VICTORY
Massive Temperate Rainforest Logging Project in Chile Called Off
http://forests.org/action.html
-- Forest Conservation Action Alerts
12/17/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
After frenzied campaigning which raised logging of Chile's forests as
a major international issue, the project that threatened to make
woodchip from threatened temperate rain forests has been called off.
We have supported the many groups working on this campaign, and all
those that have responded to alerts over the past several years share
in this victory. This is the most recent in a string of stunning
successes for the Worldwide forest conservation movement. There is
hope that global forest sustainability can and will be achieved,
before large forest wildernesses become a thing of the past.
g.b.
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Environment-Chile: Massive Cascada Logging Project Called
off
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 15, 1999
SANTIAGO, (Dec. 15) IPS - The Cascada logging project in southern
Chile that spawned massive demonstrations and became the symbol of
protest against the Millennium Round of international trade talks has
been suspended.
However, it collapsed less because of protests than unfavorable
global market conditions.
Executives from the U.S. transnational Boise Cascade reported that
international plywood prices are on a downward trend, forcing them to
postpone ground-breaking on the Cascada Chile project, originally
scheduled for the year 2000.
Environmental groups that took to the streets around the world to
protest the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Third Ministerial
Conference, held earlier this month in Seattle, adopted the Chilean
project as the symbol of their fight.
According to ecologists, Cascada is a typical initiative that
degrades natural resources within the canon of opening world markets.
The liberalization philosophy is promoted by the WTO, which is
attempting to expand international trade through the "Millennium
Round" of negotiations.
The Seattle meeting, surrounded by intense confrontations between
police and protestors, did not produce an agreement among
industrialized nations for launching the controversial trade talks.
The Cascada project, with an investment of $180 million, includes
plans for building a massive chipping plant and fiberboard
manufacturing facility that would have the capacity to process nearly
one million cubic meters of wood annually.
Boise Cascade, owner of 60 percent of the project, and its Chilean
partner Maderas Condor, would supply the mega-facility by purchasing
raw material from third parties.
Wood is abundant in Chile's tenth region, located some 900 km south
of Santiago, but it is found in the nation's endangered forests.
Chile is home to approximately one-third of world's remaining
temperate rain forests, and the Chilean region holds the highest
level of species diversity of this type of forest.
The World Bank has given temperate rain forests "highest priority"
for conservation efforts due to their biological wealth and
endangered status.
The suspension of the Cascada project means "renewed hopes for saving
native forests," according to the Institute for Ecological Policy
(IEP), one of the Chilean environmental groups that initiated the
protests against Boise Cascade and Maderas Condor.
"We hope Chile's next government is more intelligent and understands
what it means to irreversibly lose 2.42 million trees from primary
forests each year," said Bernardo Reyes, IEP director. The suspension
of the mega-project limits the demand for felled trees.
"We presume the new government will leave behind influence peddling
and political pressures that were evident in the Cascada project's
approval," added the environmental leader.
Environmentalists maintain that the Eduardo Frei government pressured
the National Commission on the Environment to approve the project,
and that it later defended Cascada in court against the legal
measures taken in attempts to paralyse the project.
Pres. Frei's term ends March 11, 2000, and his successor will be
elected Jan. 16 in a run-off vote between the governing coalition's
candidate Ricardo Lagos and the right-wing opposition's Joaquin
Lavin.
The Chilean Supreme Court rejected appeals for legal protection of
the forest brought by the IEP, the Chilean Forest Defenders Network
and other organizations in an attempt to paralyse Cascada's
development.
According to its detractors, the project affects more than the
region's native forest. Locating the chip mill in Bahia Ilque, a
fishing town, jeopardizes the healthy local shellfish and salmon
industries, as well as local tourism.
Environmental protests and legal measures were unsuccessful in
halting the project, but the projections for plywood's performance on
the world market were able to bring Cascada development to a
standstill.
A Boise Cascade spokesman reported that the transnational has
recently invested too heavily around the world in chip mills and
plywood manufacturing, just like the operations planned for Bahia
Ilque.