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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Amazonians File Complaint Against Bank

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

June 23, 1995

OVERVIEW & SOURCE

Brazilian forest peoples and activists have lodged a complaint

against the World Bank; alleging the PLANOFLORO project, intended

to to set up "extractive" reserves, has been largely ineffectual.

This bank project was largely meant to make amends for past

development failures, such as Rondonia highway building, which

were financed by the bank and caused much environmental

deterioration. This item was posted by IPS in econet's

rainfor.general. Note this item is a draft article.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

/** rainfor.genera: 159.0 **/

** Topic: amazonians file complaint against bank **

** Written 4:18 PM Jun 15, 1995 by pchatterjee in

cdp:rainfor.genera **

From: Pratap Chatterjee <pchatterjee>

Subject: amazonians file complaint against bank

please note this is a pre-edited version

ENVIRONMENT: Brazilian forest people lodge complaint against World

Bank

By Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Jun 15 (IPS) - A 300 page package from forest

communities in the Brazilian Amazon was expected to arrive

Thursday at the World Bank's offices asking for a formal

investigation into the Bank's failure to set up protected reserves

for local communties.

The complaint to the Bank's newly created inspection panel, the

third compliant filed since it was set up last August, concerns

the three-year old 167 million dollar Rondonia Agricultural,

Livestock and Forestry (PLANOFLORO) project.

The object of PLANOFLORO is to set up "extractive" reserves

to help local people harvest native products such as rubber,

Brazil nuts and about 30 other products.

Twenty five groups representing small farmers, rubber tappers,

unions, environmental and indigenous peoples groups in

Rondonia, western Brazil, say that the project "has been

hindered by a series of impediments, largely caused by

omissions of the World Bank ... failures in enforcing

contractual obligations and implementing its own policies and

directives."

PLANOFLORO was set up with much fanfare at the time of the

Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in June 1992, to clean

up the mess created by a previous multi-million dollar Bank

development project.

In 1981 the Bank lent Brazil 445 million dollars for the

Northwest Brazil Integrated Development Programme (POLONORESTE)

to pave 1500 kilometres of dirt tracks in the remote region of

Rondonia which borders Bolivia.

The newly modernised road allowed nearly half a million

migrants to invade the forests and clear them for cultivation.

By 1991 the destruction of Rondonia's forests had multiplied to

ten times its original rate. The burning of the forest became a

major focus of research as the single largest, most rapid human

caused change on earth visible from space.

Diseases spread rapidly. Malaria infection rates soared to 100

percent in some killed indigenous communities with over

250,000 people infected. Infant mortality rates reached 50

percent in some communities.

In 1987 Barber Conable, the president of the Bank, said that

POLONORESTE was a "sobering example of an environmentally

sound project gone wrong." The PLANOFLORO project was designed

to try and reverse some of these problems.

But PLANOFLORO has not worked so far. Activists say the

National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA)

has allegedly refused to sign land titles for local people and

has even brought in thousands of people to settle in lands that

were supposed to be off-limits for development.

The complaint to the panel is the latest in a series from local

groups to make the project work. Last May activists attempted

to draw attention to the lack of government cooperation by

faxing a message to the Bank when it convened a special meeting

of activists and industry groups in this city last May to

review new Bank forestry projects.

"No strategy has yet been defined for regulating land titles

and land use concessions. The first zoning map did not benefit

from field studies and consultations with the local population

involved in extractive activities," read the faxed message from

Luiz Rodrigues de Oliveira, the executive secretary of the non

governmental forum of Rondonia.

Instead, the result of the mistaken policies of other agencies

in the area financed by the Bank, has been "the continual

invasion of areas ocupied by rubber tappers, facilitated by

government agencies themselves," it added.

Since then the groups have sifted through 14,000 pages of

documents to draft the new formal complaint. They have

uncovered confidential internal Bank documents that discuss how

"to avoid embarassment" to the Bank while allowing the former

Rondonia state governor "to obtain political return before the

elections."

Roberto Esmeraldi, from the Friends of the Earth Amazon

programme, told IPS from Sao Paulo in eastern Brazil, that he

had forwarded the complaint which he received from Rondonia on

Wednesday to Washington by Federal Express courier.

Dispatching the complaint has caused commotion in Brazil as

well as here in Washington. Emerson Teixeira, Rondonia's new

planning secretary told newspapers that INCRA would sign an

agreement in the next two weeks, blaming state bureaucracy in

the previous government for the delays.

"For example loans to small farmers are stuck in the state

bank. Project resources have been spent on bureaucracy and the

civil service, in areas like salaries and consultancies," he

said.

Rondonian activists in Brazil told IPS that ever since they had

made news of the complaint public "many organisations have

been inundated with calls day and night from the Bank and

consultants telling us to withdraw the complaint."

Mark Wilson, the Bank's division chief for natural resources

management and rural poverty operations in Brazil, told IPS

that he was "disappointed" that the activists had not

discussed their plans to submit a complaint with him or his

staff.

"This project has the highest supervision component of any

project in the Latin America division of the Bank. We have an

office in Mato Grosso, we have sent five missions to the

field," he said.

"Local group representatives make up 50 percent of all the

technical committees we have for the project. We rely heavily

on the NGOs to bring us evidence of land invasions. It is a

difficult process that involves cajoling the government and we

have been on record of challenging the government ourselves,"

he added.

This weekend a team of Bank officials from Wilson's office will

fly down to Brazil to meet with the activists and undertake

another supervision mission. Meanwhile the activists are

planning to come to Washington on Jun 28 or 29 to meet with the

inspection panel.

The Brazilian complaint is the third to be submitted to the

independent three member panel that was set up last August by

the Bank to investigate complaints made by people affected by

Bank projects.

The first complaint to the panel was made last October by

Nepali groups who charged that Bank plans to lend money for a

dam planned for the remote Arun Valley in Nepal had violated

Bank policies on environmental assessment. A second complaint

was filed earlier this year by an ethnic Greek business family

that lost its lands in Ethiopia because of a Bank project.

The Bank's board of directors approved a partial investigation

into the first complaint which is expected to be wrapped up in

the next week or so. The panel has also almost finished

preparing a report on the second complaint which will not

recommend an investigation. (ENDS/IPS/PC/95)

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

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