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PNG RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS

Solomon Islands--"Stripping the Pacific island rain forests"

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

1/1/95

OVERVIEW & SOURCE

The following is a wonderfully written piece which accurately

portrays the pillaging of the Solomon Islands. It does so in a

thoughtful yet informative manner--definitely one of the best

mainstream press coverage items we have seen. This was printed in

the San Francisco Examiner and forwarded to us by a list

recipient. Note: This article as presented here is a PHOTOCOPY

and not for reprint, it is FOR CAMPAIGN INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES

ONLY. If interested in reprinting, contact the Source for

permission.

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Headline: Stripping the Pacific island rain forests

Source: SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

By John Collee

Sunday, January 1, 1995

Page A14-A15

*****

INSET

British doctor, novelist and screenwriter John Collee is working

at a hospital in the Pacific. He wrote this article for the London

Observer.

*****

Solomon Islands

ON GOOD DAYS, I finish work at 4:30 p.m. Sometimes my wife and I

take the boat and go across to Nusa Tupe, where we can sit in the

shallows and watch the sun going down. Before it gets too dark, we

head back down the side of Loga island and around the reef marker

at the entrance to Gizo harbor.

Today, as we crossed the lagoon, there was another Korean logging

ship moored there, a great rusting hulk the size of a small

factory-dwarfing the dugout canoes of the fishermen, the island's

ferry and the little group of yachts lying at anchor, dwarfing the

Catholic cathedral and the waterfront stores.

These ships have no place here. I get angry every time we see one

pulling into harbor. And we see them all the time these days. They

come in empty, get customs clearance and leave loaded with round

logs. Each ship holds 175,000 cubic feet of hardwood, or 1,000

trees. And for each of these trees, the island landowner is paid

about $18.

This must sound like a lot to the local chiefs, who believe the

supply of trees is limitless and have no concept, until it happens

to their land, of how totally a place can be stripped by modern

equipment.

So they sign the contract and are given more money than they have

ever seen in their lives, and then watch in bewilderment as the

small, determined men from Korea or Malaysia move in with their

chain saws and bulldozers and begin knocking down huge swathes of

rain forest.

Before long, the cool, green canopy behind the village has gone

and in its place is a noisy tangle of fallen timber; the rivers

are running red with sediment that flows out into the lagoon and

kills the coral reef; the villagers' gardens are destroyed, their

custom sites are destroyed and their traditional sources of food

are ruined.

What they have instead, when the company pulls out, are some

shabby prefabs, a clutch of old chain saws and outboard motors, a

shop selling beer and refined rice, and an ecosystem that will

never be the same in their lifetime, nor that of their great-

grandchildren.

You might imagine that environmentalists' pressure has put an end

to his kind of crime by now. Quite the reverse.

To quote the Financial Times of London: "The wealth accumulated

from the tropical timber industry is immense. Due mainly to

reduced logging activity worldwide, prices of most tropical

hardwoods have doubled-in some cases tripled-in the past 12

months."

In other words, it has recently become profitable for the logging

moguls to move into small Pacific island groups like the Solomons

and strip them bare.

In May, the Berjaya group from Malaysia announced that it was

"investing" $60 million in the Solomon Islands forestry industry,

for which it would be granted timber concessions of at least 1.5

million acres. Another Malaysian company, Kumpalan Emas, last year

bought the rights to a 1,170-acre concession here.

I don't know how these kinds of investments will be described when

they are floated on the stock market. No doubt the prospectus will

make them look both attractive and morally defensible. From where

I stand, they are neither.

Let me tell you about Kumpalan Emas, which operates here through a

company it owns called Silvania. These people are despoiling a

huge sector of the island of Vangunu. Vangunu is on the Marovo

lagoon, which is the largest double barrier reef lagoon in the

world and has been nominated as a world heritage site.

Last year, the Australian International Development Aid Bureau

observed Silvania's activities there and reported: "The degree of

canopy removal and soil disturbance was the most extensive seen by

the authors in any country. It appeared to be more like a clear-

felling operation."

Silvania doesn't appear to be interested in sustainability. Who

would be if you can simply rape the place and clear off with the

profits? And they're cleaning up here with frightening speed.

In the past four years, companies like Eagon and Hyundai of Korea,

or Earthmovers and Golden Springs from Malaysia, have removed 30

to 40 percent of the loggable timber in the Western province of

the Solomon Islands.

As pressure mounts to put an end to this devastation, the

companies respond by becoming more frantically destructive. In

another six years, they will have destroyed the region, and these

priceless forests that surround us here will be on sale in Europe

as coffee tables.

So what's this got to do with medicine? It has to do with medicine

because it has to do with lifestyle--a word that has become so

devalued that it implies nothing more fundamental than being able

to go for a swim after work. But, of course, lifestyle means more

than that.

The lifestyle of Solomon Islanders is something that has evolved,

like the rain forest around them, over many generations. Their

lifestyle is what guarantees their physical and mental well-being.

When you destroy the individual's lifestyle, you destroy the

individual, which is why, inevitably, the health of these

islanders deteriorates dramatically in areas that have been

logged.

THEIR FISHING AND GARDENS are destroyed, so we see malnourished

children in the hospital. Their social structure is destroyed, so

we see crimes of violence and venereal disease. Their water supply

is destroyed, so we see skin infections and water-borne diseases.

Their men become drunkards, their women turn to prostitution,

their children buy cheap sugary drinks and rot their teeth.

What the village gains in compensation is probably half a Korean

executive's annual salary. What it loses is incalculable.

The natural resources will take a century to recover. In ravaged

areas like Vangunu they may never recover at all.

I don't know what can be done about this. There should be a

worldwide embargo on the export of unprocessed timber, but there

isn't. There should be a moratorium on logging in the Pacific, but

there isn't. There should be small-scale community sawmills

whereby villagers call realize the value of their own hardwood in

a sustainable way, but there aren't many of these, either.

What there shouldn't be are logging ships in Gizo harbor. There

shouldn't be large-scale logging on small islands.

You just have to see a photo of it to know that this is not

development. It's not even legitimate business. It's a crime

against humanity, and the people who "invest" in it either must be

blind or downright evil.

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

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