreement with Norway, which has promised up to $150 million over six years to help Liberia keep its forests standing. This agreement could provide much-needed funds for Liberia to provide basic services to its people, and stem the tide of mass deforestation.

Liberia’s leaders are turning towards conserving the forests rather than selling them off, and they recognize that the key to successful forest management is putting local communities in charge of their own forests. It only makes sense that the people who have managed the lands and forests all their lives, and whose communities have managed them for generations, are best-equipped to care for them. Research shows that when Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure land rights, forest are more likely to stay standing.

The draft Land Rights Act would operationalise many of the commitments Liberia’s government has made. It would recognize Liberia’s local communities as the rightful owners of the country’s forests without requiring them to present an official deed, a significant development given that these communities inhabit a large percentage of Liberia’s land.

By extension, the legislation would protect the forests that communities have been the guardians of for generations. President Sirleaf has expressed her strong support for it, and it is now up to Parliament to take action. We expect them to take this important step towards securing Liberia a future of peace and prosperity.

But recognizing land rights is not enough. Communities already have legal title to over 30 per cent of Liberia’s land area, one of the highest percentages of community ownership in West and Central Africa, but a lack of technical capacity, government coordination and due process has led to legally titled communities losing their land to make way for concessions or conservation areas. Most were never compensated for their losses.

The reality is that local communities want to be the architects of their own development and manage their own forests, but they need more logistical and technical support to ensure that they will not be trampled by big business.

Negotiation of community forest management agreements should be done by the communities themselves with technical support from Liberia’s Forest Development Authority, civil society and other institutions with interest in the forestry sector. This will enable the communities to adequately harness benefits, including sustainable management of the forest as well as economic, social and infrastructure development at the local level.

We hope the new law will make it easier for communities to make fair agreements with corporations. They want the power to require companies operating on their lands to employ community members in key decision-making roles, and to ask companies that violate their wishes for them to leave. But faced with the prospect of negotiating commercial contracts on their land, many communities find themselves on the losing end.

Liberia is poised to clarify land rights at the local level, a move that could make history and make the country a leader in land reform in Africa. For this move to be successful, the government’s policies must not forget the vital role played by the local communities. It is the rightful owners who have kept Liberia’s forests standing.

This new vision for Liberia’s forests may be threatened from many sides, but with the power of the people and the power of President Ellen Sirleaf, how can it fail?

(End)

Excerpt:

Volunteers taking on fires at Garung village in Pulang Pisau district, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Credit: Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Indonesia

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

A regional agreement on managing transboundary haze caused by fires raging in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands appears all but buried in the embers of frustration of its neighbouring countries.

Nearby Singapore and Malaysia, apart from eastern Indonesia, have been hardest hit by the haze, which has been sending air pollution indices soaring to unhealthy levels for more than a month now. In recent days, the winds have blown the haze to southern Thailand as well.

In parts of Southeast Asia, a pall of grey hangs over the skies from morning until dusk, and scenes of residents walking around with masks have become common.

Over the past month or so, schools have been closed at some point, flights delayed or outdoor activities cancelled or limited, with warnings about the risks to children and the elderly, as countries asked Indonesia, with whom they are members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to address the burning of forests and land in eastern Indonesia.

After months of digging in its heels and saying it can manage on its own, the Indonesian government was quoted as saying this week it believes foreign help would be needed to put out the fires.

“This has proven quite a challenge for us, so we see it as a necessity to work together with countries that have the available resources to extinguish the fires,” foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Oct. 8. He said Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno LP Marsud, had talked to Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, China and Australia “to discuss cooperation initiatives to overcome fire hotspots.”

But in these discussions about the fires there has hardly been any mention of the 1997 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, a legally binding agreement among the 10 member countries of the organisation. These are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In truth, activists say, they did not have much hope in the ASEAN haze agreement and ASEAN’s ability – or will – to hold its members to its own commitments.

“The agreement is said to be legally binding, but ASEAN has no court to try offenders,” said Nur Hidayati, head of the advocacy department of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, known by its Indonesian acronym WALHI. She added that the haze accord would likely meet the same fate as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which activists see as weak.

Yet this year would have been an opportunity to show the teeth of the haze agreement, which ASEAN has long held up as an example of successful regional cooperation. The haze agreement was the world’s first regional arrangement that binds a group of states to tackle transboundary pollution from land and forest fires.

After years of resistance, Indonesia – whose inability to control the fires for nearly two decades has been an irritant in its ties with its neighbours – finally ratified the haze agreement in September 2014 and became legally bound by it. That is 12 years after Indonesia signed it with other ASEAN countries in 2002, a fact that has raised doubts about ASEAN’s ability to enforce its own decisions.

ASEAN countries are also moving toward deeper economic integration and launching the ASEAN Community in December 2015, but addressing transboundary tensions continue to challenge the 48-year-old organisation.

“If the most powerful three members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) are not able to address a recurring and predictable problem (haze), what hope does the region have for economic integration with the ASEAN Economic Community that is going to be finalized end of this year?” asked a September commentary in the Jakarta Post newspaper by Joseph Cherian of the Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments, Jack Loo of Think Business and Ang Swee Hoon of the National University of Singapore Business School.

Singapore and Malaysia have repeatedly offered assistance to put out the raging fires, but Indonesia’s officials until recently said they could manage on their own.

“For the time being, we are only thinking of exhausting all of our internal resources before seeking external assistance,” J S George Lantu, director of ASEAN functional cooperation of the Indonesian foreign ministry said in an interview earlier in October. “We really appreciate their offers of help, but as a sovereign state we don’t want to seek to external help without trying hard enough to put out the fires. We can handle the fires ourselves,” the diplomat said.

But Indonesia is showing “complete disregard for our people, and their own,” Singapore Foreign Minister K Shanmugan told the British Broadcasting Corporation earlier in October.

The head of the environment division of the Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat, which oversees the implementation of the ASEAN haze agreement, said Indonesia’s responses to the fires were in line with the accord. “Obviously, Indonesia can deal with the fires with its own resources,” division head Ampai Harakunarak said. “All member states are standing by, ready to receive requests from Indonesia.”

The accord aims to “prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires which should be mitigated, through concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international cooperation.” It requires parties to “cooperate in developing and implementing measures to prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollutions as a result of land and/or forest fires” and “to control sources of fires.”

In truth, “Indonesia ratified the agreement under strong protest from Singapore and Malaysia over haze pollution. It (the ratification) was more as a political gesture than a statement of intent,” said WALHI’s Hidayati.

Significantly, Article 12.2 of the agreement says that external assistance “can only be employed at the request of and with the consent of the requesting party, or when offered by another party or parties, with the consent of the receiving party.”

President Joko Widodo had instructed government agencies to handle the fires in peatlands and forest being cleared by plantations for products like palm oil or paper. Foreign companies run many of them, prompting Singapore’s National Environmental Agency to name five companies with Indonesian concessions suspected to be contributing to the haze.

The Singapore Environment Council and Consumers Association of Singapore have urged consumers to use only products of companies that do not use burning practices in Indonesia.

Satellite images show that 70 per cent of hotspots in Sumatera and Borneo islands in Indonesia are in local plantations. Some 1.7 million hectares of land, more than a third of which are on peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan, have been burned, Widodo said.

Clearly, Indonesia has a lot of cleaning up to do of the concessions it gives to plantation companies and enforcing of local laws, critics say.

Land and/or forest fires have plagued Indonesia annually over the past 18 years due to unprecedented expansion of pulp and paper companies and oil palm plantations and their conversion into easy-to-burn peatlands, according to WALHI.

“By nature, tropical rain forests are impossible to burn due to high humidity. However, when trees are felled and a monoculture system is introduced in oil palm and rubber plantations or forest estates, their humidity disappears and they become vulnerable to fires,” Hidayati said.

Government officials say they have frozen some oil palm and forest concessions, adding that they have fined some companies and that others are awaiting trial. “Previously, we only charged individuals or corporates violating the 2009 environmental law in criminal and civil courts. Since January 2015, however, we also impose administrative sanctions on them by either freezing or revoking their concessions,” said Muhammad Yunus, director of the criminal law enforcement division of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

But the government must review all forest and plantation concessions to determine whether companies can handle fires, Hidayati said. “A fire that breaks out in a plantation or forest estate should been seen as a concession holder’s inability to manage the land and thus serve as a ground to revoke the concession, regardless who sets it or whether or not it’s deliberate.”

Untung Suprapto, head of the land and forest fire control sub-directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said his office is drafting a regulation that would require plantation and forest concession holders to have own firefighter teams, trucks and equipment.
(End)

Excerpt:

Rain forest in Zimbabwe, where the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding, and comes down to the question of land and whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land. Credit: By Ninara/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

The efficacy of attempts to sustainably manage forests and conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in Zimbabwe is increasingly coming under scrutiny as new research warns that the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding.

It all comes down to the question of land and of whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land.

Even where they do “own” land, say researchers, these communities often find themselves competing with other players driven by different economic considerations, nullifying the very ideals being pushed under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

“Carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected … multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers” – Ian Scones
Despite the country’s agrarian reform programme, under which land was redistributed to millions of landless local communities, the state remains the biggest landowner, raising questions about community empowerment and the ownership of forests.

With researchers pointing to a spike in the demand for land based not only on rural population growth but also on people reportedly moving to rural areas, there is no doubt that any increase in the rural population brings with it increased demand for natural resources.

“The demand on natural resources for land is growing year on year at a rate which is not sustainable,” says Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, and this will mean reforestation in the millions, with these trees being planted on plots that do not belong to local communities at a time when some farmers are decimating forest cover by using firewood to cure their tobacco.

The promise held out by REDD+ was that through reforestation and by reducing emissions, communities would then have access to or earn certified emission reduction credits to be sold to or traded with the worst polluters to meet their own emission reduction targets, yet it is clear that like any economic transaction, those who owns the means of production profit most.

Land is still owned either by the state or big business, with little cascading to the “bottom billion” as some economists have called the world’s poor, and landowners and the rich industrialised countries benefit at the expense of rural communities.

According to Ian Scoones, co-editor with Melissa Leach of a recently published book titled Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa, “carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected.”

Scoones says that “multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers. Achieving a neat market-based solution to climate mitigation through forest carbon projects is not straightforward.”

On Zimbabwe’s REDD+ project, which has covered 1.4 million hectares under Carbon Green Africa, Scoones says that “as notional ‘traditional’ and ‘administrative’ owners of the land, they [rural communities] should have the authority. But they are pitched against powerful forces with other ideas about resource and economic priorities.”

Civil society organisations (CSOs) here argue that this explains why rural communities get the shorter end of the stick.

Meanwhile, a recent brief from Zimbabwe’s climate ministry noted that “rich countries have barely kept the promise” of meeting their pledges, casting doubts on whether rural communities will in fact trade any anticipated carbon credits for cash.

The rural poor could well be saying “show us the money” by 2020, the year targeted in Cancun, Mexico, for emission reduction pledges.

Climate and environment ministry officials agree that land ownership under REDD+ has remained a sticking point in its dialogue with CSOs on how local communities may derive premium dividend from forest carbon projects.

“CSOs represent the interests of local communities and lack of safeguards has made this issue an area of divergence between governments and CSOs,” says Veronica Gundu, acting deputy director in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

“They (CSOs) are pushing for clarity on land ownership and the benefits to the local communities because they view the current regime of implementation to be beneficial only to the project implementers and leaving out the locals,” Gundu told IPS.

However, Wentzel of Carbon Green Africa which is implementing Zimbabwe’s sole REDD+ project in the Zambezi valley, told IPS: “As it stands the people of these districts are the rightful beneficiaries of revenue generated from their natural resources even if they are not titled land owners.”

Edited by Phil Harris 

Date palm trees abound in the Niyamgiri hills of the Indian state of Odisha. The fruits contain antioxidants and Vitamin A, and the sap is collected and fermented to produce liquor. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
RAYAGADA, India, May 19 2015 (IPS)

Scattered across 240 sq km on the remote Niyamgiri hill range in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, an ancient tribal group known as the Dongria Kondh have earned themselves a reputation as trailblazers.

Having fought – and won – a decade-long battle with a British mining giant that invested close to a billion dollars in a bauxite extraction operation in this mineral-rich area, the Dongria Kondh set an example in 2013 to millions of tribal people around the world that David versus Goliath-style confrontations can still be won by the underdog.

Now, the indigenous group is once again at the forefront of a global problem – the twin issues of hunger and deforestation – as they continue to nurture an ancient way of life despite a wave of destructive development that is threatening their traditional and sustainable farming practices.

Here, a Dongria Kondh woman reaches for barada leaves, a vital source of iron for the community. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Numbering some 10,000 people, the Dongria Kondh believe the forests and hills to be sacred sites, and have for centuries lived in harmony with the land, with a single family harvesting an average of 130 kg of wild produce in a single year.

Their varied and nutritious diet, which includes over 25 species of plants, comes directly from the forests, while springs originating in the Niyamgiri hills provide fresh, clean water all year round.

But rampant deforestation for large-scale infrastructure projects, coupled with mono-culture plantations of fast-growing trees to supply timber and paper industries with raw materials, as well as mining activities, have reduced food availability for the Dongria Kondh and other indigenous groups by over 30 percent and increased their gathering time by 80 percent over the last 30 years.

Today, 55 percent of adults from the Dongria Kondh community are protein-energy deficient and 60 percent of school-aged children are malnourished.

The situation reflects a trend all across India, a country of 1.2 billion people, where some of the poorest and hungriest live in or around forests.

India is currently home to one-quarter of the 805 million malnourished people worldwide, as well as to a third of the world’s underweight children and nearly a third of all food-insecure people – most of them among the 275 million-strong forest-dwelling population of this vast country.

The irony of the fact that those living closest to readily available food sources are going hungry has not escaped the attention of policy-makers, with the United Nations spearheading efforts to protect forests due to their critical importance in alleviating hunger and mitigating the impacts of climate change, not just in India but worldwide.

With 1.6 billion people – including over 2,000 indigenous cultures – depending directly on forests for food, shelter, income and fuel, preserving these areas feeds directly into the U.N.’s sustainable development agenda, and could also play a role in the ‘Zero Hunger Challenge’, launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 in a bid to completely eradicate the scourge of malnutrition and food insecurity.

This is easier said than done, given that an estimated 13 million hectares of forests are destroyed annually, denying hundreds of thousands of people of their only source of food.

While this seems like a bleak trend, one need only look up at the Niyamgiri hills for a lesson on an alternative economic model, one based on community management and control of land and resources, rather than the rampant destruction of living ecosystems for profit.

Here in Odisha, the forest-food nexus meets the accumulated traditional knowledge of an ancient people, pointing the way to a horizon where hunger is a thing of the past, not the future.

A major reason for the Dongria Kondh’s opposition to Vedanta Resource’s bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Mountains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha was that it would destroy their numerous perennial hill streams. Here, a tribal girl washes at a pipe that gushes fresh water 24 hours a day. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Date palm trees abound in the Niyamgiri hills of the Indian state of Odisha. The fruits contain antioxidants and Vitamin A, and the sap is collected and fermented to produce liquor. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Tribal women collect fistfuls of ‘broom grass’ from the hill slopes of the Niyamgiri range in Odisha, India. Bundles tied together with hemp rope sell for 60 cents apiece in village markets, though urban traders get double the price. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Rich in protein, young bamboo shoots are a delicacy among the Dongria Kondh tribal community in eastern India. The outer skin is boiled with salt and chilli as a source of nutrition. During the monsoon season, when the shoots are plentiful, members of the tribe earn an income from bamboo. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The ‘barada’ leafy green is sweet, easy to digest and rich in iron. Here, a tribal woman sun-dries the leaves so they can be stored for up to two months. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Women shoulder the lion’s share of forest produce collection. A typical day’s haul includes tamarind, which fetches a large part of a household’s annual income, and wild yams, a dietary mainstay during the lean months of August to October. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The highly valued mahua flowers are collected, dried and made into liquor. Its seeds yield oil that can be used for cooking. Among some tribal groups mahua paste is used medicinally to facilitate childbirth. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Honey is the Dongria Kondh’s most precious forest product, valued for its nutrition, medicinal properties and high returns from sale. Because the tribe manages and protects large sections of the Niyamgiri hills in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, hundreds of wild honeybee colonies can still be found here. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Freshly fermented liquor made from the sap of the Salapa palm tree is often used during rituals. This is one of seven trees considered a ‘must’ in the Dongria Kondh’s sacred grove. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Berta Cáceres. Courtesy of the Goldman Prize

By Jeff Conant
BERKELEY, California, Apr 20 2015 (IPS)

The 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America has been awarded to Berta Cáceres, an indigenous Honduran woman who co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the events that earned Cáceres the prize it is this: to defend the environment, we must support the social movements.COPINH’s leadership has made it a driving force in preserving the country’s cultural and environmental heritage – and earned it the ire of loggers, dam-builders, palm oil interests, and others whose wealth depends on the depredation of the natural world and its defenders.

Like many nations rich in natural resources, Honduras, in the heart of Central America, is a country plagued by a resource curse. Its rich forests invite exploitation by logging interests; its mineral wealth is sought by mining interests; its rushing rivers invite big dams, and its fertile coastal plains are ideal for the industrial cultivation of agricultural commodities like palm oil, bananas, and beef.

Honduras is also the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere. The violence is largely linked to organised crime and to a political oligarchy that maintains much of the country’s wealth and power in a few hands. With the country’s rich resources at stake, environmental defenders are frequently targeted by these interests as well.

Some of the best preserved areas of the country fall within the territories of the Lenca indigenous people, who have built their culture around the land, forests and rivers that have supported them for millennia.

In 1993, following the 500th anniversary of Colombus’ “discovery of America,” at a moment when Indigenous Peoples across the Americas began to form national and international federations to reclaim their sovereignty, Lenca territory gave birth to COPINH, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras.

In the 22 years since, COPINH’s leadership in the country’s popular struggles has made it a driving force in preserving the country’s cultural and environmental heritage – and earned it the ire of loggers, dam-builders, palm oil interests, and others whose wealth depends on the depredation of the natural world and its defenders.

Since the early 1990’s, COPINH has forced the cancellation of dozens of  logging operations; they have created several protected forest areas; have developed municipal forest management plans and secured over 100 collective land titles for indigenous communities, in some cases encompassing entire municipalities.

Most recently, in the accomplishment that won Berta Caceres, one of COPINH’s founders, the Goldman Environmental Prize, they successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder, the Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro, to pull out of the construction of a complex of large dams known as Agua Zarca.

Berta became a national figure in Honduras in 2009 when she emerged as a leader in the movement demanding the re-founding of Honduras and drafting of a new constitution. The movement gained the support of then-president Manuel Zelaya, who proposed a national referendum to consider the question.

But the day the referendum was scheduled to take place, Jun. 28, 2009, the military intervened.  They surrounded and opened fire on the president’s house, broke down his door and escorted him to a former U.S. military base where a waiting plane flew him out of the country.

The United Nations and every other country in the Western Hemisphere (except Honduras itself) publicly condemned the military-led coup as illegal. Every country in the region, except the United States, withdrew their ambassadors from Honduras. All EU ambassadors were withdrawn from the country.

With the democratically-elected president deposed, Honduras descended into increasing violence that continues to this day. But the coup also gave birth to a national resistance movement that continues to fight for a new constitution.  Within the movement, Berta and COPINH have devoted themselves to a vision of a new Honduran society built from the bottom up.

Since the 2009 coup, Honduras has witnessed a huge increase in megaprojects that would displace the Lenca and other indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the country’s land is earmarked for mining concessions; this in turns creates a demand for cheap energy to power the future mining operations.

To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects. Among them is the Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Slated for construction on the Gualcarque River, Agua Zarca was pushed through without consulting the Lencas—and would cut off the supply of water, food and medicine to hundreds of Lenca familes.

COPINH began fighting the dams in 2006, using every means at their disposal: they brought the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, lodged appeals against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank which agreed to finance the dams, and engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to stop the construction.

In April 2013, Cáceres organised a road blockade to prevent DESA’s access to the dam site. For over a year, the Lenca people maintained a heavy but peaceful presence, rotating out friends and family members for weeks at a time, withstanding multiple eviction attempts and violent attacks from militarised security contractors and the Honduran armed forces.

The same year, Tomás Garcia, a community leader from Rio Blanco and a member of COPINH, was shot and killed during a peaceful protest at the dam office. Others have been attacked with machetes, imprisoned and tortured. None of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.

In late 2013, citing ongoing community resistance and outrage following Garcia’s death, Sinohydro terminated its contract with DESA. Agua Zarca suffered another blow when the IFC withdrew its funding, citing concerns about human rights violations. To date, construction on the project has come to a halt.

The Prize will bring COPINH and Honduras much-needed attention from the international community, as the grab for the region’s resources is increasing.

“This award, and the international attention it brings comes at a challenging time for us,” Berta told a small crowd gathered to welcome her to California, where the first of two prize ceremonies will take place.

“The situation in Honduras is getting worse. When I am in Washington later this week to meet with U.S. government officials, the President of Honduras will be in the very next room hoping to obtain more than one billion dollars for a series of mega-projects being advanced by the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the United States — projects that further threaten to put our natural resources into private hands through mines, dams and large wind projects.

“This is accompanied by the further militarisation of the country, including new ultra-modern military bases they are installing right now.”

Around the world, the frontlines of environmental defence are peopled by bold and visionary social movements like COPINH and by grassroots community organizers like Berta Cáceres.

“In order to fight the onslaught of dams, mines, and the privatisation of all of our natural resources, we need international solidarity,” Berta told her supporters in the U.S. “When we receive your solidarity, we feel surrounded by your energy, your hope, your conviction, that together we can construct societies with dignity, with life, with rebellion, with justice, and above all, with joy.”

If the world is to make strides toward reducing the destructive environmental and social impacts that too often accompany economic development, we need to do all we can to recognise and support the peasant farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and social movements who daily put their lives on the line to stem the tide of destruction.

Learn more about Berta Cáceres and COPINH in this video celebrating her Goldman Prize award.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

RFM, a Gabonese wood processing company with Malaysian investment, is one of several exploiting the rich natural forests in Gabon. The forestry sector is the country’s second source of foreign exchange after oil.

RFM and the woodworkers had been locked in a lengthy dispute over working conditions, lack of contacts and legal working hours, among other complaints.

According to the Entente Syndicale des Travailleurs du Gabon (ENSYTG) union, RFM refused to negotiate with them and workers who were planning to take part in trade union meetings were threatened and intimidated.“Although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity” – Forests Monitor

After numerous threats and charges of intimidation, on Feb. 17, as the employees were returning to work, RFM called on police to evict them from their company-supplied dormitories, claiming that the workers had violated company rules.

The dismissals were linked to worker protests over poor working conditions, unsanitary housing infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes, demands for legal working hours and payment of wages on time.

Léon Mébiame Evoung, president of ENSYTG, told IPS that the workers were simply calling on the company to respect basic rights and provide a pharmacy and an infirmary that should be managed by competent Gabonese health professionals.

RFM failed to meet any of these demands, said the union official. Instead, it decided to execute its earlier threat by firing all protesting workers.

The action has provoked the ire of civil society groups and syndicates, including Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWINT), which is circulating an online petition to help the strikers’ return to their jobs.

Marc Ona Essangui, founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs, told IPS in an online interview that he could not accept such “gross suppression” of workers’ rights. “I have signed up to the call to protect the workers,” he said.

“I strongly protest against the dismissal of these workers, which is clearly linked to their strike action,” he insisted. Such anti-union activities, he added, violate International Labour Office (ILO) conventions 87 and 98 (on freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively, respectively).

Along with other environmentalists in the region, Essangui – who once received a suspended sentence for accusing a presidential ally of exploiting timber, palm oil and rubber in Gabon’s “favourable agri-climate” – is troubled by risks to the region’s natural forests due to development activities.

The Gabonese government and international donors, however, regard the exploitation of timber as central to the country’s macroeconomic development.

According to Forests Monitor, an NGO that supports forest-dependent people, “although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity.”

The NGO notes that “production levels are already considerably above the official sustainable production estimates and are set to continue rising”, meaning that “the contribution which forestry sector revenues make to the country’s population as a whole and to people living in the locality of forestry operations is questionable.”

On its website, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that “nowhere is the pressure (on resources) more intense than in Gabon, a nation with 80 percent of its territory covered by dense tropical forest. With resource use demands spiralling in recent years, Gabon urgently needs better forest management planning if the government is to achieve its goal of becoming an emerging economy while preserving the country’s natural resources.”

RFM’s woodworking factory lies at the centre of three national parks – Lope, Crystal Mountain, and Ivindo – and to the east of Libreville. The park area is a small fraction of the land marked for development on a WRI map. The wood used by RFM is locally sourced.

Established in 2008, RFM produces windows and doors for the Gabonese domestic market. It exports semi-finished products to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company employs more than 700 workers, with a Gabonese majority.

Since November 2009, when log exports were banned, the formal economy production of processed wood has increased significantly.

According to a WRI report titled ‘A First Look at Logging in Gabon’, compiled by seven Gabonese environmental organisations, “Gabon has vast forest resources, but rapid growth of logging activity may threaten those resources. If managed properly, Gabon’s forests could offer long-term revenues without compromising the ecosystems’ natural functions.”

However, the authors continued, “(we) found information about forest development unreliable, inconsistent, and very difficult to obtain. We believe that more public information will promote accountability and transparency and favour the implementation of commitments made to manage and protect the world’s forests, which would significantly slow forest degradation around the world.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

Uncontrolled woodcutting in remote areas of Zimbabwe like Mwenezi district has left many treeless fields. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Feb 6 2015 (IPS)

There’s a buzz in Zimbabwe’s lush forests, home to many animal species, but it’s not bees, bugs or other wildlife. It’s the sound of a high-speed saw, slicing through the heart of these ancient stands to clear land for tobacco growing, to log wood for commercial export and to supply local area charcoal sellers.

This, despite Zimbabwe being obliged under the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to ensure environmental sustainability by the end of this year.

“The rate at which deforestation is occurring here will convert Zimbabwe into an outright desert in just 35 years if pragmatic solutions are not proffered urgently and also if people keep razing down trees for firewood without regulation,” Marylin Smith, an independent conservationist based in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, and former staffer in the government of President Robert Mugabe, told IPS.“The rate at which deforestation is occurring here will convert Zimbabwe into an outright desert in just 35 years if pragmatic solutions are not proffered urgently” – Marylin Smith, independent conservationist based in Masvingo, Zimbabwe

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Zimbabwe lost an annual average of 327,000 hectares of forests between 1990 and 2010.

Smith blamed Zimbabwe’s deforestation on the growing numbers of tobacco farmers who were cutting “millions of tonnes of firewood each year to treat the cash crop.”

According to the country’s Tobacco Industry Marketing Board, Zimbabwe currently has 88,167 tobacco growers, whom environmental activists say are the catalysts of looming desertification here.

“Curing tobacco using huge quantities of firewood and even increased domestic use of firewood in both rural and urban areas will leave Zimbabwe without forests and one has to imagine how the country would look like after the demise of the forests,” Thabilise Mlotshwa, an ecologist from Save the Environment Association, an environmental lobby group here, told IPS.

“But really, it is difficult to object to firewood use when this is the only energy source most rural people have despite the environment being the worst casualty,” Mlotshwa added.

Zimbabwe’s deforestation crisis is linked to several factors.

“There are thousands of timber merchants who have no mercy with our trees as they see ready cash in almost every tree and therefore don’t spare the trees in order to earn money,” Raymond Siziba, an agricultural extension officer based in Mvurwi, a district approximately 100 kilometres north of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, told IPS.

According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), there were 66,250 timber merchants nationwide last year alone.

Deforestation is a complex issue. A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that during the decade from 1980 to 1990, the world’s tropical forests were reduced by an average of 15.4 million hectares per year (an 0.8 percent annual rate of deforestation).

The area of land cleared during the decade is equivalent to nearly three times the size of France.

Developing countries rely heavily on wood fuel, the major energy source for cooking and heating. In Africa, the statistics are striking: an estimated 90 percent of the entire continent’s population uses fuelwood for cooking, and in sub-Saharan Africa, firewood and brush supply approximately 52 percent of all energy sources.

Zimbabwe is not the only sub-Saharan country facing a crisis in its forests. A panel run by the United Nations and the African Union and led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki found that in Mozambique thousands more logs were exported to China than were legally reported.

Disappearing forest cover is a particular problem in Ghana, where non-timber forest products provide sustenance and income for 2.5 million people living in or near forest communities.

Between 1990 and 2005, Ghana lost over one-quarter of its total national forest cover. At the current rate of deforestation, the country’s forests could completely disappear in less than 25 years. Current attempts to address deforestation have stalled due to lack of collaboration between stakeholders and policy makers.

In west equatorial Africa, a study by Greenpeace has called logging the single biggest threat to the Congo Basin rainforest. At the moment, logging companies working mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are busy cutting down trees in over 50 million hectares of rainforest, or an area the size of France, according to its website.

An estimated 20 to 25 percent of annual deforestation is thought to be due to commercial logging. Another 15 to 20 percent is attributed to other activities such as cattle ranching, cash crop plantations and the construction of dams, roads, and mines.

However, deforestation is primarily caused by the activities of the general population. As the Zimbabwe economy plummets, indigenous timber merchants are on the rise, battling to eke a living, with environmentalists accusing them of fuelling deforestation.

For many rural dwellers, lack of electricity in most rural areas is creating unsustainable pressures on forests in Zimbabwe.

“Like several other remote parts of Zimbabwe, we have no electricity here and for years we have been depending on firewood, which is the main source of energy for rural dwellers even for the past generations, and you can just imagine the amount of deforestation remote areas continue to suffer,” 61-year-old Irene Chikono, a teacher from Mutoko, 143 kilometres east of Harare, told IPS.

Even Zimbabweans with access to electricity are at the mercy of erratic power supplies from the state-owned Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), which is failing to meet electricity demand owing to inadequate finances to import power.

“With increasing electricity outages here, I often resort to buying firewood from vendors at local market stalls, who get this from farms neighbouring the city,” 31-year-old Collina Hokonya, a single mother of three residing in Harare’s high density Mbare suburb, told IPS.

Government claims it is doing all it can to combat deforestation but, faced with this country’s faltering economy, indigenous timber merchants and villagers say it may be hard for them to refrain from tree-felling.

“We are into the timber business not by choice, but because of joblessness and we therefore want to make money in order to survive,” Mevion Javangwe, an indigenous timber merchant based in Harare, told IPS.

“A gradual return of people from cities to lead rural life as the economy worsens is adding pressure on rural forests as more and more people cut down trees for firewood,” Elson Moyo, a village head in Vesera village in Mwenezi, 144 kilometres south-west of Masvingo, told IPS.

“Politicians are plundering and looting the hardwood forest reserves since they own most sawmills, with their relatives fronting for them,” Owen Dliwayo, a civil society activist based in Chipinge, an eastern border town of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“For all the forests that politicians plunder, they don’t pay a cent to council authorities and truly how do people get motivated to play a part in conserving hardwood forests?” Dliwayo asked.

“We will only manage to fight deforestation if government brings electricity to our doorsteps because without electricity we will keep cutting down trees for firewood,” said Chikono.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Dawn on the border of the Juma Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon. Activists say some new conservation policies are undermining traditional approaches to forest management and alienating forest-dwellers from their traditional activities. Credit: Neil Palmer (CIAT)/cc by 2.0

By Jeff Conant
BERKELEY, California, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

Dercy Teles de Carvalho Cunha is a rubber-tapper and union organiser from the state of Acre in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, with a lifelong love of the forest from which she earns her livelihood – and she is deeply confounded by what her government and policymakers around the world call “the green economy.”

“The primary impact of green economy projects is the loss of all rights that people have as citizens,” says Teles de Carvalho Cunha in a report released last week by a group of Brazilian NGOs. “They lose all control of their lands, they can no longer practice traditional agriculture, and they can no longer engage in their everyday activities.”The whole concept fails to appreciate that it is industrial polluters in rich countries, not peasant farmers in poor countries, who most need to reduce their climate impacts.

Referring to a state-run programme called the “Bolsa Verde” that pays forest dwellers a small monthly stipend in exchange for a commitment not to damage the forest through subsistence activities, Teles de Carvalho Cunha says, “Now people just receive small grants to watch the forest, unable to do anything. This essentially strips their lives of meaning. ”

Her words are especially chilling because Teles de Carvalho Cunha is not just any rubber tapper – she is the president of the Rural Workers Union of Xapuri – the union made famous in Brazil when its founder, Chico Mendes, was murdered in 1988 for defending the forest against loggers and ranchers.

Mendes’ gains have been consolidated in tens of thousands of hectares of ‘extractive reserves,’ where communities earn a living from harvesting natural rubber from the forest while keeping the trees standing. But new policies and programmes being established to conserve forests in Acre seem to be having perverse results that the iconic leader’s union is none too happy about.

Conflicting views on the green economy

As Brazil has become a leader in fighting deforestation through a mix of  public and private sector actions, Acre has become known for market-based climate policies such as Payment for Environmental Services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) schemes, that seek to harmonise economic development and environmental preservation.

Over the past decade, Acre has put into place policies favouring sustainable rural production and taxes and credits to support rural livelihoods. In 2010, the state began implementing a system of forest conservation incentives that proponents say have “begun to pay off abundantly”.

Especially as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change continues to fail in its mission of bringing nations together around a binding emissions reduction target – the latest failure being COP20 in Lima earlier this month – REDD proponents highlight the value of “subnational” approaches to REDD based on agreements between states and provinces, rather than nations.

The approach is best represented by an agreement between the states of California, Chiapas (Mexico), and Acre (Brazil).

In 2010, California – the world’s eighth largest economy – signed an agreement with Acre, and Chiapas, whereby REDD and PES projects in the two tropical forest provinces would supply carbon offset credits to California to help the state’s polluters meet emission reduction targets.

California policymakers have been meeting with officials from Acre, and from Chiapas, for several years, with hopes of making a partnership work, but the agreement has yet to attain the status of law.

Attempts by the government of Chiapas to implement a version of REDD in 2011, shortly after the agreement with California was signed, met strong resistance in that famously rebellious Mexican state, leading organisations there to send a series of letters to CARB and California Governor Jerry Brown asking them to cease and desist.

Groups in Acre, too, sent an open letter to California officials in 2013, denouncing the effort as “neocolonial,”:  “Once again,” the letter read, “the former colonial powers are seeking to invest in an activity that represents the ‘theft’ of yet another ‘raw material’ from the territories of the peoples of the South: the ‘carbon reserves’ in their forests.”

This view appears to be backed up now by a  new report on the Green Economy  from the Brazilian Platform for Human, Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights. The 26-page summary of a much larger set of findings to be published in 2015 describes Acre as a state suffering extreme inequality, deepened by a lack of information about green economy projects, which results in communities being coerced to accept “top-down” proposals as substitutes for a lack of public policies to address basic needs.

Numerous testimonies taken in indigenous, peasant farmer and rubber-tapper communities show how private REDD projects and public PES projects have deepened territorial conflicts, affected communities’ ability to sustain their livelihoods, and violated international human rights conventions.

The Earth Innovation Institute, a strong backer of REDD generally and of the Acre-Chiapas-California agreement specifically, has thoroughly documented Brazil’s deforestation success, and argues that existing incentives – farmers’ fear of losing access to markets or public finance or of being punished by green public policies – have been powerful motivators, but need to be accompanied by economic incentives that reward sustainable land-use.

But the testimonies from Acre raise concerns that such economic incentives can deepen existing inequalities. The Bolsa Verde programme is a case in point: according to Teles de Carvalho Cunha, the payments are paltry, the enforcement criminalises already-impoverished peasants, and the whole concept fails to appreciate that it is industrial polluters in rich countries, not peasant farmers in poor countries, who most need to reduce their climate impacts.

A related impact of purely economic incentives is to undermine traditional approaches to forest management and to alienate forest-dwellers from their traditional activities.

“We don’t see land as income,” one anonymous indigenous informant to the Acre report said. “Our bond with the land is sacred because it is where we come from and where we will return.”

Another indigenous leader from Acre, Ninawa Huni Kui of the Huni Kui Federation, appeared at the United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru this month to explain his people’s opposition to REDD for having divided and co-opted indigenous leaders; preventing communities from practicing traditional livelihood activities; and violating the Huni Kui’s right to Free, Prior and Informed Consents as guaranteed by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.

One of the REDD projects the report documents (also documented here) is the Purus Project, the first private environmental services incentive project registered with Acre’s Institute on Climate Change (Instituto de Mudanças Climáticas, IMC), in June 2012.

The project, designed to conserve 35,000 hectares of forest, is jointly run by the U.S.-based Carbonfund.org Foundation and a Brazilian company called Carbon Securities. The project is certified by the two leading REDD certifiers, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Climate, Community, Biodiversity Standard (CCBS).

But despite meeting apparently high standards for social and environmental credibility, field research detected “the community’s lack of understanding of the project, as well as divisions in the community and an escalation of conflicts.”

One rubber tapper who makes his living within the project area told researchers, “I want someone to explain to me what carbon is, because all I know is that this carbon isn’t any good to us. It’s no use to us. They’re removing it from here to take it to the U.S… They will sell it there and walk all over us. And us? What are we going to do? They’re going to make money, but we won’t?”

A second project called the Russas/Valparaiso project, seems to suffer similar discrepancies between what proponents describe and what local communities experience, characterised by researchers as “fears regarding land use, uncertainty about the future, suspicion about land ownership issues, and threats of expulsion.”

The company’s apparent failure to leave a copy of the project contract with the community did not help to build trust. Like the Purus Project – and like many REDD projects in other parts of the world whose track record of social engagement is severely lacking – this project is also on the road to certification by VCS and CCB.

Concerns like criminalising subsistence livelihoods and asserting private control over community forest resources, whether these resources be timber or CO2, is more than a misstep of a poorly implemented policy – it violates human rights conventions that Brazil has ratified, as well as national policies such as Brazil’s National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities.

The report’s conclusion sums up its findings: “In the territories they have historically occupied, forest peoples are excluded from decisions about their own future or—of even greater concern – they are considered obstacles to development and progress. As such, green economy policies can also be described as a way of integrating them into the dominant system of production and consumption.

“Yet, perhaps what is needed is the exact opposite – sociocultural diversity and guaranteeing the rights of the peoples are, by far, the best and most sustainable way of slowing down and confronting not only climate change, but also the entire crisis of civilization that is threatening the human life on the planet.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Emberá dwellings in a clearing in the rainforest. The Emberá-Wounaan territory covers nearly 4,400 sq km and the indigenous people want to manage the riches of their forest to pull their families out of poverty. Credit: Government of Panama

By Emilio Godoy
PANAMA CITY, Oct 22 2014 (IPS)

For indigenous people in Panama, the rainforest where they live is not only their habitat but also their spiritual home, and their link to nature and their ancestors. The forest holds part of their essence and their identity.

“Forests are valuable to us because they bring us benefits, but not just oxygen,” Emberá chief Cándido Mezúa, the president of the National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of Panama (COONAPIP), told Tierramérica.

“It is organic matter, minerals in the forest floor, forms of life related to the customs of indigenous peoples,” added Mezúa, the seniormost chief of one of Panama’s seven native communities, who live in five collectively-owned indigenous territories or “comarcas”.

In this tropical Central American country, indigenous people manage the forests in their territories through community forestry companies (EFCs). But Mezúa complained about the difficulties in setting up the EFCs, which ends up hurting the forests and the welfare of their guardians, the country’s indigenous communities.

Of Panama’s 3.8 million people, 417,000 are indigenous, and they live on 16,634 sq km – 20 percent of the national territory.

According to a map published in April by the National Environmental Authority (ANAM), drawn up with the support of United Nations agencies, 62 percent of the national territory – 46,800 sq km – is covered in forest.

Cándido Mezúa (centre), the high chief of the Emberá-Wounaan territory, is calling for an integral focus in forest management that would benefit Panama’s indigenous people. Credit: Courtesy of COONAPIP

And this Central American country has 104 protected areas that cover 35 percent of the national territory of 75,517 sq km.

But each year 200 sq km of forests are lost, warns ANAM.

The EFCs “are an effort that has not been well-developed. They merely extract wood; the value chain has not been developed, and the added value ends up outside the comarca,” said Mezúa, the high chief of the Emberá-Wounaan comarca on the border with Colombia, where his ethnic group also lives, as well as in Ecuador.

The indigenous leader said the EFCs help keep the forests standing in the long term, with rotation systems based on the value of the different kinds of wood in the management areas. “But it is the big companies that reap the benefits. The comarcas do not receive credit and can’t put their land up as collateral; they depend on development aid,” he complained.

Only five EFCs are currently operating, whose main activity is processing wood.

In 2010, two indigenous comarcas signed a 10-year trade agreement with the Panamanian company Green Life Investment to supply it with raw materials. But they only extract 2,755 cubic metres a year of wood.

The average yield in the comarcas is 25 cubic metres of wood per sq km and a total of around 8,000 cubic metres of wood are extracted annually in the indigenous comarcas, bringing in some 275,000 dollars in revenue.

In five years, the plan is to have 2,000 sq km of managed forests, the indigenous leader explained.

The government’s Programme for Indigenous Business Development (PRODEI) has provided these projects with just over 900,000 dollars.

Community management of forests in indigenous territories is a pending issue in Panama. Tropical forest in the province of Bocas del Toro, in the north of the country. Credit: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

But only a small proportion of forests in indigenous territories is managed. Of the 9,944 forest permits issued by ANAM in 2013, only 732 went to the comarcas.

Looking to U.N. REDD

In Mezúa’s view, the hope for indigenous people is that the EFCs will be bolstered by the U.N. climate change mitigation action plan, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).

“We want to pay for the conservation and sustainable use of forests,” the coordinator of REDD+ in Panama, Gabriel Labbate, told Tierramérica. “It is of critical importance to find a balance between conservation and development. But REDD+ will not resolve the forest crisis by itself.”

REDD+ Panama is currently preparing the country for the 2014-2017 period and designing the platform for making the initiative public, the grievance and redress mechanism, the review of the governance structures, and the first steps for the operational phase, which should start in June 2015.

UN-REDD was launched in 2007 and has 56 developing country partners. Twenty-one of them are drawing up national plans, for which they received a combined total of 67.8 million dollars. The Latin American countries included in this group are Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay.

Because forests trap carbon from the atmosphere and store it in tree trunks and the soil, it is essential to curb deforestation in order to reduce the release of carbon. In addition, trees play a key role in the water cycle through evaporation and precipitation.

Panama’s indigenous people believe that because of the position that trees occupy in their worldview, they are in a unique position to participate in REDD+, which incorporates elements like conservation, improvement of carbon storage and the sustainable management of forests.

But in February 2013, their representatives withdrew from the pilot programme, arguing that it failed to respect their right to free, prior and informed consultation, undermined their collective right to land, and violated the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

They only returned in December, after the government promised to correct the problems they had protested about.

In REDD+ there should be a debate on “the safeguards, the benefits, the price of carbon, regulations on carbon management, and legal guarantees in indigenous territories,” Mazúa said.

“We want an indigenous territory climate fund to be established, which would make it possible for indigenous people to decide how to put a value on it from our point of view and how it translates into economic value,” the chief said.

“The idea is for the money to go to the communities, but it is a question of volume and financing,” said Labbate, who is also in charge of the Poverty-Environment Initiative of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the U.N. Development Programme.

Poverty and the environment are inextricably linked to Panama’s indigenous people. According to statistics published Sept. 28 by the government and the U.N., Panama’s overall poverty rate is 27.6 percent, but between 70 and 90 percent of indigenous families are poor.

Indigenous representatives are asking to be included in the distribution of the international financing that Panama will receive for preserving the country’s forests.

They also argue that the compensation should not only be linked to the protection of forests and carbon capture in the indigenous comarcas, but that it should be part of an environmental policy that would make it possible for them to engage in economic activities and fight poverty.

Indigenous leaders believe that their forests are the tool for reducing the inequality gap between them and the rest of Panamanian society. “But they have to support us for that to happen, REDD is just part of the aid strategy, but the most important thing is the adoption of legislation to guarantee our territorial rights in practice,” Mazúa said.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Police barricade in Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations (May 2013). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Tessa Love
ISTANBUL, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

A year after the Gezi Park uprising – a protest that began as an act to save trees – exploded into anti-government riots around the country, sparking cohesive community efforts to fight urban sprawl, the face of environmental activism and awareness in Turkey has changed.

“It’s no coincidence that the demonstrations were ignited by an ecological issue, by concerns of urban development,” said Morat Ozbank, an assistant professor of political theory at Bigli University and a board member of the Turkish Green Party. “And this later became an issue of human rights and democratisation.”

At 11 pm on May 27, 2013, bulldozers moved into Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations.  They were there to clear the trees for the controversial construction of an Ottoman-era style shopping mall.“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul. All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction” – Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners

Within 20 minutes, throngs of people filled the park to block the construction, and they stayed for 20 days before being forced out by police.

The proposed shopping mall was just one of a long list of mega-projects spearheaded by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Other projects include a third bridge across the Bosphorus, a tunnel for private vehicles beneath the same waterway, the world’s largest airport, and a second Bosphorus on the Asian side of the city.

Many of these projects are being carried forward despite opposition from bodies such as the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), which is responsible for assessing the potential impact of proposed projects and advising against those that could be detrimental to the environment.

According to Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners, all of these projects fit that description.

“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul,” he says. “All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction.”

Atlar believes that every neighbourhood in Istanbul should legally have a certain amount of green space to uphold urban planning standards. Nevertheless, public parks are being destroyed and, beyond the city limits, miles of wild forests have been destroyed to make way for the third bridge and the second Bosphorus.

While all of these projects had elicited outcries from various small organisations and legal action from TMMOB before May 2013, nothing came close to the response at Gezi Park.

“Gezi was a unique moment is Turkish history,” says Atlar. “There was no leader, no formal organisation. It was an awakening.”

One year later, this movement is still alive and although policies regarding urban planning have not changed at governmental level, grassroots organisations have joined forces in the hope of making changes where they can.

One of these – Northern Forest Defence – is a movement organised by free volunteers to defend the last forests of northern Istanbul. Known as the “Child of Gezi,” it works to halt the development of mega projects like the third bridge, as well as working within small communities to stop the destruction of public parks for development.

While many of these efforts are small, Cigdem Cidamli, a founding member of the organisation, believes that they are essential to the progress of urban defence. “Small movements can’t change as much as big movements,” she says, “but we can’t have big movements without the small ones. So now we are trying to create more integrated channels of solidarity.”

Cidamli, Atlar and Ozbank all agree that the integration of organisations is the most recognisable accomplishment of Gezi so far. Many neighbourhoods now have an urban defence group to discuss a wide range of issues including urban development.

Many of these groups have come together to form larger organisations such as Taksim Solidarity, Istanbul Urban Defence and Northern Forest Defence.

One small group, Caferaga Dayanismasi, is a collective in the Kadikoy neighbourhood that conducts meetings and organises activist movements from a “squat” – an abandoned building that members have occupied and are renovating.

Bahadir, a member of the squat, says that the best thing they have done as a group is to have occupied and cultivated an empty lot that was going to be turned into a car park. Now it is a community vegetable garden where neighbours, both the young and the old, get their hands dirty.

Cidamli is thankful to Gezi for this development. “After Gezi, people are looking inward to create solidarity in small ways,” she says. “We can’t have Gezi every day. So, instead, we cultivate tomatoes.”

With this growth in community-minded activism, Bahadir says that the city cannot cut down a single tree without sparking a protest.

But so far, the only major development that has successfully been halted is the shopping mall at Gezi.

“The funny thing is, they can’t do anything in Taksim Square right now,” says Ozbank with a smile. “They can’t touch anything … not even to beautify the place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Paraguayan Indians fight to enforce collective ownership of their land at the Inter-American Court. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

Starting next year, a new grant-making initiative will aim to fill what organisers say has been a longstanding gap in international coordination and funding around the recognition of community land rights.

The project could provide major financial and technical support to indigenous groups and forest communities struggling to solidify their claims to traditional lands. Proponents say substantive action around land tenure would reduce growing levels of conflict around extractives projects and land development, and provide a potent new tool in the fight against global climate change.“Yes, the forests and other non-industrialised land hold value. But we must also value the rights of those who inhabit these areas and are stewards of the natural resources they contain." -- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

The new body, the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, is being spearheaded by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington-based coalition, though the fund will be an independent institution. The Swedish government is expected to formally announce the project’s initial funding, some 15 million dollars, at next week’s U.N. climate summit in New York.

“The lack of clear rights to own and use land affects the livelihoods of millions of forest-dwellers and has also encouraged widespread illegal logging and forest loss,” Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, the director general of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, said Wednesday.

“Establishing clear and secure community land rights will enable sustainable economic development, lessen the impacts of climate change and is a prerequisite for much needed sustainable investments.”

As Gornitzka indicates, recent research has found that lands under strong community oversight experience far lower rates of deforestation than those controlled by either government or private sector entities. In turn, intact forests can have a huge dampening effect on spiking emissions of carbon dioxide.

This is a potential that supporters think they can now use to foster broader action on longstanding concerns around land tenure.

Governments claim three-quarters

National governments and international agencies and mechanisms have paid some important attention to tenure-related concerns. But not only have these slowed in recent years, development groups say such efforts have not been adequately comprehensive.

“There is today an unprecedented convergence of demand and support for this issue, from governments, private investors and local people. But there remains no dedicated instrument for supporting community land rights,” Andy White, RRI’s coordinator, told IPS.

“The World Bank, the United Nations and others dabble in this issue, yet there has been no central focus to mobilise, coordinate or facilitate the sharing of lessons. And, importantly, there’s been no entity to dedicate project financing in a strategic manner.”

According to a study released Wednesday by RRI and Tebtebba, an indigenous rights group based in the Philippines, initiatives around land tenure by donors and multilaterals have generally been too narrowly tailored. While the World Bank has been a primary multilateral actor on the issue, for instance, over the past decade the bank’s land tenure programmes have devoted just six percent of funding to establishing community forest rights.

“Much of the historical and existing donor support for securing tenure has focused on individual rights, urban areas, and agricultural lands, and is inadequate to meet the current demand from multiple stakeholders for secure community tenure,” the report states.

“[T]he amount of capital invested in implementing community tenure reform initiatives must be increased, and more targeted and strategic instruments established.”

As of last year, indigenous and local communities had some kind of control over around 513 million hectares of forests. Yet governments continue to administer or claim ownership over nearly three-quarters of the world’s forests, particularly in poor and middle-income countries.

From 2002 to 2013, 24 new legal provisions were put in place to strengthen some form of community control over forests, according to RRI. Yet just six of these have been passed since 2008, and those put in place recently have been relatively weaker.

Advocates say recent global trends, coupled with a lack of major action from international players, have simply been too much for many developing countries to resist moving aggressively to exploit available natural resources.

“Yes, the forests and other non-industrialised land hold value,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on indigenous peoples and a member of the advisory group for the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, said in a statement.

“But we must also value the rights of those who inhabit these areas and are stewards of the natural resources they contain. Failure to do so has resulted in much of the local conflict plaguing economic development today.”

Unmapped and contested

Experts say the majority of the world’s rural lands remain both unmapped and contested. Thus, the formalisation of land tenure requires not only political will but also significant funding.

While new technologies have made the painstaking process of mapping community lands cheaper and more accessible, clarifying indigenous rights in India and Indonesia could cost upwards of 500 million dollars each, according to new data.

Until it is fully up and running by the end of 2015, the new International Land and Forest Tenure Facility will operate on the Swedish grant, with funding from other governments in the works. That will allow the group to start up a half-dozen pilot projects, likely in Indonesia, Cameroon, Peru and Colombia, to begin early next year.

Each of these countries is facing major threats to its forests. Peru, for instance, has leased out nearly two-thirds of its Amazonian forests for oil and gas exploration – concessions that overlap with at least 70 percent of the country’s indigenous communities.

“If we don’t address this issue we’ll continue to bump into conflicts every time we want to extract resources or develop land,” RRI’s White says.

“This has been a problem simmering on the back burner for decades, but now it’s reached the point that the penetration of global capital into remote rural areas to secure the commodities we all need has reached a point where conflict is breaking out all over.”

The private sector will also play an important role in the International land and Forest Tenure Facility, with key multinational companies sitting on its advisory board. But at the outset, corporate money will not be funding the operation.

Rather, White says, companies will help in the shaping of new business models.

“The private sector is driving much of this damage today, but these companies are also facing tremendous reputational and financial risks if they invest in places with poor land rights,” he says.

“That growing recognition by private investors is one of the most important shifts taking place today. Companies cannot meet their own growth projections as well as their social and environmental pledges if they don’t proactively engage around clarifying local land rights.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Canada has been leading the world in forest loss since 2000, accounting for 21 percent of global forest loss. Credit: Crustmania/ CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 5 2014 (IPS)

The world’s last remaining forest wilderness is rapidly being lost – and much of this is taking place in Canada, not in Brazil or Indonesia where deforestation has so far made the headlines.

A new satellite study reveals that since 2000 more than 104 million hectares of forests – an area three times the size of Germany – have been destroyed or degraded.Since 2000 more than 104 million hectares of forests – an area three times the size of Germany – have been destroyed or degraded

“Every four seconds, an area of the size of a football (soccer) field is lost,” said Christoph Thies of Greenpeace International.

The extent of this forest loss, which is clearly visible in satellite images taken in 2000 and 2013, is “absolutely appalling” and has a global impact, Thies told IPS, because forests play a crucial in regulating the climate.

The current level of deforestation is putting more CO₂ into the atmosphere than all the world’s cars, trucks, ships and planes together, he said, adding that “governments must take urgent action” to protect intact forests by creating more protected areas, strengthening the rights of forest communities and other measures, including convincing lumber, furniture manufacturers and others to refuse to use products from virgin forests.

Greenpeace is one of several partners in the Intact Forest Landscapes initiative, along with the University of Maryland, World Resources Institute and WWF-Russia among others, that uses satellite imagery technology to determine the location and extent of the world’s last large undisturbed forests.

The new study found that half of forest loss from deforestation and degradation occurred in just three countries: Canada, Russia and Brazil. These countries are also home to about 65 percent of world’s remaining forest wilderness.

However, despite all the media attention on deforestation in the Amazon forest and the forests of Indonesia, it is Canada that has been leading the world in forest loss since 2000, accounting for 21 percent of global forest loss. By contrast, the much-better known deforestation in Indonesia has accounted for only four percent.

Brazil’s Amazon forest – 2000. Credit: Courtesy of Global Forest Watch

Brazil’s Amazon forest – 2013. Credit: Courtesy of Global Forest Watch

Massive increases in oil sands and shale gas developments, as well as logging and road building, are the major cause of Canada’s forest loss, said Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch Canada, an independent Canadian NGO.

A big increase in forest fires is another cause of forest loss. Climate change has rapidly warmed northern Canada, drying out the boreal forests and bogs and making them more vulnerable to fires.

In Canada’s northern Alberta’s oil sands region, more than 12.5 million hectares of forest have been crisscrossed by roads, pipelines, power transmission lines and other infrastructure, Lee told IPS.

Canada’s oil sands and shale gas developments are expected to double and possibly triple in the next decade and “there’s little interest at the federal or provincial political level in conserving intact forest landscapes,” Lee added.

The world’s last remaining large undisturbed forests are where most of the planet’s remaining wild animals, birds, plants and other species live, Nigel Sizer, Global Director of the Forest Programme at the World Resources Institute, told a press conference.

Animals like Siberian tigers, orangutans and woodland caribou require large areas of forest wilderness, Sizer noted, and “losing these top species leads to a decline of entire forest ecosystems in subtle ways that are hard to measure.”

While forests can re-grow, this takes many decades, and in northern forests more than 100 years. However, if species go extinct or there are too few individuals left, it will take longer for a full forest ecosystem to recover – if ever.

Trees, plants and all the creatures that make up a healthy forest ecosystem provide humanity with a range of vital services including storing and cleaning water, cleaning air, soaking up CO₂ and producing oxygen, as well as being sources of food and wood. These ‘free’ services are often irreplaceable and generally worth far more than the value of lumber or when converted to cattle pasture, said Sizer.

In just 13 years, South America’s Paraguay converted an incredible 78 percent of its remaining forest wilderness mainly into large-scale soybean farms and rough pasture, the study found. Satellite images and maps on the new Global Forest Watch website offer see-it-with-your-own eyes images of Paraguay’s forests vanishing over time.

The images and data collected for the study are accessible via various tools on the website. They reveal that 25 percent of Europe’s largest remaining forest, located 900 km north of Moscow, has been chopped down to feed industrial logging operations. In the Congo, home of the world’s second largest tropical forest, 17 percent has been lost to logging, mining and road building. The Global Forest Watch website also shows details of huge areas of Congo forest licensed for future logging.

Deforestation starts with road building, often linked to logging and extractive industries, said Thies. In some countries, like Brazil and Paraguay, the prime reason is conversion to large-scale agriculture, usually for crops that will be exported.

The new data could help companies with sustainability commitments in determining which areas to avoid when sourcing commodities like timber, palm oil, beef and soy. Market-led efforts need to gain further support given the lax governance and enforcement in many of these forest regions, Thies said.

He called on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – a voluntary certification programme that sets standards for forest management – to “also play a stronger role” and to improve those standards in order to better protect wilderness forests.

Without urgent action to curb deforestation, it is doubtful that any large-scale wild forest will remain by the end of this century, concluded Sizer.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Salvadorans Elsy Álvarez and María Menjivar – with her young daughter – planning plantain seedlings in a clearing in the forest. Credit: Claudia Ávalos/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 24 2014 (IPS)

The international community is failing to take advantage of a potent opportunity to counter climate change by strengthening local land tenure rights and laws worldwide, new data suggests.

In what researchers say is the most detailed study on the issue to date, new analysis suggests that in areas formally overseen by local communities, deforestation rates are dozens to hundreds of times lower than in areas overseen by governments or private entities. Anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to deforestation each year."This model of government-owned and -managed forests usually doesn’t work. Instead, it often creates an open-access free-for-all.” -- Caleb Stevens

The findings were released Thursday by the World Resources Institute, a think tank here, and the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global network that focuses on forest tenure.

“This approach to mitigating climate change has long been undervalued,” a report detailing the analysis states. “[G]overnments, donors, and other climate change stakeholders tend to ignore or marginalize the enormous contribution to mitigating climate change that expanding and strengthening communities’ forest rights can make.”

Researchers were able to comb through high-definition satellite imagery and correlate findings on deforestation rates with data on differing tenure approaches in 14 developing countries considered heavily forested. Those areas with significant forest rights vested in local communities were found to be far more successful at slowing forest clearing, including the incursion of settlers and mining companies.

In Guatemala and Brazil, strong local tenure resulted in deforestation rates 11 to 20 times lower than outside of formally recognised community forests. In parts of the Mexican Yucatan the findings were even starker – 350 times lower.

Meanwhile, the climate implications of these forests are significant. Standing, mature forests not only hold massive amounts of carbon, but they also continually suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“We know that at least 500 million hectares of forest in developing countries are already in the hands of local communities, translating to a bit less than 40 billion tonnes of carbon,” Andy White, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)’s coordinator, told IPS.

“That’s a huge amount – 30 times the amount of total emissions from all passenger vehicles around the world. But much of the rights to protect those forests are weak, so there’s a real risk that we could lose those forests and that carbon.”

White notes that there’s been a “massive slowdown” in the recognition of indigenous and other community rights over the past half-decade, despite earlier global headway on the issue. But he now sees significant potential to link land rights with momentum on climate change in the minds of policymakers and the donor community.

“In developing country forests, you have this history of governments promoting deforestation for agriculture but also opening up forests through roads and the promotion of colonisation and mining,” White says.

“At the same time, these same governments are now trying to talk about climate change, saying they’re concerned about reducing emission. To date, these two hands haven’t been talking to each other.”

Lima link

The new findings come just ahead of two major global climate summits. In September, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host international leaders in New York to discuss the issue, and in December the next round of global climate negotiations will take place in Peru, ahead of intended agreement next year.

The Lima talks are being referred to as the “forest” round. Some observers have suggested that forestry could offer the most significant potential for global emissions cuts, but few have directly connected this potential with local tenure.

“The international community hasn’t taken this link nearly as far as it can go, and it’s important that policymakers are made aware of this connection,” Caleb Stevens, a proper rights specialist at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the new report’s principle author, told IPS.

“Developed country governments can commit to development assistance agencies to strengthen forest tenure as part of bilateral agreements. They can also commit to strengthen these rights through finance mechanisms like the new Green Climate Fund.”

Currently the most well-known, if contentious, international mechanism aimed at reducing deforestation is the U.N.’s REDD+ initiative, which since 2008 has dispersed nearly 200 million dollars to safeguard forest in developing countries. Yet critics say the programme has never fully embraced the potential of community forest management.

“REDD+ was established because it is well known that deforestation is a significant part of the climate change problem,” Tony LaVina, the lead forest and climate negotiator for the Philippines, said in a statement.

“What is not as widely understood is how effective forest communities are at protecting their forest from deforestation and increasing forest health. This is why REDD+ must be accompanied by community safeguards.”

Two-thirds remaining

Meanwhile, WRI’s Stevens says that current national-level prioritisation of local tenure is a “mixed bag”, varying significantly from country to country.

He points to progressive progress being made in Liberia and Kenya, where laws have started to be reformed to recognise community rights, as well as in Bolivia and Nepal, where some 40 percent of forests are legally under community control. Following a 2013 court ruling, Indonesia could now be on a similar path.

“Many governments are still quite reluctant to stop their attempts access minerals and other resources,” Stevens says. “But some governments realise the limitations of their capacity – that this model of government-owned and -managed forests usually doesn’t work. Instead, it often creates an open-access free-for-all.”

Not only are local communities often more effective at managing such resources than governments or private entities, but they can also become significant economic beneficiaries of those forests, eventually even contributing to national coffers through tax revenues.

Certainly there is scope for such an expansion. RRI estimates that the 500 million hectares currently under community control constitute just a third of what communities around the world are actively – and, the group says, legitimately – claiming.

“The world should rapidly scale up recognition of local forest rights even if they only care about the climate – even if they don’t care about the people, about water, women, biodiversity,” RRI’s White says.

“Actually, of course, people do care about all of these other issues. That’s why a strategy of strengthening local forest rights is so important and a no-brainer – it will deliver for the climate as well as reduce poverty.”

A Jun. 7 session of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in the Mexican Congress. Nearly 500 legislators from some 90 countries took part in the gathering in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

Latin America’s parliaments have failed to protect the forests and to guarantee their sustainable use, despite the fact that a number of countries have laws on forests, legislators from the region said at a global summit in the Mexican capital.

There are problems in areas such as respect for the rights of local communities, budget allocations for the protection of forests, land tenure guarantees, forest floor carbon ownership, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from sustainable use of forests.

“We aren’t working with the communities, and we don’t have the technical capacity to include international standards; the government is fearful and more worried about bringing in forest investment in activities like mining, without any responsibility for the environment,” Colombian Senator Mauricio Ospina of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole told IPS.

Ospina was one of the nearly 500 legislators from more than 90 countries who took part in the Jun. 6-8 second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in Mexico City, organised by the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International).

The summit agenda focused on the struggle against climate change and efforts to protect forests and natural capital.

Colombia, which has 60 million hectares of forest, is one of the 18 nations of the developing South taking part in the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (U.N. REDD), which was launched in 2007.

U.N. REDD is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. It finances national programmes to fight deforestation, reduce carbon emissions and foment access by participating countries to technical and financial support to combat climate change.

U.N. REDD was launched as a collaborative programme of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

The aim goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

Preventing deforestation is essential because trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into carbon in their trunks and branches and in the soil. When forests are cut down, not only do they stop absorbing carbon, but also the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere as CO2. Moreover, forests are critical to rainfall and play a key role in the water cycle through evaporation and precipitation.

In June 2013, U.N. REDD approved an allocation to Colombia of four million dollars for activities such as the creation of a forest inventory, the development of social and environmental safeguards, and the identification of benefits.

Colombia is carrying out 10 U.N. REDD projects and another 23 forest initiatives. Since 2008, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has approved an additional 3.6 million dollars in funds for the country.

The REDD+ action plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is a platform of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change that incorporates elements like conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks and the sustainable management of forests.

Peru is also moving forward in the design of a REDD+ strategy, facing challenges similar to those of the rest of the region.

“We have to work in the communities, providing them with tools,” Congresswoman Marisol Espinoza, of the governing Peruvian Nationalist Party, told IPS. “Those who take care of the forests are their guardians and should be paid for what they do. We hope the new laws will strengthen this new approach to preserving forests.”

Peru is developing a national REDD+ strategy that has a handicap: it has no mechanism to resolve disputes over land property rights, according to the article “REDD+ Readiness progress across countries: time for reconsideration” published in May in the British journal Climate Policy.

There are currently 19 REDD+ projects and another 18 forest initiatives in that Andean nation, which is set to receive 3.8 million dollars from the FCPF.

The 20 authors of the study published in the Climate Policy journal, who assessed the cases of Peru, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cameroon, found that progress had been made in planning, coordination, demonstration and pilots.

But they said measurement, reporting and verification of forest carbon, audits, financing, benefit sharing, and policies, laws and institutions faced major challenges.

They suggested a “rethink of the current REDD+ Readiness infrastructure given the serious gaps observed in addressing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, linking REDD+ to broader national strategies and systematic capacity building.”

Mexico, which is moving forward in fits and starts in its national REDD+ strategy, has some 65 million hectares covered by trees in the territories of around 2,300 communities, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

“There are still important steps to take to create a legal framework that would provide a sound coherent foundation for the successful application of REDD+,” Mexican lawmaker Lourdes López, cochair of the Globe International forestry initiative, told IPS. “The priority is to support sustainable forest producers and grant facilities to small producers.”

López, of Mexico’s Ecological Green Party, is promoting the reform of the 2003 General Law on Sustainable Forestry Development, to cut red tape surrounding forestry initiatives, foment commercial forest plantations, and step up certification of good management practices.

She also wants to regulate businesses like carpentries and furniture stores, to ensure that the lumber they use was legally obtained.

There are 11 REDD+ projects and another 38 forest initiatives in Mexico. In March, the FCPF and the government signed an agreement for 3.8 million dollars to complete the process of consultation and preparation of the REDD+ national strategy.

The government is about to open up the consultation process in order for the strategy to begin to be implemented next year.

The declaration of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators, to which IPS had access before it was released, only alludes indirectly to the forestry issue, by emphasising the approval of robust laws that support sustainable development, including forests and REDD+.

The parliamentarians urged governments and the U.N. to press international financial institutions for environmental programmes like REDD+ to involve national legislators, in order to “develop capacities and share best legislative practices.”

In response to a question from IPS, Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, predicted significant changes in international financial institutions and the nations with the greatest forest capital with respect to the increase in REDD+, at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Kyte said that since December “we have more than 300 million dollars” to support forest projects.

In Espinoza’s view, it is essential that forest protection schemes do not reproduce poverty.

One country that the rest of the region looks to is Costa Rica, a world pioneer in setting the goal of reaching carbon neutrality in 2021. According to official estimates, the Central American nation will emit close to 21 million tonnes of carbon in 2021, and it hopes to compensate for 75 percent of this total by carbon capture in its forests, which cover 52 percent of the national territory.

Carpenter Antonio Gutiérrez organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in the Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

The lack of markets to supply raw materials for Cuba’s new private sector, along with the poverty in isolated rural communities, is fuelling the poaching of endangered species of flora and fauna.

In 2010, the socialist government of Raúl Castro gave the green light to private enterprise in a limited number of activities, mainly in the services sector.

But without wholesale markets to supply the 455,000 “cuentapropistas” – officially registered self-employed people – unforeseen phenomena soon appeared, like the rise in poaching and illegal logging.

Forests, which cover just under 29 percent of the territory of this Caribbean island nation, are suffering the consequences.

“You can get a permit to work as a carpenter, but it’s hard to get the raw materials,” Antonio Gutiérrez, a carpenter who works at a sawmill in the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest Caribbean island wetland, told Tierramérica. “You can also build more homes, or upgrade homes. People need boards, windows, everything…and to solve the problem they go into the bush and cut.”

Last year, the forest ranger corps levied 19,993 fines for a total of 125,000 dollars, and seized 2,274 metres of wood. Although there are no statistics on wood confiscated in previous years, the authorities say illegal logging is on the rise.

“That’s confiscated mahogany and oak,” said Gutiérrez, 48, pointing to a pile of thin tree trunks on the ground. “Those trees had a lot of growing to do to become real logs.”

He maintained that more wood should be sold to people in order to safeguard forests from illegal logging.

The Agriculture Ministry’s forestry director, Isabel Rusó, told the press in March that the law in effect since 1998 provides for fines that are not effective in dissuading illegal logging. She also said private businesses either have to face a sea of red tape to purchase wood from state-owned companies or buy wood on the black market.

A new forestry bill is to be introduced in parliament in 2015.

But the problems are not only limited to the country’s forests.

Last year, the authorities confiscated 1,696 boats and registered 2,959 cases of illegal fishing – up from 1,987 in 2011 and just 996 in 2012.

In the western province of Pinar del Río, which has rich nature reserves, over two tonnes of poached sea turtles were seized, most of which belonged to endangered or threatened species.

In addition, 219 simple fishing boats were confiscated, and fines were levied for the use of banned fishing techniques, the capture of protected or toxic species, and vandalism against state fishing companies, among other offences.

The capture of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) “is indiscriminate because it is done at night and the females are often on their way to lay their eggs in the sand,”
Pedro Fernández, a 62-year-old bricklayer from Havana who has been a hobby fisherman for four decades, told Tierramérica.

“The turtles are killed and cleaned, and the waste is dumped at sea,” he added. “Because of the way things are done, it’s hard to control and assess the real magnitude of the problem,” said Fernández, who added that he had never fished illegally.

He said that to catch the turtles, the fishermen place net traps at the bottom of the sea for a month or more.

From May to September, loggerhead turtles, green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) lay their eggs on Cuba’s beaches.

Many of the beaches are protected areas, such as the ones in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, the San Felipe keys, the Largo del Sur key, the Isle of Youth (Cuba’s second-biggest island), and the Guanahacabibes peninsula in Pinar del Río.

But that doesn’t stop the poachers. Nor do the stiff penalties against poaching or the strict police controls.

The meat of different animals and fish and seafood sell for astronomical prices on the black market. One kilo of loggerhead sea turtle or crocodile meat fetches between five and seven dollars.

The average salary of a state employee – the government still employs roughly 80 percent of the workforce – is the equivalent of 19 dollars a month. But some Cubans have other sources of income, and can afford such forbidden luxuries.

In this business, however, not everyone is always lucky. A young man from Havana returned last month from a trip to Pinar del Río, 160 km west of Havana, with empty hands, after making the journey to buy loggerhead turtle steaks.

“No fisherman sold me anything,” the young man, who occasionally sells prohibited foods,” told IPS. “People buy up this soft, tasty protein-rich meat really quickly.”

Poaching and illegal logging are increasing along Cuba’s coasts and in its forests, mangroves, swamps and marshes – even in the country’s 103 protected areas.

The damage caused by poaching endangered species is the most visible face of the illegal hunting, fishing and logging in this country, which has 1,163 endangered species of animals and 848 endangered species of plants.

The shrinking populations of manatees, dolphins, crocodiles, caimans, green and loggerhead sea turtles, pirarucu, black coral, queen conch, parrots, and the multicoloured polymita land snail are all targeted by poachers.

Generally, poachers are men, although women take part in transporting and selling the products.

The authorities are beefing up oversight and inspection, to prevent international smuggling as well, while stepping up environmental education.

“But alternatives must be found to boost the development of populations that live near or inside the nature reserves,” Carlos Rojas, the manager of the Laguna Guanaroca-Gavilanes protected area, told Tierramérica.

In the nature reserve, located 11 km from city of Cienfuegos in southeast Cuba, which depends on both tourism and fishing, poaching has been reduced “due to fear of the law, but not because there’s environmental consciousness,” he said.

“Educational programmes help, but we see that people still feel like they have the right to fish. The bans cause conflicts when it comes to how they make a living,” Rojas added.

One positive step in his administration was to increase the number of people from neighbouring communities on the reserve’s payroll. But Rojas lamented that a project for sustainable fishing had never been implemented. And he said ecotourism would be another path to environmentally-friendly local livelihoods.

Demand is the main driver of poaching of fish and seafood in the reserve’s lagoon, he said. And there are newer, growing phenomena, like collectors, or the lack of markets providing supplies for the private sector, he added.

“Permits were issued for making crafts and selling food, but no one knows where some of the things that are sold came from,” he cautioned.

Two years ago, the non-governmental Cuban Association of Artists and Artisans adopted restrictive measures for those who sold crafts made with coral or shells from vulnerable species.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

The open wounds of the Amazon. Credit:Rolly Valdivia/IPS

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2014 (IPS)

Indigenous leaders are warning of increased violence in the fight to save their dwindling forests and ecosystems from extractive companies.

Indigenous representatives and environmental activists from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas met over the weekend here to commemorate those leading community fights against extractive industries. The conference, called Chico Vive, honoured Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber-tapper killed in 1988 for fighting to save the Amazon.“Right now in our territory we can’t drink the water because it’s so contaminated from the hydrocarbons from the oil and gas industry." -- Chief Liz Logan of the Fort Nelson First Nation in BC, Canada

The gathering also recognised leaders who are continuing that legacy today.

“His struggle, to which he gave his life, did not end with his death – on the contrary,” John Knox, the United Nations independent expert on human rights and the environment, said at the conference. “But it continues to claim the lives of others who fight for human rights and environmental protection.”

A 2012 report by Global Witness, a watchdog and activist group, estimates that over 711 people – activists, journalists and community members – had been killed defending their land-based rights over the previous decade.

Those gathered at this weekend’s conference discussed not only those have been killed, injured or jailed. They also shared some success stories.

“In 2002, there was an Argentinean oil company trying to drill in our area. Some of our people opposed this, and they were thrown in jail,” Franco Viteri, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, told IPS.

“However, we fought their imprisonment and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in our favour. Thus, our town was able to reclaim the land and keep the oil company out.”

Motivated by oil exploration-related devastation in the north, Ecuadorian communities in the south are continuing to fight to defend their territory. Viteri says some communities have now been successful in doing so for a quarter-century.

But he cautions that this fight is not over, particularly as the Ecuadorian government flip-flops on its own policy stance.

“The discourse of [President Rafael] Correa is very environmentalist, but in a practical way it is totally false,” he says. “The government is taking the oil because they receive money from China, which needs oil.”

China has significantly increased its focus on Latin America in recent years. According to a briefing paper by Amazon Watch, a nonprofit that works to protect the rainforest and rights of its indigenous inhabitants, “in 2013 China bought nearly 90% of Ecuador’s oil and provided an estimated 61% of its external financing.”

The little dance

Many others at the conference had likewise already seen negative impacts due to extractives exploration and development in their community.

“We have oil and gas, mines, we have forestry, we have agriculture, and we have hydroelectric dams,” Chief Liz Logan of the Fort Nelson First Nation in British Columbia, Canada, told IPS.

“Right now in our territory we can’t drink the water because it’s so contaminated from the hydrocarbons from the oil and gas industry … The rates of cancer in our community are skyrocketing and we wonder why. But no one wants to look at this, because it might mean that what [extractives companies] are doing is affecting us and the animals.”

Logan described the work of protecting the community as a “little dance”: first they bring the government to court when they do not implement previous agreements, then they have to ensure that the government actually implements what the court orders.

Others discussed possible solutions to stop the destruction of ecosystems, and what is at stake for the communities living in them. The link between local land conflicts and global climate change consistently reappeared throughout many of the discussions.

“My community is made up of small-scale farmers and pastoralists who depend on cattle to live. For them, a cow is everything and to have the land to graze is everything,” said Godfrey Massay, an activist leader from the Land Rights Institute in Tanzania.

“These people are constantly threatened by large-scale investors who try to take away their land. But they are far more threatened by climate change, which is also affecting their livelihood.”

Andrew Miller of Amazon Watch described the case of the contentious Belo Monte dam in Brazil, which is currently under construction. Local communities oppose the dam because those upstream would be flooded and those downstream would suddenly find their river’s waters severely reduced.

“People are fighting battles on local levels, but they are also emblematic of global trends and they are also related to a lot of the climate things going on,” Miller told IPS. “[Hydroelectric] dams, for example, are sold as clean energy, but they generate a lot of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.”

According to Miller, one value of large gatherings such as this weekend’s conference is allowing participants to see the similarities between experiences and struggles around the world, despite often different cultural, political and environmental contexts.

“In each case there are things that are very specific to them,” Miller said. “But I think we are also going to see some trends in terms of governments and other actors cracking down and trying to limit the political space, the ability for these folks to be effective in their work and to have a broader impact on policy.”

Yet activists like Viteri, from Ecuador, remain determined to protect their land.

“We care for the forest as a living thing because it gives us everything – life, shade, food, water, agriculture,” Viteri said. “It also makes us rich, even if it is a different kind of richness. This is why we fight.”

Forest elephants have been described by conservationists as gardeners of the forest. Credit: Richard Ruggiero/USFWS/CC by 2.0

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, Mar 20 2014 (IPS)

Of the endangered species listed for protection under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) a great many are forest dwellers – West African elephants, gorillas, bats and many birds.  

And it is not simply a case of the animals depending on the forest for food and suitable habitat to breed and raise their young — the forest often depends on the animals too.

Conservationist and CMS ambassador Ian Redmond describes elephants and gorillas as “gardeners of the forest”. Elephants provide an invaluable service by uprooting trees, thereby making holes on the jungle canopy which allows light to reach plants closer to the ground and encourages their growth.Forest ecosystems, the most biodiverse of all terrestrial habitats, are often very finely balanced.

Gorillas eat fruit and the seeds pass through their digestive tract to be deposited as fertiliser. Tropical fruit bats also play an important role in the pollination of plants.

Forest ecosystems, the most biodiverse of all terrestrial habitats, are often very finely balanced. The more diverse, the more robust they are and the better they are at doing what we want – and need them – to do.

While usually many species perform the same function, the removal of a top predator, pollinator or seed disperser can set off a chain reaction, with far-reaching consequences.

A reduction in the forest’s resilience, increasing the likelihood of further species loss, can impinge on its ability to provide the ecosystem services, such as water purification and the production of oxygen upon which human well-being depends. The livelihoods of as much as a fifth of the world’s population are directly linked to forests, which also provide a home for 300 million people.

The presence (or absence) of an animal as significant as elephants can have huge effects on the character of the habitat, as has been demonstrated by comparing two similar forest landscapes in Uganda.

Douglas Sheil and Agus Salim Center for International Forestry Research, Jakarta, Indonesia found in 2004 that the patterns of succession and regeneration in Budungo forest, which has no elephants, are totally different from those in Rabongo forest. Both forests are in Uganda where there exists a large elephant population.

It has been estimated that approaching one sixth of all greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to deforestation and forest degradation.  

A similar proportion of human-generated carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by forests acting as “carbon sinks” through sequestration. Tropical forests also help to cool the planet as large quantities of water evaporate forming clouds that reflect sunlight away from the surface.

Dr. Bradnee Chambers says many endangered migratory species cannot do without forests; and the forests need the migratory species. Courtesy: Francisco Rilla / CMS

Eco-tourism is a booming business worth billions of dollars a year and wildlife watching forms a significant part of the sector. Sensitively managed, all players reap the benefits – the tourist gets the “close to nature” experience, employment opportunities are created in the local economy and the animals are seen as a valuable asset, not as an irrelevance, nuisance or a threat and therefore worth protecting.

Visitors are prepared to pay fees of 750 dollars to see the mountain gorillas of the Virunga National Park in Rwanda, where 10 groups of the reclusive animals have now been habituated to human visits. The visits are conducted under strict conditions: no more than eight tourists at any time; no noise; no approaching the animals; no litter; and, given the gorillas’ susceptibility to human diseases, no participants who are visibly ill.

During the 1990s the mountain gorilla numbers rose by 17 percent, with the greatest increase amongst those groups habituated to tourists and researchers. Without gorilla watching and the associated conservation efforts it is probable that the mountain gorilla subspecies would not have survived.

Instead it is estimated that today there might now be as many as 1,000 Mountain gorillas – still too few for the International Union for Conservation of Nature to regard them as anything more secure than critically endangered. The outlook is less rosy for the more numerous lowland gorilla subspecies, which are seeing their habitat destroyed by logging and conversion to agriculture and which are hunted for bushmeat, with some of the traumatised, orphaned young ending up in the exotic pet trade.

The baby animals certainly look appealing and generally gorillas are characterised by their gentle demeanour, but they do not stay young and cute for long. They are totally unsuited for domestication with a two-metre adult male weighing in at over 200 kgs.

Many endangered migratory species cannot do without forests; and the forests need the migratory species.

Humans need both as they contribute to a healthy environment, a benign climate, a sustainable economy and to a shared natural heritage that enriches our live in ways that cannot be expressed in monetary terms.

Excerpt:

Rainforest in the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Jungles, forests, mangroves, swamps and lagoons are natural carbon storehouses or “sinks” in the Caribbean regions of Mexico. But now studies are being conducted to measure their capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

These ecosystems are typically found along the strip of coastline that includes the southeastern states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo.

“The recommendation to avoid deforestation and forest degradation is a measure aimed at the mitigation (reduction) of the roughly 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from these causes,” said researcher José Andrade of the Yucatan Centre for Scientific Research (CICY), a government institute.

However, “at the same time, emissions from industry and transportation need to be reduced with alternative energy sources. (Forest conservation) alone is not a solution for reducing global emissions,” he told Tierramérica*.

As part of the research study “Las hojas: parte fundamental del almacenamiento de carbono en una selva de Yucatán” (Leaves: A fundamental part of carbon storage in a Yucatán rainforest), Andrade and four of his colleagues assessed factors such as air currents, biomass and carbon fluxes in the ecosystem of the Kiuic Reserve, which covers 1,800 hectares in the state of Yucatán.

Of the plant species studied, gumbo-limbo or copperwood (Bursera simaruba) trees were found to absorb 730 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per square metre, Florida fishpoison or Jamaican dogwood (Piscidia piscipula), 680 grams, and kitinché (Caesalpinia gaumeri), 1.32 kilograms. The last two are native to Mexico.

“The data suggest that the species of the area use water efficiently to promote the regeneration of new leaves, which allows them to continue absorbing CO2 and thus to store carbon in the form of biomass,” explained Andrade.

The Mexican Caribbean is exposed to increasingly destructive hurricanes and storms and the threat of rising sea levels, which would flood wide strips of the coastline, specialists warn. The area’s biological wealth is also endangered by the expansion of the tourist industry, deforestation, cattle grazing and oil industry activities.

Mexico’s emissions of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, total some 748 million tons annually. Agriculture is responsible for 12.3 percent of these emissions, industry for 8.2 percent, and changes in land use and forestry for 5.3 percent, according to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

“Climate change heightens our uncertainty about the future of forests. We aren’t sure about what is going to happen,” Richard Birdsey of the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told Tierramérica*.

“In some places forests are growing more, in others they are growing less. This is influenced by many factors that we need to study,” added Birdsey, a member of CarboNA, a joint government-level initiative between Canada, the United States and Mexico for carbon cycle research throughout North America.

CarbonNA projects, including one being undertaken in Yucatán, are aimed at CO2 monitoring and modelling in the region through remote sensing and mapping.

“It’s difficult to calculate the CO2 in the soil, but we are trying to measure it. We process ecosystems on a small scale to generate emission factor curves,” said Birdsey.

In 2011, a group of scientists created the MexFlux network in Mexico, to study water and carbon fluxes based on the same methodology as the AmeriFlux network in the United States. At least seven sites have been established in Mexico to study these mass and energy exchanges between the land and atmosphere.

The ecosystems of the Mexican Caribbean provide valuable services for the environmental equilibrium of the region and serve as protection against climate and weather phenomena such as droughts, storms, storm surges and flooding.

But the Yucatán peninsula “is highly degraded. There is a great deal of pressure on the ecosystems. The areas that act as carbon sinks need to be analysed. Tropical rainforests fix more carbon dioxide than they release,” Rodrigo Valle, a postgraduate student and researcher at CICY, told Tierramérica.

Valle and two colleagues are working on the study “Estimación de la distribución espacial de la biomasa forestal en la Península de Yucatán, usando percepción remota y datos de campo” (Estimation of the spatial distribution of forest biomass in the Yucatán Peninsula using remote sensing and field data).

Their research found 229,000 tons of biomass per hectare in the area studied, by measuring the electromagnetic radiation reflected by green matter.

Using data from the 2009-2013 National Forests and Soils Inventory, two government agencies, the National Forests Commission and the Mexican Carbon Program, estimated that there are 9.146 million tons of carbon stored in Mexico’s soils.

The Yucatán peninsula is the region with the highest levels of buried CO2, due to its chalky soil.

This year, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, which is considered a critical level for the effect it will have global temperatures. It also demonstrates that the measures adopted up until now are not working, and that the only solution is to drastically cut emissions of these gases.

Given the amount of carbon dioxide stored in plants, “one alternative is to reduce deforestation and promote the management and conservation of jungles and forests as carbon reservoirs,” Luisa Cámara of the public Juárez Autonomous University of Tabasco told Tierramérica.

Cámara is heading up a study in Huimanguillo, Tabasco to measure the carbon stored in a tropical lowland forest of Quercus oleoides, a type of oak, and plantations of Eucaliptus urophylla, a species of eucalyptus, and Gmelina arborea, a fast-growing deciduous tree, neither of which is native to Mexico.

In the areas studied, Cámara and her research team measured 14.75 tons of CO2 per hectare in the eucalyptus trees, 15.54 tons in the Gmelina arborea and 63.51 tons in the oaks. These figures indicate that the creation of industrial tree plantations does not represent a solution for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Forest in Sierra de Manantlán biosphere reserve in western Mexico.Credit: Comisión Nacional de Áreas Protegidas

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 25 2013 (IPS)

Issues related to the ownership of forest carbon and to prior consultation mechanisms threaten to derail plans for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests (REDD+) in some countries of Latin America, according to experts.

The problems are hindering the design of Mexico’s plan in the framework of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). In Panama, they have prompted the country’s indigenous peoples to withdraw from the programme.

“The previous government let slip the opportunity of concluding the process for fear of social activism, especially on the part of indigenous people and campesino communities,” Gustavo Sánchez, head of the Mexican Network of Campesino Forestry Organisations (Red MOCAF), told IPS.

The administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term began in December, has not said “whether or not it will adopt the current draft” of the national plan, he said.

“When it comes to the plan, Mexico is the second most advanced country in the Mesoamerican region (southern Mexico and Central America), because Costa Rica is already engaged in consultations, after reaching an agreement between native peoples and the government,” Sánchez said.

REDD+ is a climate change mitigation action plan that currently finances national programmes in 16 countries of the developing South in a quest to combat deforestation, reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and promote access by participating countries to technical and financial support.

The initiative was launched in 2008 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), with the goal of promoting conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

In Latin America the participating countries are Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay, while associate members that have not so far received financing are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. A total of 46 countries in the developing South are participating.

Mexico’s forested area covers 65 million hectares in the territories of some 2,300 communities, of which 600 manage forestry enterprises, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

This country of nearly 117 million people emits 748 million tonnes a year of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Close to 16 percent arises from livestock farming, deforestation and other soil uses.

The authorities estimate that 150,000 hectares of forest are lost every year, but environmental organisations put deforestation at over 500,000 hectares a year.

In February, Panamanian indigenous groups withdrew from the pilot programme in their country, saying that the process was disrespecting their right to free, prior and informed consent and their collective right to traditional lands, as well as violating the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The state has marginalised us. The first thing the programme must guarantee is safeguards for indigenous people. Continuing in the programme makes no sense,” said Héctor Huertas of the National Union of Indigenous Lawyers of Panama (UNAIPA), which represents the National Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP).

Huertas told IPS that COONAPIP, a confederation of the seven native peoples in this Central American country, will be bringing a lawsuit in an administrative court against the Panamanian National Environmental Authority in a bid to halt REDD+.

Panama, a country of 3.5 million people, is home to some 417,000 indigenous people, according to the 2010 census, living on 16,634 square kilometres, equivalent to 29 percent of the national territory. Indigenous lands are regarded under the constitution as collectively-owned property that cannot be sold.

The crisis of the plan in Panama has fed suspicion in dozens of NGOs and academic institutes around the world that REDD+ does not represent a viable solution for environmental problems.

But it may serve as a lesson for the countries involved in designing the REDD+ programmes.

The study “Legal analysis of cross-cutting issues for REDD+ implementation: Lessons learned from Mexico, Viet Nam and Zambia”, says that “Mexico’s laws do not specify who owns carbon, but we can presume that forest owners and rights holders will be the direct beneficiaries.

“The clarification of land tenure rights is a crucial component of forest-based approaches to combating climate change and defining related carbon rights,” says the study, published May 2 by UN-REDD.

Another report, “Putting the Pieces Together for Good Governance of REDD+: An Analysis of 32 REDD+ Country Readiness Proposals”, published in March, concludes that few countries involved in the initiative “consider specific design options or challenges related to REDD+ benefit sharing, conflict resolution, or revenue management systems.”

However, the report makes the positive point that “most include plans to address these issues as readiness activities move forward.”

The publication, by Lauren Goers Williams of the U.S.-based World Resources Institute, says: “Relatively few readiness proposals identify specific next steps to address land tenure challenges or establish mechanisms to coordinate with local institutions during REDD+ planning and implementation.”

Although six REDD+ pilot projects, known as early actions, are under way in Mexico, it is unlikely that the national strategy will be completed this year.

“It is worrying to see the progress made with the early actions, because there is no national core concept, which should have come first,” Sánchez complained. ”Less importance is being given to tenure and rights, and more to measuring, reporting and verifying carbon. More progress is being made on the technical side, but there is no criterion for sustainability.”

NGOs involved in the process will ask the National Forestry Commission for clarity with respect to negotiation of the national strategy, for the settling of critical issues.

In the case of Panama, Huertas said that indigenous people “were demanding that indigenous experts be included on the programme, and that consultations be channelled through COONAPIP. Now we want a suspension of REDD+ based on the precautionary principle, because fundamental rights are being violated.”

The precautionary principle states that when potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activities in question should not proceed.

The withdrawal of the native communities is being discussed at the 12th session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, being held in New York May 20-31.

UN-REDD is currently carrying out an external evaluation of the Panama national programme.

The UN-REDD study says: “To ensure the successful and equitable distribution of REDD+ benefits, legislation on REDD+ should incorporate clear and harmonised legal procedures and rules, allowing for open participation among actors at subnational and national levels.”

A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

Environment groups are applauding a new United Nations decision to officially characterise international wildlife and timber trafficking as a serious organised crime, in a move that advocates say will finally give international law enforcement officials the tools necessary to counter spiking rates of poaching.

Crimes related to the trafficking of flora and fauna are today one of the most significant money-makers for criminal networks, amounting to some 17 billion dollars a year, according to some estimates. That would make this black market the fourth-largest transnational crime in the world, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington watchdog group."The most important element here is the potential deterrence of significant prison time.” -- WWF's Wendy Elliott

On Friday, a new resolution on the issue was adopted almost unanimously at the end of a summit of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ, often called the U.N. Crime Commission). The resolution, put forward by the United States and Peru, now urges member states to formally view the illicit trade in wild flora or fauna as a “serious crime”.

“It is commendable that the U.N. CCPCJ is now taking note of wildlife crime,” Peter Paul van Dijk, director of the tortoise and freshwater turtle conservation programme at Conservation International, an international network, told IPS.

“This demonstrates how wildlife crime is no longer perceived as a proportionally minor type of crime affecting specific species, but is now beginning to be understood as being symptomatic of underlying problems of natural resource security, governance and transparency, and ineffective international actions.”

He continues: “International wildlife crime can generate the funds to fuel insurgencies and instability, and warrants an equally coordinated and prioritised response from the international community, including the United Nations. “

Under U.N. rules, characterisation as a “serious crime” can require stiff sentences of four or more years in prison, and will also allow the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to broaden its role in combating the trade. For years, environment-related crimes have recorded one of the world’s lowest conviction rates.

“This is a breakthrough resolution in terms of recognising the serious nature of wildlife crimes, encouraging governments to view this not just as an environmental issue but as a crime akin to human or arms trafficking,” Wendy Elliott, the leader of the wildlife crime campaign at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a global conservation group, told IPS from Geneva.

“For so many years, poachers and wildlife traffickers have received fines and quickly been let back onto the streets. The most important element here is the potential deterrence of significant prison time.”

Development impact

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in poaching, particularly in Africa. Many suggest this is being driven largely by the increasing force of consumer spending in Asia.

Over the past decade and a half, experts say, South Africa has seen a staggering 5,000 percent increase in the illegal hunting of rhinoceroses, while elephant poaching is also currently at record levels, at some 30,000 deaths each year. Meanwhile, nearly a third of all global timber today is thought to have been illegally logged.

While wildlife crime was first discussed by the U.N. General Assembly a dozen years ago, Elliott says the issue has never been as serious as it is today.

“Historically, poaching was a small-scale local activity, but the value of both the product and the demand is now seen at levels akin to other major illegal commodities,” she notes.

“In turn, that has attracted organised criminal syndicates, so the response needed is something completely different. That’s the shift we’re now starting to see, but we need to really ramp this up globally – wildlife crimes prey on a finite set of resources, after all, and the clock is ticking.”

Much of the new international interest in wildlife and timber trafficking can almost certainly be traced to the groups that have become involved, as well as the illicit funding they’ve been able to secure. According to a new brief put out by the WWF and other environment organisations ahead of the U.N. Crime Commission meetings, these groups include rebels in Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan and others.

“Illegal trade in wildlife alone amasses profits of about 10 billion dollars each year, [and] the illicit trade is intertwined with corruption, money laundering, and the trafficking of other commodities such as weapons and narcotics,” Brian A. Nichols, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the U.N. Crime Commission in introducing the resolution.

“It undermines security, stability and the rule of law. The criminals that illegally poach and trade in wildlife are part of integrated networks that span continents. They devastate local communities and have pushed more and more species toward extinction.”

Indeed, the impact of wildlife poaching on local economies and development efforts can be extremely significant.

“These crimes are not only putting the survival of endangered species in peril, but are also threatening security and sustainable economic development,” Elliott notes.

“In many African countries, wildlife continues to constitute a major source of family income and gross domestic product. So this is imperative from a development perspective, potentially endangering years of development advances.”

Supply, demand

Following the passage of the new U.N. resolution, much of the impetus will now fall to national governments to oversee a strengthening of their anti-poaching and customs systems. Next week, governments in Central Africa are slated to meet to discuss links between poachers and ongoing security concerns.

“The proof of commitment will be in not only how many governments ensure adequate penalties, but how many invest in initiatives to engage police and customs investigators in combating these crimes,” Debbie Banks, a senior campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based watchdog, told IPS.

“Combating wildlife crime is not rocket science. The solutions and tools are widely available, but it’s a matter of how much governments are prepared to invest in them. We now have some great political commitments articulated in the new resolution, so it’s time for action.”

Importantly, the new resolution will apply equally to countries that have serious illicit export problems – for instance, in Central Africa – and to countries where demand tends to be highest, particularly in Asia.

“These increased penalties will need to affect not just those doing the supplying but also those creating the demand,” WWF’s Elliott says.

“To really reduce demand, it has become increasingly clear that we can’t just rely on awareness-raising campaigns – there has to be enforcement, as well. Unless the public feels real consequences for purchasing these items, demand reduction will be very hard to achieve.”

Two corruption scandals – one homegrown and the other originating in Spain – are again highlighting the connections in Argentina between irregular investments, the misuse of environmental remediation projects for private gain, and plans that contribute to the degradation of natural resources.

Pollution levels in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin have not dropped despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering its clean-up. Credit: Malena Bystrowicz /IPS

For the organisation Transparency International, climate change and forest and water management are areas that are particularly vulnerable to corruption, especially in developing countries where natural resources are plentiful and economic resources are scarce.

A Spanish court is currently investigating a case of corruption involving the former treasurer and head of Spain’s governing People’s Party (PP), Luis Bárcenas (1993-2009). That scandal has an Argentine chapter, closely linked to the destruction of native forests that should be protected.

One of the owners of La Moraleja, a 30,000-hectare plantation in the northwestern province of Salta, is the Spanish politician Ángel Sanchís, who served as PP treasurer from 1982 to 1987 and has been under investigation in his country due to his close ties to Bárcenas.

The Spanish courts informed in January that Bárcenas had at least one account with 29.8 million dollars in Switzerland, from which – according to leaks in the investigation – funds were diverted to a company connected with La Moraleja and it is suspected that they were invested in the agricultural establishment itself, although the Sanchís family has denied it.

Also last month, Miguel Ángel Soto, head of Greenpeace Spain‘s forest campaign, reported that in 2004 Sanchís offered “a compensation” in exchange for the environmental watchdog’s support for a non-native species planting project he was planning to implement in Salta.

According to Soto, Sanchís explained that his plantation in Argentina had only 12,000 productive hectares and that, therefore, he wanted to deforest the non-productive areas and replace the indigenous vegetation with “noble” wood species, such as cherry, teak and mahogany. But the organisation says the area he planned to replant is a high conservation value forest.

At the time, Greenpeace Argentina was conducting a strong campaign for the preservation of native forests in Salta, where the expansion of soybean and other cash crops was wiping out forests and threatening the survival of the area’s indigenous communities.

The organisation began its campaign by denouncing the auctioning off of the General Pizarro nature reserve, located near La Moraleja. Then Governor of Salta Juan Carlos Romero, who visited La Moraleja often, justified the sale with the argument that the reserve was already degraded.

Every law has a loophole

As a result of these anti-logging protests, in November 2007 a Minimum Standards for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests Act (Law 26,331 or Forest Act) was passed, stipulating that high, medium and low conservation areas had to be identified in every province. These would be categorised, respectively, as red, yellow and green zones under a land-use management scheme.

Hernán Giardini, head of the Greenpeace Argentina campaign, told IPS that La Moraleja is located in a transition zone between the Chaco forest to the east and the Yungas jungle to the west, and is home to species from both regions.

“There’s very little left of the transition forest in Salta and, just as (the Romero) provincial administration was nearing the end of its term and after the (forest) law had been passed, logging permits increased five-fold,” even in La Moraleja, which is in a red category zone, Giardini said.

According to the information obtained by Greenpeace, the owners of this agricultural establishment were granted permits to clear 5,900 hectares of forest in December 2007, just days after the law banning such activity was passed. That same year logging permits were issued for a total of 435,000 hectares in Salta.

These figures were taken from a deforestation monitoring report (“Monitoreo de Deforestación de Bosques Nativos de la Región Chaqueña Argentina”) released in late 2012 by the non-governmental organisation Red Agroforestal Chaco Argentina, which assessed the native forests of the Argentine Chaco region. The study further reveals that from 1976 to 2012 two million hectares of Salta’s native forest were cleared.

“The information gathered indicates that the Forest Act had little impact in terms of reducing the rate of deforestation in Salta in the years immediately following the enactment of this law,” the report concludes. It also highlights that the most affected area is Salta’s Anta region, where La Moraleja is located, and which accounts for 40 percent of the province’s deforested territory.

Giardini told IPS that he was never able to confirm the rumours that accused Romero of issuing permits in exchange for money, but that he did find evidence that permit applications were hurried through when it was evident that the law would have the necessary votes.

Romero served as governor of Salta for three consecutive terms (1995-2007) and currently holds a seat in the national senate. He was elected under the governing Justicialista Party ticket but belongs to a right-wing faction that opposes President Cristina Fernández, who heads the central-left faction Frente para la Victoria.

A basin contaminated by justice

Another emblematic case of environmental degradation driven by corruption is the project to clean up the basin of a river that runs 64 kilometres from the northeast of the Buenos Aires province, where it is called Matanza, to the southern border of the Argentine capital, where its name changes to Riachuelo.

“Corruption must be considered an additional source of pollution of the Matanza-Riachuelo basin,” activist Andrés Nápoli, of the Environment and Natural Resource Foundation, told IPS.

In 2006, Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice issued a ruling ordering a clean-up plan for this basin – the country’s most polluted waterway, which covers 2,240 sq km and includes 232 streams-, as well as the mitigation of environmental damage and the improvement of the quality of life of the people living along the banks of this river that flows into the Río de la Plata estuary.

A Matanza-Riachuelo Basin Authority (ACUMAR) was created to implement this plan, formed by representatives of the government of the city of Buenos Aires, 14 Buenos Aires province municipalities, and the federal government, which are the jurisdictions involved.

Environmental groups say that while many measures stipulated by the court ruling have not yet been implemented, the plan has achieved general improvements.

In late 2012, however, the newspaper Página/12 denounced acts of corruption allegedly committed by Luis Armella, the judge responsible for enforcing the court sentence.

The paper claimed that relatives of the judge created companies that were awarded contracts for clean-up works without going through bidding channels, with the excuse that the works needed to be completed urgently.

The court took Armella off the case and conferred jurisdiction on two other judges: Sergio Torres and Jorge Rodríguez. Following an independent investigation, the National Auditing Office confirmed the accusations, and the Council of the Judiciary is currently assessing whether Armella should be removed from the bench.

“It came as a shock to us and it was a great blow to the credibility achieved with the Court’s intervention. The basin is tainted by the stigma of pollution, apathy and corruption, and now Armella’s misconduct seems to confirm that fate,” Nápoli said.

Nápoli recalled, for example, that in the 1990s the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) granted a 250-million-dollar loan to finance an earlier clean-up plan for the Riachuelo and that “the only thing (that money) was good for” was to increase Argentina’s public debt.

Greenpeace Argentina rubbed salt into the wound when it announced on Sunday, Feb. 3 that contamination levels in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin were exactly the same as five years ago and that the water’s toxicity was still very high.

The Bank's new approach included the use of industrial logging. Here, lumber from the Amazon's Antimary forest is readied for transport. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report.

The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical of the bank’s use of mass-scale logging concessions as a forest-management strategy and of a lack of projects that promote community involvement in the oversight of forests.

While the full IEG report has not yet been made public, draft copies of both the report and management responses were scheduled to be discussed at the bank’s Washington headquarters on Monday. (Leaked copies of both documents can be found here and here.)

The draft response from the bank’s management warns that the audit “contains a number of inaccuracies and misleading assertions that are based on generalizations about the forest sector rather than on an evaluation of the (World Bank Group’s) own work in this sector.”

In addition to expressing frustration with the IEG’s research methodology, the bank’s responses are particularly vociferous on the charge that its forest governance reforms – particularly regarding concessions – may not have led to sustainable and inclusive development.

The management warns that bank concession policies should not be looked at outside of their comprehensive context as they constitute “one part of a suite of reforms”, and that “an extensive body of literature” already exists on concession reforms, for which further re-appraisals would offer “little added value”.

In addition, the bank says that the IEG missed out on some particularly important reforms, such as a new requirement mandating third-party verification of sustainable forest management prior to any bank investment. Nor does the evaluation substantively explore the contributions of a bank initiative called the External Advisory Group on Forests, aimed at offering monitoring and oversight of the bank’s forest investments.

Both the frankness of the IEG report and the force with which the World Bank management have responded have surprised some observers.

“The evaluation was surprisingly forthright, but it’s important to realise that this issue is particularly touchy as the bank attempts to position itself as a major player in responding to global climate change,” Joshua Lichtenstein, forest programme manager with the Bank Information Center, a Washington watchdog, told IPS.

“The corollary here, however, is that the bank’s approach of focusing on industrial timber concessions doesn’t appear to have worked. While there’s been some progress in improving the legal framework, the IEG is saying that those programmes have led neither to sustainable, inclusive economic development nor to decreases in deforestation or sustainable use of forests.”

Centrality of concessions

As put in place in 2002, the World Bank’s Forest Strategy was aimed at both poverty alleviation and the safeguarding of local environments.

One important component of this new approach is the use of industrial logging, for which the 2002 strategy lifted a previous ban. By focusing instead on reforms such as increased management and certification activities, the policy aims at providing both local employment and national-level revenues.

The IEG evaluation, however, is clear in its view that this approach does not appear to have delivered results.

“We’re in no way opposing World Bank involvement in the forest sector – indeed, the bank has lots of small, community-driven development projects that are successful,” Lichtenstein says.

“But that’s kind of the point: there are other models, good alternatives, available, and the bank now needs to give up on this big industrial logging concession model. That was clearly important and worth trying, but it hasn’t panned out.”

By inserting itself in the logging sector in tropical forests, the World Bank had hoped it could bring its good offices to bear on an already existing industry and make it better. Thus, while the bank is not directly financing these companies, it is providing the legal and policy framework to make the sector function in its current form.

Yet some argue that the bank’s involvement has made certain situations worse, including pushing industrial logging operations into remaining primary rainforests.

“The allocation of large logging concessions, millions of hectares, to mostly foreign companies is still the prevailing model in many countries in the Congo Basin to manage forests,” Susanne Breitkopf, a Washington-based senior political adviser on forest and climate with Greenpeace International, told IPS, referring to the vast tropical rainforests that cover six countries in Central Africa.

“That clashes with local use by communities, and economically the local communities are not benefitting from this. As it turns out, these are often low-paid, low-quality jobs without contracts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we found that over time local communities are often poorer than when the companies arrive.”

There have also been widespread allegations of fraud and illegal activity. Breitkopf says that a recently released report, funded by the European Union and other donors, on logging in Congo found that nearly all major companies in the sector were involved in illegal activities, including logging outside of legal limits, non-payment of taxes and massive fraud.

Meanwhile, many have complained that community forestry programmes in these areas have been either an afterthought or entirely absent. On the issue of participatory forest management, the new IEG assessment suggests that the bank is “neglecting” the informal sector.

In response, the bank agrees that “Effective community participation is essential for improving the management of protected areas … (but questions) the evaluative basis for IEG’s conclusions that the Bank is not already doing this.”

Reassessment opportunity

“The IEG report is a very good starting point,” Breitkopf says, “offering a great opportunity for the bank to seriously reassess its approach and develop new priorities in land rights, livelihoods and protection of ecological systems, especially with regard to the role that forests are playing in protecting us from devastating climate change.”

Yet she is pessimistic that the new evaluation will lead to significant change. She also notes that the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, currently in early talks with a French timber company called Rougier, is currently contemplating re-engagement with industrial logging in the Congo Basin for the first time in three decades.

“Unfortunately, even as the evidence has increasingly mounted over the years, this has not been taken into account,” Breitkopf says. “From what we’ve heard from management, there still seems to be a resistance towards the recommendations from the IEG. And frankly, we don’t understand this, given that this is such a good chance to find better solutions.”

A family walks along the beach in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, in northeastern Nicaragua. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
DOHA, Nov 26 2012 (IPS)

The upcoming United Nations climate talks may have a renewed sense of urgency with a new World Bank report warning that the planet is on a dangerous path to four degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100.

“Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4ºC Warmer World Must be Avoided”, released on Nov. 19, was prepared for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.

But the 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 18) that begins Nov. 26 in Doha, Qatar has become extremely complex.

There is agreement amongst the 194 nations that are parties to the Convention on the need to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to keep the increase in global temperatures below two degrees, to avoid catastrophic climate change.

That target is easy enough to understand, but exactly how this can be achieved has been the subject of intense and complex negotiations for many years, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based NGO.

Last year at COP 17 in Durban it took extra days of negotiations for countries to finally agree to launch a new round of negotiations to create a legally binding international agreement.

That agreement will require carbon emission reductions for all nations by 2015 to meet the two-degree target. It is intended to be ratified and enter into force by 2020.

“No one knows what this new agreement will look like,” Morgan told Tierramérica in a press conference. “Are countries going to show up in Doha with the will to create a solid work plan?”

2015 is only three years off. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires some industrialized countries to reduce their emissions, was negotiated in less than three years. However, it took another eight years to be ratified by enough countries to enter into force, and some key nations like the United States backed out of the Protocol.

One of the major issues in Doha will be “ambition”, said Morgan. Ambition refers to how big the emission cuts that nations are prepared to agree to will be.

Climate science clearly shows that to stay below two degrees of warming, global greenhouse gas emissions must begin to decline by 2020.

To do this, industrialized nations must trim their emissions output by 25 to 40 percent below their 1990 emission levels.

The United States has pledged to make a three percent reduction compared to 1990 levels. The United Kingdom is aiming for a 34 percent reduction and has already reached 18 percent.

“We hope the U.S. will bring a new strategy, including greater ambition, to Doha,” said Morgan.

Most countries’ current reduction pledges are nowhere near what is needed, said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, a non-profit climate science advisory group based in Berlin.

Countries have to find ways to trim another 9 to 11 billion tons of CO2 by 2020 or forget two degrees Celsius, Hare told Tierramérica.

This “emissions gap” between the reductions pledged and those needed to keep the climate under control is growing larger, based on new data to be released this week by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Hare’s group.

“The gap keeps getting bigger… making it ever more difficult and costly to stay below two degrees,” said Hare.

Deforestation is the second largest source of climate-heating carbon emissions after fossil fuels.

To provide a financial incentive for developing countries to reduce deforestation, a controversial programme called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is also being negotiated at COP 18.

Forests are far more valuable than places to store carbon, according to the first comprehensive scientific assessment of REDD+ and potential impacts on biodiversity and local peoples’ livelihoods.

Conserving biodiversity and sustaining livelihoods are essential if REDD+ is going to work, says the new study, “Understanding Relationships Between Biodiversity, Carbon, Forests and People: The Key to Achieving REDD+ Objectives. A Global Assessment Report”.

Coordinated by the world’s largest network of forest scientists, the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO), the report will be formally presented during the meeting in Doha.

“The world’s rapidly dwindling forests are not just carbon warehouses,” John Parrotta, report co-author and scientist with the United States Forest Service, told Tierramérica. “Forests provide a wide range of environmental goods and services that people need.”

Those goods and services include cleaning water, preventing flooding, and providing food and habitat for humans and many other creatures like bees that perform valuable services like pollination.

Deforestation currently gobbles up an area the size of Greece (13 million hectares) every year, and is driven mostly by conversion to agriculture and by the wood products industries. REDD+ is an attempt to reverse this by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in forests.

Trees take heat-trapping carbon out of the atmosphere as they grow and store it for as long as the trees live. Instead of cutting down trees and selling the wood, the carbon trapped in the living trees can be sold as “carbon credits” on an open market.

A steel, cement, or coal-fired power company in the United States or a European country can then buy those credits instead of reducing its carbon emissions. The current price is around 10 dollars per ton, but this fluctuates.

Like any market, the carbon market demands verification of how much carbon is in a forest and how much carbon will remain there over 40, 60 or 80 years. This is both very technical and very expensive to do.

Purchasers of carbon credits also want contractual agreements with forest owners to guarantee the carbon stays in the forest, which may prevent local people from using the forest to grow food, fix a roof or even hunt for generations.

While REDD+ could protect forests and be an annual revenue source for local people, doing it right is very complex and there is much work left to do, said Parrotta. “It is hard to see how there will be much progress at Doha.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

Brazil is one of the most advanced countries in the world when it comes to legally guaranteeing the rights of forest communities and reducing deforestation, says economist Jeffrey Hatcher in this interview.

Rio+20 could be an opportunity to empower forest communities, believes Jeffrey Hatcher. Credit: Rights and Resources Initiative

In 2002, 85 percent of the planet’s forests were owned by governments. By 2008, that share had fallen to 70 percent, according to the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of 14 groups that works with 120 organisations in 16 countries around the world to promote reforms in laws and policies related to how forests are owned and managed.

One of the initiative’s goals is to advance the rights of poor communities who live in the forests, and in this regard, Brazil’s progress in community and indigenous rights is noteworthy, said Hatcher, the director of global programs at RRI.

The RRI periodically reviews the status of forest rights in the world and publishes a major report every five to six years to assess the changes that have taken place, explained Hatcher, 31, in an interview in Rio de Janeiro. In his opinion, Brazil has shown considerable leadership and put great effort into rationalising how forests are managed.

Q: What results have been observed in the evolution of forest ownership in recent decades? A: Since 1992 there’s been a very significant move legislatively to provide greater rights to communities and households that live in forests, not only indigenous people, but other communities who live there as well.

In Africa today, legally almost all the forests are the property of the state, but since 1992 they have created special legal regimes that could provide rights to communities that live there. There are a lot of people who live in the forest but they have no rights to stay there. They lived there before the state was created.

Brazil is probably the most advanced, besides some countries like China or Sweden. In Brazil there has been a major innovation in the Constitution of 1988 and since then, the creation of indigenous territories on a large scale. There are not many places in the world that have such large areas of forest under indigenous ownership.

Q: What is the role of indigenous peoples in the conservation of forests? A: There has been a lot of research done over the past 10 to 15 years trying to understand that question. What the research has shown pretty conclusively is that where communities that live in the forest have legal rights and they feel protected, they do a very good job at maintaining the forest, (as well as) biodiversity, animals and carbon.

Most of the deforestation in the world occurs in Brazil, the DRC and Indonesia. But over the past few years, deforestation has gone down dramatically in Brazil.

Indonesia produces 20 percent of the world’s deforestation-related carbon emissions. And in both Indonesia and the DRC, communities that live in the forest have no rights, no legal way to secure their land.

Q: Is it possible for indigenous peoples to remain in the forests to protect them, even though their numbers are very small relative to the territories they occupy? A: That is very possible. There are a lot of arguments saying that indigenous people are claiming too much forest, but because they live there, they are very good at managing it. There is a study that came out recently showing that if you take a protected area managed by the government and if you compare it to protected areas managed by the indigenous communities, there was an eight times greater chance of fire in the protected area managed by the government, because in that area there are no people.

And on the other side, (communities) are dispersed on indigenous territory, and they have the ability to keep other people out, which is very effective in terms of preserving the forest.

One of the things in Brazil that it is complicated, in the Amazon in particular, is that there are a lot of overlapping claims to the land, irregular titles, titles obtained illegally. In areas where there is a lot of unclarity, people can take advantage of it. And that is the same situation in a lot of places.

Q: The delineation and homologation of indigenous lands in Brazil could take decades. A: The actual effort that goes into delineating a territory could be done in a shorter amount of time, but the reason it takes a long time is because it is a political question of who controls the resources.

The process of delineating indigenous properties involves a lot of negotiation in settling the boundaries, because every day that goes by, that land is more valuable. So it is a question that needs support at higher political levels, but it also needs the demand from indigenous communities for that land.

Q: The Brazilian Congress is about to vote on reforms to the Forest Code, which are opposed by environmentalists because they would grant an amnesty to agricultural and livestock producers who have illegally cleared forests and relax controls on deforestation. How do you see this from abroad? A: I understand the desire to develop, but this model of development which is very extensive, using a lot of land, doesn’t seem to be the most rational way to develop the agriculture sector. It might be relevant for the agriculture sector, but probably not for the whole country.

Q: What can you tell us about the publication that RRI plans to launch at the end of May, before Rio+20 (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development)? A: It will be a global overview that analyses forest ownership and how it has changed in 50 countries since 1992. And there will be a component in which we will look at specific cases showing the effect that tenure rights have on poverty and on deforestation.

We are using satellite images and property rights records to see what the change has been in areas where people gain legal title.

In Brazil, we will look at the diversity of the laws and regulations that are available and how they have been implemented. We want to show the rest of the world what Brazil has done and what it is possible in terms of protecting rights, but also show that there is a threat that exists because of the (new) Forest Code.

Q: What are your expectations for Rio+20? A: In general it provides an opportunity to raise this type of issue, the forest rights issue, which is one of the few success stories since Rio 92 (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit, held in the same city in 1992).

I would like to see a big commitment to a green economy. There are billions of people around the world that live every single day based on natural resources they have on their land. If there is a general political commitment to empowering them to take decisions and use resources legally, for me that will be a successful outcome.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

By Milagros Salazar
LIMA, Mar 21 2012 (IPS)

In Peru, where over half of the national territory is covered by forests and the logging industry is marred by corruption, transparency and good forest management are closely linked.

Twenty government agencies related to forest management were evaluated by a non-governmental institution in 2011 to determine whether they complied with a legal requirement to operate websites and to what degree they provide the public with access to information.

The study found that the number of responses to requests for information has increased yearly. The percentage of requests fulfilled rose from 67 percent in 2010 to 75 percent in 2011. Nevertheless, the percentage of responses provided later than the legally mandated deadline rose from 22 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

Within the national government, the Ministry of Environment showed considerable improvement. However, according to specialists, the steps taken by regional governments were even more significant, because within the framework of decentralisation in Peru, it is these agencies which are increasingly responsible for forest governance, particularly in the Amazon region.

Two of the six regions that now are now responsible for controlling, monitoring and granting forest concessions – formerly the excusive domain of the national government – showed the greatest progress: San Martín and Loreto, both in northern Peru.

All combined, these six regions account for 86 percent of Peru’s Amazon rainforest cover.

The “2011 Annual Report: Transparency in the Peruvian Forestry Sector”, presented Mar. 14 in Lima, was produced by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Law, Environment and Natural Resources), better known by the Spanish acronym DAR.

DAR has been conducting these evaluations since 2009 as part of an international effort coordinated by the British NGO Global Witness, which encompasses four African countries, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana and Liberia, and three Latin American countries, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru.

“Making information more transparent contributes to eradicating bad practices and bad management, because it allows the authorities to organise their information, which makes management much more efficient,” Javier Martínez, lead author of the report and coordinator of the DAR Ecosystems Programme, told Tierramérica.

The government of San Martín, for example, operates a special section of its website that provides access to documentation related to logging permits and forest concessions, as well as maps to locate these concessions and determine the tree species that can be legally harvested.

“Over the last year we have managed to post the greatest amount of information possible, but it isn’t easy. There is never enough time, because a great deal needs to be done,” the director of the Department of Natural Resources of San Martín, Miguel Alva, told Tierramérica.

This regional agency earned high praise from DAR for the progress it has achieved. But Martínez noted that they still face the challenge of publishing information on the volume of timber harvested on each concession, so that the public can monitor the sale of this resource.

This would make it possible to confirm “whether logging activity complies with permitted quotas, and can contribute to formalising the sector,” he explained.

The Amazon region of Loreto in northeastern Peru comprises almost a third of the country’s territory. The regional government’s website features an environmental information system with figures on the volume of timber exported and the areas deforested, among other data.

The public can also report wrongdoings online.

In the coming months, DAR hopes to obtain results reflecting greater transparency in the eastern regions of Madre de Dios and Ucayali, after signing agreements with their respective governments.

But Martínez stressed that the challenges faced vary from one region to another.

Authorities in San Martín and Loreto told Tierramérica that their efforts are constrained by insufficient resources to hire more staff and a lack of equipment.

In San Martín, Alva has a staff of 34 people to oversee 1.5 million hectares of forests with non-stop logging activity, a task that requires at least double that number of personnel.

In Loreto, the director of the Regional Natural Resources Management Programme, Abel Benites, told Tierramérica that 87 employees must contend with monitoring 36 million hectares of forest.

In 2010, the Ombudsman’s Office reported that the agencies responsible for supervising the Amazon region were seriously understaffed.

Numerous operational shortcomings were also detected in 38 offices attached to the national Ministry of Agriculture and regional offices in charge of forest governance. Motor vehicles in good condition were found in only three, and just one was equipped with a boat, despite the essential importance of river transportation in the Amazon region, according to the report, “Forestry Policies and the Peruvian Amazon: Advances and obstacles on the path to sustainability”.

This degree of informality has allowed both officials and users to falsify information, with timber transport permits “laundered” to permit the sale of trees harvested in unauthorised areas, it added.

“If resources are scarce, what are the possibilities for these authorities to place priority on transparency? It needs to be demonstrated that more organised and freely available information contributes to making better decisions,” Elena Castro, the commissioner for the environment, public services and indigenous peoples at the Ombudsman’s Office, commented to Tierramérica.

The national government provides the regions responsible for forest management with only 25 percent of the money earned through the sale of rights to the exploitation of forest resources, stressed the governor of Loreto, Yván Vásquez.

Moreover, some municipalities receive very little of the so-called forest levy, the share of income and revenues obtained by the national government for the exploitation of natural resources that is allocated to regional and local governments.

The district of Tres Unidos in San Martín receives an average of two dollars a month through this forest levy, reported Alva.

Representatives of DAR and the Ombudsman’s Office emphasise the need to find ways of increasing the budget available for the colossal task of guarding the forest. One possibility is raising the fees for the rights to forest resource exploitation, which have not been adjusted in over a decade, despite the requirement to do so established by the regulations of the country’s forest law.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

An alteration of the relationship between the Amazon rainforest and the billions of cubic metres of water transported by air from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean to the Andes Mountains could endanger the resilience of a biome that is crucial for the global climate, warns a recently concluded two-decade research project.

Scientific observation tower in Boa Vista, capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima, which borders with Venezuela. Credit: Courtesy of Mario Bentes

In order to more fully understand this complex ecosystem, scientists from Brazil and around the world created the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA).

After 20 years of research, the conclusions reached from the data collected warn of numerous potential threats.

According to the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), one of the agencies participating in the experiment, unless effective policies are implemented in the coming years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by the end of the 21st century there will be 40 percent less rainfall and average temperatures of up to eight degrees higher than normal in the Amazon.

This would convert the rainforest into a source of carbon dioxide emissions instead of a “sink” that contributes to carbon sequestration and storage.

The International Energy Agency estimates that in 2010 the world’s population released a record amount of 30.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.

“The research shows us that the rainforest has a great power of resilience, but also that this power has limits,” physicist Paulo Artaxo, chair of the LBA International Scientific Steering Committee, told Tierramérica.

“If we continue burning so much carbon, the climate scenario for the region will be considerably unfavorable for any resilience that the rainforest could develop. It would be difficult for it to survive such enormous climate stress,” he added.

To gather data for its research, the LBA used, among other instruments, 13 towers measuring between 40 and 55 metres in height, set up in different points throughout the rainforest to measure the flow of gases, the functioning of basic properties of the ecosystem, and many other environmental parameters.

The information collected was analysed by scientists from various fields in order to understand the rainforest as an interrelated system.

“The perception in the scientific community was that studies carried out in individual disciplines were not sufficiently able to explain the Amazon, and this led to the LBA. It was felt that an integrated effort was needed to explain the rainforest from the viewpoint of the physical, chemical, biological and human sciences, and the relationship between them,” explained Brazilian climate expert Antônio Nobre, another participant in the research initiative.

“When I began my studies in the LBA, my part in the project was mainly about carbon. But carbon without water dries out and the forest catches fire. Without transpiration, there is no carbon sequestration, because there is no photosynthesis. I realised that the water and carbon cycles are inseparable,” Nobre told Tierramérica.

This integrated analysis demonstrated that the Amazon rainforest absorbs a small amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, estimated at half a ton per hectare per year.

But the amount of carbon absorbed varies considerably from region to region, depending on environmental alterations. In areas near places where human activity has caused significant degradation, the rate of absorption is reduced, and the Amazon, instead of storing carbon dioxide, is releasing it.

In addition, the rainforest’s absorption of carbon dioxide is counteracted by emissions from deforestation and queimadas, fires intentionally set to clear forested land in order to expand agriculture, stressed Artaxo.

Since the latter practice has declined drastically in recent years, from 27,000 sq km in 2005 to around 7,000 sq km in 2010, “the characteristic feature of the rainforest today is that it absorbs carbon,” he said.

But the changes brought about by the greenhouse effect and rising temperatures in the rainforest have led to a situation where the dry season tends to last longer, creating the conditions for the outbreak of more fires and more carbon dioxide emissions.

“The solid particles released into the atmosphere by queimadas alter the microphysics of clouds and the rainfall regimes,” added Artaxo.

In one of the experiment’s studies, it was observed that the increase in queimadas in the northern state of Rondônia extended the dry season by between two and three weeks, which in turn increased the incidence of fires and even further aggravated their effect on the functioning of the ecosystem, he explained.

During a very severe drought in 2005, “the Amazon lost a lot of carbon,” he said. In the event that serious droughts become more frequent, the rainforest could become “an emitter of carbon dioxide and cease to provide an important environmental service,” he warned.

The lengthening of the dry season causes another phenomenon that was also studied in the LBA: the emission of carbon by rivers.

“Small and medium-sized waterways emit significant amounts of gas. This leads to what is called carbon dioxide evasion from bodies of water, and it happens because most of these rivers are saturated with carbon dissolved in their water,” said Ataxo.

As time passes, this carbon “is released into the atmosphere in rather significant quantities. All of the phenomena that alter the Amazon ecosystem have a strong impact on the evasion of gases from the rivers. When the temperature rises, the emission of gases rises as well,” he added.

To illustrate the potential consequences of a lack of equilibrium in the Amazon on the global climate, Nobre referred to the so-called “flying rivers” research that begun in the 1970s and was consolidated in the Flying Rivers Project in 2007.

“We discovered that the sun’s action on the equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean evaporates a large amount of water. This humidity is transported by the wind to the north of Brazil. Around 10 billion cubic metres of water arrive in the Amazon every year in the form of water vapor. Some of it falls as rain, and the rest continues to flow until it runs into the wall of the Andes mountain range,” explained Nobre.

In the Andean region it falls as snow, and when the snow melts, “it feeds the rivers of the Amazon basin. Most of the rain that falls on the rainforest is evaporated again,” he added.

This humidity fluctuates over Bolivia, Paraguay and the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, in the west, Minas Gerais and São Paulo, in the east and southeast, and even the southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. “And it brings most of the rain to all of these regions,” he stressed.

A drought in the Amazon would have a serious impact on these invisible airborne rivers and on the rainfall patterns in these regions, which are very rich in agriculture, Nobre warned.

The LBA is currently a program of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, coordinated by the National Institute of Amazonian Research, with the support of other agencies.

Its researchers are expanding the initiative into other areas, including agro-pastoral systems and the behavior of carbon dioxide in soybean plantations.

“We have a great deal of work ahead of us to understand the natural processes and the effects of what humans do in terms of the alteration of ecosystems,” concluded Artaxo.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.