Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network
November 18, 2000
By Lynne Hall

A thatched roof protects the two-room stucco house of Tomas Rojas from rain, but will convert it into a funeral pyre if the fires ever reach it. In August of 1997, fires from slash-and-burn farming destroyed much of Ascencion de Guarayos, the town in central Bolivia where Tomas lives. That fire claimed the town’s hospital, 600 homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of surrounding forests and farmland.

The loss has not thwarted the Guarayos’ quest for economic development. As president of the Centre for the Organizations for the Native Guarayo Peoples, Rojas leads the mission to obtain legal title to the land they have occupied and depended on for centuries.

When the government granted a logging concession located in the Guarayo Forest Reserve to the timber company La Chonta 25 years ago, the Guarayo residents were not consulted. They received no benefits. They were denied access to the forest upon which they depended. They had no recourse.

The one tool Rojas believes can permanently ensure that the land title remains in the hands of the Guarayos and can bring his people much-needed economic growth is forest certification.

Ever since La Chonta began operations in the reserve, the Guarayos have resented the presence of loggers on Guarayo ancestral lands while La Chonta has insisted in their legal claim to log there. In February 1997, the two parties signed an agreement to respect each other’s rights and collaborate in forest management.

Credit for persuading these antagonistic neighbors to negotiate belongs to a burgeoning movement in the worldwide timber industry called forest certification. La Chonta sought the certification of its timber operations by the Forest Stewardship Council in order to compete in international markets essential for its own growth.

Founded in 1993, the nonprofit FSC is the international organization coordinating the independent certification of good forest management.

To be worthy to sell wood products with this label, which promotes best management practices of the world's forests, La Chonta had to change its forest management.

Pablo Antelo, La Chonta’s general manager, initially saw certification as restrictive because of the standards and practices that a company must adopt to gain FSC’s seal of approval. But after discovering that the international demand for certified timber exceeded the supply as well as the possibilities of marketing non-traditional species with the FSC label, he became convinced it was an opportunity to increase their foreign market share.

“Prior to certification, the goal was to transform the raw material of the forest but now our goal is to manage the forest. We want our forest to be producing in the future,” says Antelo. He predicts La Chonta will double its income in five years as new European and U.S. buyers order the FSC-certified doors they manufacture from non-traditional species.

Certification has brought improved economic viability to La Chonta as well as the expertise to more successfully compete in the international timber market. At the same time it also has decreased the environmental impact of logging on the forest.

La Chonta’s forest engineer has guided their forest management in new, environmentally healthy practices required by FSC. He has developed logging plans to minimize environmental impact such as using narrow, temporary paths left to regenerate after extracting each carefully selected tree. He has instituted permanent maintenance of single-lane main roads, which includes a ban on logging activities during rain.

To comply with FSC social standards, employee safety and job satisfaction have improved. Loggers work eight hours a day instead of 16 and can return home to their families on weekends. They are also periodically trained in logging safety and provided with necessary safety gear.

La Chonta’s greatest challenge in complying with FSC’s social requirements and gaining certification was the issue of land tenure with the Guarayos. With the help of arbitrators and the realization by La Chonta management and the Guarayos that this was the path to reaching both their goals, the neighbors signed a letter of understanding.

Tomas Rojas is president of the Organizations for the Native Guarayo Peoples.

“Before there was no dialogue, only fighting. We have gone from saying ‘this is mine!’ to ‘how are we going to take care of it?’. Now we work together, the community and the business,” says Rojas.

Under their agreement, La Chonta management meets regularly with community representatives to discuss the forest concession's logging plans. La Chonta also provides the Guarayos with technical training in best forest management practices to increase the community’s capacity to manage the forests under their control.

The Guarayos help La Chonta patrol the forest for timber “miners” who invade the forest illegally to remove commercially viable species. And if the Guarayos obtain FSC certification for the forests under their own management, La Chonta is ready to buy their timber.

This new relationship also has made them partners against the biggest threat to the forest – manmade fires. The perpetrators are poor farmers clearing land for crops.

t was these farmers whose fires raged out of control in a particularly dry 1997. The Guarayos and La Chonta have not established a plan to deal with this threat, but they are in agreement that they must include the farmers in the partnership so that together they can find economic alternatives.

Lynne Hall is an environmental writer based in Washington, D.C. She filed a version of this story for the World Wide Fund for Nature. Error: Unable to read footer file.