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   

Indonesian President Joko Widodo (right) and Walhi Executive Director Abetnego Tarigan (centre) come to Sungai Tohor village. Credit: Walhi/Friends of the Earth Indonesia

By Jeff Conant
JAKARTA, Dec 5 2014 (IPS)

Last week, Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, ordered the country’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry to review the licenses of all companies that have converted peatlands to oil palm plantations.

If the ministry follows through, this will be one of the most important actions the Indonesian government can take to begin truly reining in the destruction reaped by the palm oil industry there – and to address the severe climate impacts of peatland destruction.“The best thing to do is to give the land to people... They won’t do any harm to nature. However, if we give the land to corporations, they will only switch it to monoculture plantations.” -- President Widodo

The Indonesian Forum on the Environment, known as WALHI/Friends of the Earth Indonesia, has been pushing for this initiative, and the announcement was made in the village of River Tohor, in Riau Province, where WALHI has long worked with the community.

Walhi had invited Jokowi, as the president is casually known, to come to Riau because the province is ground zero for Indonesia’s massive haze crisis that comes from the near-constant burning of carbon-rich peatlands in order to convert these fragile ecosystems to plantations.

“We invited him to River Tohor to demonstrate the community’s success in preserving the peat forest ecosystem,” said Zenzi Suhadi, forest campaigner for Walhi.

“We hoped this visit would show the president that community management can protect forests, and that granting concessions to companies is the wrong approach,” Suhadi said.

The strategy appears to have succeeded, as Walhi hailed President Jokowi’s Riau visit as proof of his commitment to solving ecological problems.

“The best thing to do is to give the land to people,” the president told the Jakarta Globe. “What’s made by people is usually environmentally friendly. They won’t do any harm to nature. However, if we give the land to corporations, they will only switch it to monoculture plantations.”

“I have told the minister of environment and forestry to review the licenses of companies that have converted peatlands into monoculture plantations if they are found damaging the ecosystem,” Jokowi said. “There is no other solution to the issue; everyone understands what must be done.” 

Peatlands – waterlogged vegetable soils that make up a significant portion of Indonesia’s rainforests – are great storehouses of carbon dioxide. The widespread practice of draining and burning peat to develop palm-oil and other plantation crops makes Indonesia the world’s third largest emitter of global warming pollution, after China and the United States.

Taking strong measures to prevent this practice may be the single best action Indonesia can take in the fight to curb the climate crisis.

Palm oil producers have fought long to preserve the ability to clear peatlands. When Wilmar International, among the world’s largest palm oil traders, announced last year that it would stop trading palm oil grown on cleared peatlands, some suppliers pushed back, saying it would not only harm the industry, but would set back the economic development of smallholder farmers.

Jokowi appears to have taken the economic argument to heart: he made the announcement to audit palm oil concession licenses after joining the local community to plant seedlings of sago, a native palm species that is harvested for its starchy tapioca-like pith, a food product that can be sold locally or for export.

“The president’s decision to audit concession licenses to protect peat puts the interests of citizens ahead of the interests of the industry,” said Suhadi.

“This is an acknowledgment that the people of Indonesia have been waiting on for decades,” Suhadi continued. “Finally it is recognized that government must foster trust in people to be the first to protect forests.”

Jokowi’s move came shortly after his government announced a four- to six-month moratorium on all new logging concessions. That prohibition goes beyond the 2011 nationwide moratorium on new concessions across more than 14 million hectares of forests and peatlands

The move also comes on the heels of Jokowi’s announcement that the Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Environment would be combined into one ministry, headed by Siti Nurbaya – a move that not all see as positive but that does signal a radical effort to restructure the way the government manages lands and resources.

Jokowi has also pledged to clean up Indonesia’s notoriously corrupt forestry sector as a step toward reducing deforestation.

Walhi Executive Director Abetnego Tarigan says the president must soon follow up the visit with “concrete actions” in the form of firm law enforcement.

“Among the concrete actions that President Jokowi can immediately take is ordering the termination concessions for companies proven to have been involved in forest and land fires,” Abetnego said.

“Law enforcement must continue legal action against companies that have been named suspects, as well as develop investigations into companies that civilians have filed reports against,” he added.

The environmental and social degradation caused by the palm oil is founded upon corruption and illegality, Walhi argues.

“In order to begin restoring forests and returning rights to the people,” says Suhadi, “the large companies need to be the first target of the government. President Jokowi needs to streamline the ability of law enforcement to take action against these companies as part of a national movement to reclaim citizen’s rights to lands and livelihoods.

“As it is now, law enforcement agencies are part of the corporate crime wave that undermines peoples’ rights. The first duty of the government is to improve law enforcement in the forest sector.”

It appears that, after decades of growing corruption and the massive deforestation, climate pollution and social conflict that has followed from it, Indonesia’s new president may be serious about bringing much-needed change.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

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)

Commercial logging and firewood extraction for domestic use have accelerated Myanmar's deforestation rates in the last three decades. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 14 2014 (IPS)

Civil society groups are split over a decision by the U.S. government to waive sanctions on Myanmar’s timber sector for one year.

The decision, which went into effect late last month, is being hailed by some as an opportunity for community-led and sustainability initiatives to take root in Myanmar, where lucrative forestry revenues have long been firmly controlled by the military and national elites. The European Union, too, is currently working to normalise its relations with the Myanmarese timber sector.“The concern is that the system that is gaining traction with the international timber industry is to bypass any national systemic forestry reform process.” -- Kevin Woods of Forest Trends

Yet others are warning that Washington has taken the decision too soon, before domestic conditions in Myanmar are able to support such a change.

“Lifting sanctions on the timber industry now appears to be a premature move by the U.S., and risks lessening Burma’s impetus towards reform,” Ali Hines, a land campaigner with Global Witness, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“Burma is not yet in a position to state convincingly where and how timber is sourced, meaning that U.S. importers and traders have little way of knowing whether Burmese timber is illegal, or linked to social or environmental harm.”

In June, Washington granted a limited one-year license to the 200 members of the U.S.-based International Wood Products Association (IWPA) to engage in transactions with the Myanma Timber Enterprise, the state logging agency. U.S. officials say the aim of the decision is to allow U.S. companies and customers to help strengthen reforms in the Myanmarese timber trade, hopefully promoting transparency and building nascent sustainability practices.

“Interaction with responsible business can help build basic capacity so that Burma can begin to tackle the long-term systemic issues present in its extractive sectors,” Kerry S. Humphrey, a media advisor with the U.S. State Department, told IPS.

“The State Department has been in consultations with IWPA to ensure that any trade conducted under this license is in line with U.S. Government policies, including promoting sustainable forest management and legal supply chains.”

Humphrey notes that IWPA will now be required to file quarterly reports with the State Department on its “progress in helping to ensure legal timber supply chains”.

Yet critics worry this will simply create two parallel timber sectors, one licit and another that is little changed. The industry, as with Myanmar’s broader extractives sector, has long been notorious for deep corruption and human rights abuses.

“The concern is that the system that is gaining traction with the international timber industry is to bypass any national systemic forestry reform process,” Kevin Woods, a Myanmar researcher with Forest Trends, a watchdog group, told IPS.

Instead, Woods says, the end result could be to “create a wall around a few government-managed timber reserves to feed global tropical timber demand, leaving the rest of the country’s forests located in ethnic conflict zones to be continually pillaged and sold across its borders.”

Free-for-all?

Nearly a half-decade after Myanmar began a stuttering process of pro-democratic reform, many today are increasingly concerned that this process is slowing or even reversing course. Late last month, 72 members of the U.S. Congress warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that conditions in the country have “taken a sharp turn for the worse” over the past year and a half.

Kerry was in Myanmar over the past weekend, where he reportedly raised U.S. concerns over such regression with multiple top government officials.

Yet he also rejected concerns that Washington is “moving too quickly” in rolling back punitive bilateral sanctions on Myanmar. He had gone through “a long list of challenges” with Myanmarese officials, Kerry told journalists Sunday, “in a very, very direct way”.

With the removal of sanctions, however, many worry that Washington is losing important leverage. In the timber sector in particular, some question the extent to which U.S. and other foreign companies will have the wherewithal, or interest, to effect change on the ground in Myanmar – particularly given the tepid commitments made by the country’s government.

“This is not the time for U.S.-based timber importers to be investing in Burma,” Faith Doherty, a senior campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“Secretary Kerry … raised serious questions as to the backsliding of reforms and continuing human rights abuses within the country – how do companies within the IWPA think they are able to avoid contributing to these issues that are prevalent throughout the timber sector?”

Indeed, some observers suggest that Myanmar’s opening-up has been accompanied by a sense of free-for-all.

“Illegal logging and natural resource grabbing, including land, in ethnic states and regions … have become worse since the reforms started and the influx of foreign investment into the country,” Paul Sein Twa, with the Burma Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organisation, told IPS.

“Remember, we are still in a fragile peace-building period and there is no rule of law in the conflict areas. So our recommendation is to go slowly on reforming law and policies – to open up more space, engage with civil society organisations and the ethnic armed groups.”

Certification momentum

Any ultimate success in reforming Myanmar’s forestry sector will depend on future actions by both the country’s government and the foreign companies that end up purchasing the country’s timber. Yet some are applauding the lifting of U.S. sanctions as an important opportunity to finally begin the work of reform.

“The problem with sanctions is that they restrict buyers in our country from engaging in the sector – the international marketplace, which today includes strong preferences for sustainable products, is inaccessible,” Josh Tosteson, a senior vice-president with the Rainforest Alliance, a group that engages in the certification of tropical forest products, told IPS.

“Particularly if the lifting of sanctions comes along with some commitments from significant buyers to work cooperatively to support and incentivise the march toward sustainability certification, that can inject some real energy to drive this process forward.”

This week, the Myanmar Forest Department accepted a proposal from the Rainforest Alliance for a pilot production community forest in the country’s south.

“Having market mechanisms there that provide a minimum preference and a new market norm that won’t allow anything other than responsible or sustainably produced products to enter the market – that will be the key element,” Tosteson says.

“Particularly in intra-Asian trade you’ll need to have buying companies get on board with these norms. That will be a significant challenge, but if they’re not stepping up to create these new market norms no other efforts will matter – illicit products will simply flow through the routes of least resistance.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Indigenous children hold signs supporting a land rights struggle in Cherãn. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 2014 (IPS)

Global trends towards a strengthening of legal rights over land for local and indigenous communities appear to have slowed significantly in recent years, leading some analysts to warn that the fight for local control over forests has reached an inflection point with a new danger of backtracking on previous progress.

The past five years have seen less than 20 percent of global forestland put under community control compared to the previous half-dozen years, according to new research released Wednesday by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington-based coalition of 140 international organisations. Further, the group says that far fewer legal safeguards were put in place during this latter period, while those laws that have been passed have been weaker.“If private companies and governments from the developed countries don’t weigh in, all of this progress could be lost – this could be it.” -- Andy White

“If private companies and governments from the developed countries don’t weigh in, all of this progress could be lost – this could be it,” Andy White, RRI’s coordinator, told IPS.

“Even though there’s a lot of talk on this issue right now, no one is really investing – not the donors, not the big companies, not the developed country governments. No one is putting money behind the words to help developing countries to do the mapping, the registries, the consultations that will be required to get this done.”

The slowdown comes despite a significant uptick in the public discussion over land and indigenous rights, with multinational corporations, national courts and Western donors increasingly acknowledging the issue’s importance and pledging to strengthen safeguards for forest tenure. Development workers say this disconnect between words and actions highlights both a lack of prioritisation on land rights and, given the rising rhetoric, an opportunity for future action.

“[T]he overriding picture in 2013 remained one of continuing resource grabs by local elites and corporations, aided by governments eager to give away land to investors on almost any terms,” RRI states in its flagship annual report, released Wednesday at a London conference.

“This has to change, and it can. If domestic political pressure within developing countries aligns with new government commitments and enlightened forward-thinking companies, the prospects for clarifying and respecting land rights can be transformed in 2014.”

For now, however, RRI says recent global progress on land rights has been “dismal”.

60 percent government-owned

As of last year, indigenous and local communities had some kind of control over around 513 million hectares of forests. Yet particularly in lower- and middle-income countries, governments continue to administer or claim ownership over roughly 60 percent of that land.

While this figure has come down by around 10 percent since 2002, these gains are massively skewed towards certain regions and even just a handful of countries. In Latin America, for instance, communities now control around 39 percent of forests, compared to just six percent in sub-Saharan Africa – and less than one percent in the Congo Basin.

RRI says that from 2002 to 2013, 24 new legal provisions were put in place to strengthen some form of community control over forests. Yet just six of these have been passed since 2008, and those that have been put in place recently have been relatively weaker, with none considered strong enough to recognise ownership rights.

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

“It is no coincidence the global slowdown in reform happened at the exact time that the financial value of land, water, and carbon skyrocketed,” Raul Silva Telles do Valle, policy and rights programme coordinator for Instituto Socioambiental, a Brazilian NGO, said Wednesday.

“As a result, ‘land grabbing’ has spiked and impoverished countries desperate for an economic boost see forests as a commodity, not as their citizens’ home. These governments need to see the forest as more than just land for exploitation and a collection of trees.”

In recent years, multinational companies (such as Nestle and Unilever) and multilateral institutions have made a series of important new commitments to honour and strengthen community and indigenous land rights. But these pledges don’t appear to have made much of a difference – at least not yet.

Indeed, the new data suggests that one of the most significant multilateral anti-deforestation programmes, the World Bank-run REDD+, has yet to impact significantly on this pattern, despite stated aims.

While these commitments have been in line with a rising international understanding on the importance of land tenure to a broad spectrum of development concerns, in 2007 food and land prices suddenly jumped. Analysts say this appears to have cut off a process towards land reforms that had been well underway.

“Latin America in 2002 was continuing to go through a series of democratic reforms that included the recognition of indigenous rights as human rights, but the tragedy is that this democratic bolt has not happened in Africa or Southeast Asia,” RRI’s White says.

“In a truly unfortunate coincidence, right when these regions were beginning to make pledges about reforms, that’s when land prices went through the roof. A number of governments that had been putting in place plans to advance reforms suddenly reconsidered, including Laos, Liberia, Cameroon.”

Tension vs investment

A half-decade later, the new data should worry development and anti-poverty experts. RRI now looks at the current situation surrounding land rights as being at a global tipping point, under strain between the strengthening global understanding of the importance of community tenure on the one hand and the stalled progress on legally and fully enshrining these rights on the other.

Yet undertaking the work to secure land tenure isn’t overly expensive, particularly compared to the costs of the violence that has been seen growing around land disputes in recent years. Indeed, this climbing tension could offer a potent point of economic motivation for governments in developing countries to re-prioritise reforms in favour of local control of forestlands.

“There’s a clear chance here to increase foreign investment and to strengthen incomes and poverty alleviation,” White says.

“We all know the investors with a conscience do not go into countries where land disputes are a problem, and we know there’s trillions of dollars sloshing around the world looking for a place to go, particularly with global demand for food expected to double by 2050. This conflict is starting us in the face and it’s not going to diminish, but you can attract good capital and good business models if you advance these reforms.”

Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Sarah Tucker
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A recent article by IPS journalist Ngala Killian Chimtom described the struggle of the Baka of Cameroon to maintain their indigenous culture and livelihoods while coping with the rapidly-changing environment around them.

The Baka are hunter-gatherers indigenous to Cameroon’s southeastern forests. They are masters of the forest in every way, experts in the medicinal, spiritual, and nutritional qualities of the plants and animals around them. However, as Chimtom explains, the Baka today are threatened on multiple fronts, and “consumed with questions about their future.”

The Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Logging, mining, and poaching have greatly reduced the forest’s richness by driving away animals and reducing biodiversity. Conservation efforts have made once fruitful forest land off-limits to human activity. Although they legally have the right to carry out some subsistence activities in certain protected areas, the Baka often fall victim to brutal intimidation, arrest, and even torture at the hands of those charged with enforcing environmental protection.

With the forest jeopardised and the outside world quickly approaching, this generation of Baka children faces a more ambiguous and threatening future than their ancestors ever knew. The term “marginalisation” fits the Baka exceedingly well – they find themselves pushed to the margins in almost every way imaginable. They are forced to subsist on the outer edges of rich forests they once knew as their own. Their rights seem to be penciled in as an afterthought in key legislation affecting their ancestral lands and lifestyle.

But the biggest travesty is their marginalisation in our minds. Their story of struggle is written as a footnote to the narrative of Cameroon’s push to develop. In pursuit of economic growth, the government has prioritised exploitation of forest resources and urban expansion at the expense of its striking cultural and ecological diversity. As a result, the culture and environment that form the foundation of Baka identity are under threat.

Sarah Tucker, a researcher and Baka education specialist, says Cameroon’s Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Courtesy: Stephen Cashmere

We often describe the loss of the forest and Baka culture in the past tense. News media, nonprofit organisations, and researchers decry the degradation of the Baka way of life, but often speak as if it has already happened, and there is nothing to be done to stop it.

The truth is that this assault is happening before our eyes. We have a unique opportunity to take action to stop the forces in motion from repeating the same destruction that has played out in countless indigenous contexts worldwide.

This battle starts with education.

Contrary to popular belief, there is high demand for schooling among Baka communities. The fact that so many Baka parents choose to send their children to school is a testament to the fact that they are wary of what the future holds. It shows that they are deeply concerned that traditional forest education will not be enough to prepare their children for the challenges ahead.

Developing approaches that truly incorporate and validate Baka culture is the most challenging and exciting opportunity before us. Many view education as a “civilising” tool, used to transition the Baka into the “modern” world. But this perception over-simplifies their aspirations, and fails to acknowledge that it is possible to educate youth in a way that reinforces their traditions while also preparing them for their encounters with “modernity.”

The Baka have been changing and adapting to the world around them for millennia, as with all people on earth: they are just as “modern” as any city or town dweller could claim to be. A truly adapted education system will enable Baka children to make informed and empowered decisions about their own future.

We must understand that all education systems – kindergarten classrooms, prestigious universities, and Baka traditional education included – consist of a set of cultural priorities and assumptions about the future. Inclusive and adapted education strategies will enable the Baka to gain the skills they need to thrive in their forest home, as well as adapt to the rapidly encroaching outside world.

Done well, this will instill pride in Baka youth about their indigenous identity and heritage, empower them to defend their rights and interests, and help them choose their own path in life.

Sarah Tucker is a researcher and Baka education specialist. She is the co-founder of Chasing Two Rabbits at Once, a Baka education and empowerment organisation in Cameroon. Her work has been recognised by World Learning and Opportunity Africa.

Baka children in Cameroon sit in front of a hut called a 'mongolou'. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MINDOUROU, Cameroon, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Essomba Dominique, a Baka man from Mindourou in Cameroon’s East Region, sits dulled-eyed in front of his hut, known in the Baka language as the ‘mongoulou’.

A wood-transporting truck rumbles by, raising billows of dust in its wake. As he watches his seven children play in the courtyard, Essomba’s mind seems consumed with questions about their future."The forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all." -- Clement Nzito

“These passing trucks mean these children are going to suffer,” he tells IPS.

As if to illustrate his point, Essomba grasps his spear and whistles to a nearby dog. The animal wags its tail obediently and follows its master into the surrounding forest. After three hours of hunting, Essomba comes back, with just one miserable monkey strung on his shoulder.

“Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to carry the day’s catch all by myself,” he says. “I would have found it easy killing gorillas, monkeys and even elephants. Now, the animals have all fled.”

In the distance, sawmills are busy, and bulldozers as well, opening up access roads to logging and mining sites.

“Just look at the way they are destroying this forest,” Essomba says.

For the Baka, the forest represents the beginning and the end of life.

The chief of the Baka village of Mayos in the country’s East Region, Clement Nzito, tells IPS that “the forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all, the Supreme God which we call ‘Jengi’.”

All this has come under threat as Cameroon gets closer to living its dream of becoming an emerging economy by 2035.

Samuel Nnah Ndobe, who directs Pygmy programmes for the Yaoundé-based non-governmental Centre for Environment and Development (CED), recalls that in 1994, Cameroon passed forestry laws “that had the effect of forcing the Baka from primary forests, and these were turned into national parks where they are not allowed to hunt.”

The Baka are allowed to hunt in secondary forests, “but that precisely is where timber companies are also allowed free rein to log, and that’s destroying the forests,” Ndobe says.

He regrets that the fauna-rich parts of the forests where the Baka used to hunt game have now been protected and guarded. “Logging areas are also guarded, and the Pygmies are now found on the fringes,” he says.

Conservation groups have been working with the government to find middle ground between conservation efforts, the rights of the Bakas and the exigencies of development.

One way of integrating the Baka in the development agenda is through education. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is working with the government to develop educational strategies. The challenge is getting the Baka into formal school settings while at the same time safeguarding their culture.

“The Baka have strong cultural ties to the forest, and an incredible traditional education: as they grow up, young children learn the nutritional, medicinal, and spiritual qualities of the plants and animals all around them,” Sarah Tucker, senior international consultant for WWF, tells IPS.

“Innovative education approaches must engage Baka children and communities in a way that welcomes their culture.  School must enable them to build skills necessary to flourish in their forest home as well as in the outside world,” she says.

Xenophobic tendencies among Bantu neighbours also keep the Bakas on the fringes.

“Bantu consider Baka as sub-human. They claim Baka kids stink in class,” Alexis Tadokem, head teacher of a government primary school in Ntam Carrefour, a village on Cameroon’s borders with Congo Brazzaville, tells IPS.

“Baka are used as servants to Bantu. They are tortured and sometimes killed in the forest by the Bantu,” he says.

“When our children go to school, they are beaten by the Bantus,” confirms Yana Nicolas, a Baka man in Moloundou.

These constraints have been worsened by the influx of logging and mining companies, as well as the creation of national parks which limit Baka access to the forests they have traditionally considered their natural home.

A research team from the WWF has issued a series of innovative proposals, including adapting the educational calendar to the seasonal movement of Baka, use of the Baka language as co-medium for teaching in school, involving the Baka community in the educational process, and streamlining the content of education programmes to the socio-cultural context of Baka.

“We believe these innovations could help restore the eroding dignity of the Baka, and enhance Cameroon’s drive towards attaining the millennium development goal on universal access to primary education,” Zame Obame, pedagogic inspector in charge of nursery and orimary education at the ministry of basic education, tells IPS.

Maddlyn Maelofa (far right) and young girls in Huahai village in Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS.

By Catherine Wilson
AUKI, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands, Dec 1 2013 (IPS)

Logging is the largest industry in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located northwest of Fiji, where 80 percent of the islands are covered in tropical rainforest. But, although timber accounts for 60 percent of this South Pacific nation’s export earnings, most local communities have experienced no beneficial development.

And when the social costs for those who live in the vicinity of logging camps includes greater inequality, increased alcohol abuse, the undermining of traditional governance and violation of human rights, such as the commercial sexual exploitation of children, there is reason for people to claim that their lives have got worse.

Today seven Malaysian logging companies operate near the village of Huahai, home to 500 people in the rural Arekwa region of Malaita Island in Malaita Province. But the community, which has been surrounded by timber extraction for a decade with new operators arriving every year, has had enough.“They invite girls aged 13 to 14 years to the logging camps. Sometimes they say they are going to see movies, but we don’t know what happens,”

“The companies are benefitting, but they are destroying our community’s resources,” Maddlyn Maelofa, Mothers Union leader for the Arekwa region, told IPS in Huahai.

But Maelofa’s most ardent concern is for the fate of children and young girls in the village.

“They [the loggers] invite girls aged 13 to 14 years to the logging camps. Sometimes they say they are going to see movies, but we don’t know what happens,” she said.

Maelofa is aware of at least 10 girls who are involved, and many of them have become pregnant.

“I also saw a woman take her teenage daughter to a logging ship,” she continued. “The ship came to pick up the logs and the woman went to sell [prostitute] her daughter.”

Sexual exploitation of minors by foreign logging workers has been identified in four of the nine provinces in the Solomon Islands, namely Makira, Isabel, Western and Malaita.

In 2007, the Church of Melanesia’s Christian Care Centre (CCC) in the capital, Honiara, published a report on the issue in Makira Province. Based on a study of 12 villages and 41 individual interviews, it documented 73 children who had been subjected to sexual exploitation and 12 who had been sold into marriage to migrant logging workers. Half of them were below the age of 15 years. Child prostitution was prevalent in every community with victims between 11-19 years and girls or families receiving rewards of cash or goods.

A spokesperson for the Malaita Council of Women highlighted that one tragic consequence was increased teenage pregnancies and a growing generation of fatherless children. Many families cannot afford to provide for the illegitimate children, she said, especially when workers returned to their home countries and left the girls behind.

In the 1990s international logging companies gained numerous concessions in the country as political instability followed the outbreak of a civil conflict which would last five years from 1998 to 2003. Timber extraction, dominated by companies from South East Asia, soon reached unsustainable levels, feeding the demand for natural resources by rapidly developing Asian economies.

Corruption, limited government resources for monitoring logging operations and a scarce police presence in remote rural areas of the Solomon Islands have contributed to corporate impunity.

However socio-economic hardship and lack of education in remote island communities with 23 percent of the population living below the poverty line are also factors in exploitation.

According to the CCC report, “overseas loggers presented an opportunity for young people to access money and goods which would normally be out of their means.” The prospect of families receiving money was also found to be significant in parents failing to prevent exploitation.

Other issues include early marriage and custom of bride price, which involves the awarding of money or goods to the family of a girl promised in marriage. An estimated 3 percent of children are married by the legal age of 15 years in the Solomon Islands and 22 percent by 18 years.

Aaron Olofia, chairman of the Child Protection Sub-Committee, Ministry of Health in Honiara, told IPS that a Taskforce Against Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of Children (TACSEC) was established to respond to the report’s recommendations, which included improving awareness among communities, empowering children and parents, building more effective local support services and consulting with logging companies.

“We engaged with communities and logging camps,” Olofia claimed. “Communities agreed to set up small working groups comprising chiefs and church leaders to explore how best to address the issue.”

The Taskforce approached several companies that subsequently introduced penalties to workers found to be involved in child exploitation consisting of a fine of 10,000 dollars and forced return to their home country. Due to lack of funding, TACSEC has been unable to follow up on implementation.

Existing laws in the Solomon Islands prohibit the defilement of girls below 13 years and the luring of females below 15 years for prostitution. A review this year of the penal code for sexual offences by the Law Reform Commission recommends that further criminal offences should include acting as an agent to induce a child to engage with commercial sexual exploitation, receiving a benefit from child prostitution or exploitation and permitting it to occur by a parent or child-carer.

Longden Manedika, director of the Solomon Islands Development Trust (SIDT), a national NGO, also believes that women and girls must be given more meaningful and empowered roles in village decision-making and rural development.

Community development of bylaws to protect human rights in communities before logging companies enter an area is advocated by the Malaita Council of Women, as well as improvement of literacy in rural communities and delivering awareness of child exploitation in local schools.

The people of Hauhai village have also explored sustainable economic alternatives to timber extraction.  Nearly three-quarters of people in the village are now employed by locally run coconut enterprises.

“We make coconut oil and export it,” Maelofa explained. “Those who own the factory sell it, but those who grow coconuts also benefit, because they sell their fruit to the factory.”

The community now sees no reason for logging to continue in their area.

“Last year a company tried to come and operate here and they [the chiefs] did not allow it, so the company left,” Maelofa recounted. “Our chiefs don’t allow logging to come here now.”

More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organisations protested Monday in the Chilean capital to demand that the state regain control over the management of water, which was privatised by the dictatorship in 1981.

More than 6,000 people took part in the peaceful, colourful “great carnival march for the recovery and defence of water” in Santiago, according to the organisers, one of whom was former student leader Camila Vallejo, who plans to run for parliament for the Communist Party.

The demonstrators also delivered a letter to right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were not only due to persistent drought but also to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the Binational Mining Treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

“This wall is drying up our basins, it is devastating the water cycles that have sustained our valleys for centuries, it is sowing death in our territories and it must be torn down now,” it adds.

The mining industry, which uses significant quantities of water, is one of the pillars of the Chilean economy, with copper exports alone accounting for one-third of all government revenue.

“There is a water crisis at the national level,” indigenous leader Rodrigo Villablanca, president of the Diaguita Sierra Huachacan Community in northern Chile and spokesman for the “Hope of Life” Ecological and Cultural Committee, told IPS.

The movement is fighting for the repeal of the water code, adopted by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which made water private property by granting the state the right to grant water use rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity.

The code also allows water use rights to be bought, sold or leased, without taking into consideration local priorities for water use, the organisations complain.

“Our main demand is the repeal of the water code that is denying us the right to have water to live,” Teresa Nahuelpán, an activist with the Movement for the Defence of the Sea in Mehuín, 800 km south of Santiago, told IPS.

The code “favours profits and the wealthy,” she argued.

The organisations are also demanding the repeal of the bilateral mining treaty signed by Chile and Argentina in 1997 which, they say, hands foreign mining corporations all of the water and energy they need for their operations along the border between the two countries.

The treaty states that the public institutions of the two countries will act in a coordinated manner with a view to facilitating mining investment and the development of the industry. It goes on to say that towards that end, public authorities will permit the use of “all kinds of natural resources, inputs and infrastructure”.

Villablanca said “the binational mining treaty hands over 4,000 kilometres of (Andes) mountains to transnational corporations.”

The community leader said the agreement “allows the extraction of natural resources and the use of water to be granted practically free of charge to companies.

“In Latin America, the biggest concentrations of freshwater are in the Andes mountains,” home to 80 percent of Chile’s indigenous communities, who “depend on these sources of water for survival,” he said.

Furthermore, “these mining and water use concessions (to private interests) are inheritable; they are forcing the highlands communities to retreat. Indigenous people have been moving out and small-scale mining and livestock-raising, which the communities depended on for subsistence, have been hurt,” Villablanca added.

“The aim of the march was to have an impact on public opinion, in Chile as well as at an international level,” he said.

Nahuelpán said “the march is a wakeup call for people, and a demand for water that allows us to continue living, that gives us life.

“Logging companies in the south have also caused a great deal of damage” to Mapuche communities, she added. “The territories are drying up; there are many communities that have no water, and that are getting water from tanker trucks.”

The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group, numbering about one million in a country of nearly 17 million people. They represent 87 percent of the native population, and live mainly in the south of the country, where Mapuche communities frequently clash with logging companies over land and water.

The latest setback in the organisations’ struggles was an early April Supreme Court verdict ruling that it is not illegal for a mining company to not pay for extracting groundwater on land it was granted under concession because it is merely “exploring” for minerals in the water, rather than “exploiting” the water.

Environmentalists warn that the ruling could serve as a legal precedent for mining corporations to use water without any controls, even until a water source has been exhausted.

The ruling was in favour of the Sociedad Legal Minera NX Uno de Peine company, which the Dirección General de Aguas, Chile’s water authority, had denounced for using groundwater without a permit.

But the Supreme Court ruling stated that the groundwater pumping operation in question was authorised by the exploration concession and did not require a permit from the water authority, as stated in article 58 of the water code.

“We’re talking about water that was in the basins, which enables Chile’s valleys to survive,” said Villablanca. “In a word, they are leaving all of Chile without water.”

Pukobjê-Gavião community members in the Governador indigenous territory. Credit: Gilderlan Rodrigues – Courtesy of CIMI

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 5 2013 (IPS)

An indigenous community in Brazil has decided to single-handedly take action against illegal loggers who are moving into their territory in search of highly valued timber.

Indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest, rich in precious hardwood species, have become a new target for illegal loggers, who use bribery and threats to ply their illicit trade.

The most recent episode occurred in late January in the Governador indigenous territory, located in the southwest of the state of Maranhão, near the city of Amarante and 900 km from the state capital, São Luís.

In this eastern corner of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, members of a Pukobjê-Gavião indigenous community seized four trucks and a tractor loaded with almost 20 cubic metres of ipê (Tabebuia chrysotricha) and sapucaia (genus Lecythis) logs.

“We got tired of denouncing what was going on and decided to matters into our own hands. We saw the trucks inside the reserve. What was going to happen if we didn’t do anything?” said chief Evandro Gavião from the village of Governador, one of the six Pukobjê-Gavião communities located within the indigenous territory of the same name.

The young community leader, only 24, spoke with IPS by telephone during a meeting with the chiefs of the other villages, where they discussing a plan for the monitoring and protection of the reserve.

Gavião stressed that the community first denounced illegal logging on its lands back in 2009. Located in the transitional area between the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado tropical savannah biome, these lands are rich in coveted tropical timber species like ipê and sapucaia, aroeira (Schinus terebinthifolius), copaíba (Copaifera sp.) and cerejeira (género Amburana).

“But the trees are running out,” warned Gavião.

According to the Brazilian chapter of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), illegal logging is closely tied to highway construction and migration flows. Road access facilitates ever deeper entry into the rainforest.

Between September and November 2012, Interpol arrested 200 people in 12 Latin American countries in the first international operation against the illegal harvesting and sale of timber. The operation encompassed Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela, and resulted in the seizure of 50,000 cubic metres of wood, with a total value of some eight million dollars.

The inhabitants of the Governador indigenous territory are demanding the presence of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the Brazilian government environmental agency IBAMA, and the Federal Police to guarantee the safety of the roughly 1,000 people living in the six villages.

“What we did was dangerous, but it was the only way to capture the attention of the responsible agencies,” said Gavião.

Since the seizure of the trucks, illegal logging has not stopped; the perpetrators have simply switched to a different route into the area.

“The feeling is that it could get worse, and that the threats we are suffering will continue. We already know that a price of 30,000 reais (over 15,000 dollars) has been put on the head of the chief of the village of Nova, to have him killed. But the Gavião people will not back down,” he declared.

The indigenous communities attribute the increase in threats and pressures to the redefinition of the borders of the reserve. A new demarcation of the Governador indigenous territory has been underway since 1999, in order to expand the original borders established in 1980.

The traditional land use by local indigenous communities was not respected when the limits of the reserve were first determined, which meant they were forced to leave their territory in order to access the natural resources they need to feed themselves and carry out their ritual practices, explained Rosimeire Diniz of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic church organisation.

Parts of the territory traditionally used by the Pukobjê-Gavião were left outside the original demarcation and were occupied by cattle ranchers. For many years, the indigenous people’s relations with the ranchers were “more or less friendly,” but when they requested a revision of the limits of their territory, it sparked an upsurge in conflicts and violence, Diniz told IPS.

The Governador indigenous territory currently encompasses 42,000 hectares, which could expand to 80,000 hectares as a result of the new demarcation. According to Gavião, the current land area is not large enough, because it was “hastily” determined by the military regime in power at the time.

“The places where our ancestors fished and hunted are outside the indigenous land. They did not consult with the indigenous people to find out where they fished, where they hunted, where they planted crops. That’s why we have asked for a revision. We realise it can take a long time, but we have a responsibility to our people. That’s why we are fighting,” he said.

Illegal logging has been happening on indigenous lands since at least the 1980s, but the inhabitants of these lands were formerly unaware of it.

“Now it is much more visible. Using bribery, the loggers transferred the responsibility for these environmental crimes onto the indigenous people. The situation became intolerable, and the natives decided to take action to protect themselves. The logging was so blatant that the trucks were passing right through the villages,” said Diniz.

Fábio Teixeira, a Federal Police agent in Imperatriz, the second largest city in the state of Maranhão and roughly 100 km from Governador, told IPS that, over the years, illegal loggers have been relocating towards this part of the reserve and that there are currently at least seven large sawmills in the area.

“There has always been deforestation, but it used to be an isolated occurrence. However, after a major operation to combat deforestation in other locations, a lot of loggers moved towards Governador,” he said.

He added that a “highly conflictive” situation has developed, pitting the indigenous people against ranchers and loggers, who are banding together.

Teixeira reported that after the incident with the logging trucks, the residents of the small municipality of Amarante, a 20-minute drive from Governador, set up a barricade with fire and stones across the highway to keep the indigenous people from entering town, and security had to be reinforced with 20 federal agents and 30 military police officers.

“I didn’t know that the town was so heavily invested in illegal logging,” Teixeira admitted. “Its economy is based on the timber and livestock industries. Even the municipal authorities are implicated. I can’t give any details about our operations, but we will be stepping up control of the area,” he said.

In Teixera’s view, the action taken by the indigenous people was “an act of desperation” that could have turned into a “bloodbath”. Since then, “we have advised them to record anything they see as illegal activity within the reserve with photographs, since this will serve as evidence for an investigation,” he said.

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

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.”

Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 28 2012 (IPS)

As Lysette Mendum listens to the sound of bulldozers crashing through the forest clearing a road to a mining site near her small village of Assoumdele in the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block in Cameroon’s East Region, she has never been more fearful in her life.

The forest block is 943,000 hectares of relatively intact forest that straddles part of eastern and southern Cameroon. And it is Mendum’s home.

But all the indigenous Baka widow thinks about when she hears the bulldozers is how uncertain the future is for her three kids. The indigenous Baka, historically called pygmies, are an ethnic group of about 35,000 people who have traditionally lived within the forests of southeastern Cameroon.

But now they have been displaced from their traditional homes in the government’s bid to develop this West African nation into an emerging economy.

“The government of Cameroon and some white people moved us out of the heart of the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block and resettled us in this village in the precinct of it. Now we go into the depths of the forest in the day and return in the evening. We are not allowed in there at night,” Mendum told IPS.

As logging and mining companies are granted concessions to large portions of the country’s forests, environmental agencies have expressed concern about the situation.

Of Cameroon’s 22.5 million hectares of forest area, 17.5 million or roughly 78 percent are classified as productive forests and are being allocated to logging companies, according to statistics from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF).

Out of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests, the government has already granted logging concessions for 7.5 million hectares. In the Ngoyla sub-district where Mendum lives, an Australian iron ore exploration and development company has been granted mining rights.

A source at the MINFOF told IPS that a modest 20 percent of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests has been classified as wildlife reserves, which include national parks, game reserves, botanical and zoological gardens, sanctuaries and hunting zones.

“Government has been dishing out logging and mining permits since the early 2000s to various companies in an effort to generate wealth and become an emergent economy by 2035. But this has had the effect of depriving the Baka Pygmies of access to the forests they have always considered their natural home,” David John Hoyle, director of conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told IPS.

This is because the 1994 Wildlife, Forestry and Fishery law prohibits human settlement inside protected areas, which include areas marked for logging and national parks. The law also restricts access to these areas.

So from 2000, the government began moving the Baka out of the productive forests and attempted to integrate them into society.

Mfou’ou Mfou’ou, the director of conservation at the MINFOF, told IPS that the government was working with its partners to ensure that the forests are managed in a sustainable manner.

“This means also protecting the rights of the Baka,” he said.

He said his ministry signed a 1.7-million-dollar accord with the Ministry of Social Affairs to enable it to implement best practices in the socio-cultural and economic integration of the Baka into mainstream society. But it has been against their will.

“The Baka have been living in the forests of southern Cameroon for thousands of years, and they have lived in total harmony with the forest,” Hoyle said.

For the Baka, it has been a devastating exclusion from their traditional land and its resources.

“At first we thought our people would benefit from all these companies coming here, but all we got at the end was an interdict asking us not to go into some parts of the forest near the Boumba Bek National Park,” said Ernest Adjima, president of Sanguia Bo Buma Dkode, a Baka association, which translated from the original Bakola means “One Heart”.

Samuel Naah Ndobe, coordinator of the Cameroonian Centre for the Environment and Development, told IPS that the government now wants to settle the Baka on agricultural land along the country’s main roads.

“But the Baka have to burrow the forest for game … and agricultural lands along the main roads are generally considered to belong to the dominant Bantu tribes. So when the Baka come out of the forest to settle here, the Bantus simply tell them ‘You don’t have land here, this is ours.'”

But now when they return to the forests they are treated like unwelcome visitors.

“We can’t help being afraid because everyday strangers come to us preaching a new gospel of mining. And as the days go by, we see systematic restrictions on our rights,” Mendum told IPS.

Naah Ndobe said that when the Baka attempt to access the forests, game rangers and conservators routinely evict them.

“With no land to call their own, these first settlers are now very vulnerable. They no longer have rights to the land which they have enjoyed and considered home for centuries,” he told IPS.

Government’s user rights policy for the forests has also sidelined the Baka.

The policy allows the Baka the right to retrieve non-timber products from the forests like medicinal herbs, wild fruits, tubers, honey, and game for personal consumption. But the Baka have not been allowed to sell any of the items they collect from the forest.

“The Baka can only hunt game for family consumption, for instance. So they cannot sell the game to send their children to school,” Naah Ndobe said.

Now, there is a deep sense of defiance among the Baka and an urgency to share in the resources of their traditional land.

“If they come for us we shall not run away, we shall wait for them to come and kill us here because we rely on this forest for our basic needs,” Mendum told IPS.

But they are not struggling alone.

In 2000, the WWF began its Jengi Southeast Forest Programme, which aims to negotiate access rights for the Baka into protected forest areas, among other things.

Hoyle said progress has been made, with some logging companies committing to protect the forests.

“WWF has been assisting logging companies that have embraced Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification standards and, along with the Baka, mapped out areas of social, economic and cultural interest to the Baka within logging concessions with guarantees that they can harvest wild tubers, honey and medicinal plants and carry out fishing in such areas,” Hoyle told IPS.

The FSC is a non-governmental organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

He also said a memorandum of understanding has been reached with the government to guarantee the Baka access to the Boumba Bek National Park. It not only enables the Baka to gather food, it also allows them to perform their traditional Jengi rites, which usually take place at night. Jengi is the Baka god or spirit of the forest.

Mfou’ou said that while efforts are being made to guarantee the Baka access rights to national parks, social infrastructure like schools and health centres are also being constructed.

However, Naah Ndobe said it was urgent that Cameroon develop more specific support structures and policies to cater for the rights of the Baka.

Ikea’s wholly owned subsidiary, Swedwood, cuts down about 1,400 acres of virgin forest a year. Credit: William Murphy/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Ida Karlsson
STOCKHOLM, May 29 2012 (IPS)

The home furnishing giant Ikea, founded in Sweden in 1943, is facing heavy criticism for the logging and clear-cutting of old-growth forests in the north of Russian Karelia by its wholly owned subsidiary Swedwood. 

According to leading environmental organisations, such logging is destroying ancient and unique forests that have a high conservation value.

Wood is by far the primary raw material in Ikea’s products. Roughly 60 percent of the products stocked in the multinational’s 300 department stores around the world contain wood in any form.

For years, the company has used the “We Love Wood” slogan to promote the fact that Ikea only uses wood obtained in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way.

But recent reports and studies prove that this proclamation is a myth.

An investigative report released last month by Swedish public service television found that Swedwood cuts down about 1,400 acres of forest a year.

“We have a (limited) amount of old-growth forest in the north of Russian Karelia with high conservation value. Ikea says they don’t operate in old-growth forests but it is not true,” Olga Ilina, head of the forest department of the NGO SPOK, the Karelia Regional Nature Conservancy, told IPS.

Now only about 10 percent of the ancient old-growth forests remain in Karelia, according to Ilina.

The Global Forest Coalition, an alliance of NGOs in more than 40 countries, strongly condemned Ikea’s activities in Russia.

Protect the Forest, Sweden, a nature conservation organisation, has documented that Ikea, through Swedwood, clear-cut areas of old-growth forest containing 200-600 year-old trees in the northwest of Karelia, near the Finnish border, a process that is having deep ramifications on the invaluable forest ecosystems.

The belt of virgin forest in Russia, together with the tropical rainforests along the equator, performs vital functions for life on earth: forest belts bind huge amounts of carbon dioxide and are home to hundreds of thousands of unique animal and plant species.

The report also stressed that Swedwood is certified by the international forestry organisation Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which claims to ensure “responsibly managed forests”.

On paper FSC has strict rules for certification that ensure protection of ancient forests. But in reality there are some gaps in regulation, according to Andrei Ptichnikov, general manager of FSC in Russia.

“You can’t say that FSC can protect all forests. If we (claimed) to protect every tree, no company would (register) with FSC. It is not realistic. It is always a compromise,” he told Swedish TV journalists recently.

Anders Hildeman, forest manager at Ikea, acknowledged the charges but stood by the company line that Ikea takes high conservation values into account when they plan their logging.

“We will continue to work according to the principles that we agreed on together with Russian environmental organisations like SPOK. Our goal is to develop and improve forest management. Swedwood has played an important role in the advancement of forestry in Karelia,” he told IPS.

Hildeman says Swedwood was the first FSC-certified company in Karelia back in 2006. According to him FSC certification is a good basis for responsible forest management.

Ilina said Swedish and Russian NGOs  had planned to meet with Ikea officials to discuss the situation in north Karelia but when the company only agreed to meet with the Russian organisations, the meeting was called off.

“Swedwood operates in a better way than local Karelian companies but we think they can do much better considering their resources. They could plan their forestry better and make it more ecologically friendly. They should log secondary forests that are not so valuable instead of virgin forestry. Ikea has the means to do this,” Ilina told IPS.

Ikea’s total profits between 2000 and 2008 amounted to some 30 billion dollars, according to the company’s annual financial reports.

(END)