***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
WWF
Reports Asian Loggers Latest Threats to Brazil's Rainforest
***********************************************
Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
9/3/96
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE by EE
Continuing
recent scrutiny of a major increase in potential large scale
industrial
forestry in the Amazon, the World Wide Fund for Nature reports
on
Asia's biggest logging companies plans to deforest the Amazon region.
Large
scale industrial forestry as practiced by a handful of Asian timber
companies
is _THE_ major threat to tropical rainforests and their
tremendous
biodiversity and ecosystem function.
Failure to stop a repeat
of
Borneo's (Sarawak) wholesale forest clearing in the South Pacific,
Africa
and the Amazon will mean leaving a much diminished world to our
children. This article is copyrighted (and thus the
standard disclaimer
that
list recipients must contact the source if they want to republish
holds)
and comes from WWF's home page at:
http://www.panda.org/news/features/9-96/story5.htm
Glen
Barry
*******************************
RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Asian
loggers latest threat to Brazil's rainforest
By
Annic Johnson
September
1996
Copyright
1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature
Some of
Asia's biggest logging companies with massive financial muscle have
penetrated
the Brazilian Amazon raising fears of imminent deforestation.
Even
before their arrival, the Brazilian authorities had yet to prove they
could
police their own backyard.
Sao
Paulo: Voracious Asian logging companies with a history of
environmental
destruction have gained a foothold in the Brazilian
Amazon,
fuelling fears that deforestation might be about to enter a new,
more
devastating phase.
The
Brazilian government says it has detected three acquisitions of
bankrupt,
local companies by Asian multinationals and other deals have been
known
to be under negotiation. The government vows it will not allow a
repeat
in the Amazon of the kind of destruction wreaked elsewhere.
But
environmentalists say Brazil, despite recently introducing new, tighter
controls
on logging, has yet to prove it can force the notoriously
negligent
Amazon timber trade to observe the law. The arrival of the
multinationals,
with more financial and technical muscle than their
Brazilian
counterparts, is a decisive test of Brazil's forestry policy.
Deforestation
in the Brazilian Amazon, of which logging is a major
contributing
factor, actually sped up after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio,
reaching
14,896 square km in 1994, compared with 11,130 square km in 1991.
"The
problem is lack of enforcement. Just changing legislation without a
systematic
and comprehensive strategy will not work," said Garo Batmanian,
executive
director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Brazil.
The
Brazilian government says the three Asian logging companies now present
in the
Brazilian Amazon are: WTK Group and Samling Organization, both of
Malaysia,
and China's Fortune Timber. Officials say a small amount of
timber
has already been felled.
WTK and
Samling established themselves as forces in the world timber trade
through
massive logging concessions in the Sarawak region of Malaysia,
where
indiscriminate forestry techniques have decimated what used to be
virgin
jungle.
Like
other Far Eastern timber giants, they looked abroad to expand their
businesses.
Both have concessions in Cambodia, where King Norodom Sihanouk
has led
a chorus of criticism of the destruction of the environment and the
ways of
life of indigenous groups by the logging industry there.
Changes
in government policy in the Far East, along with the dwindling of
the
region's forests, has focused the attention of Asian loggers further
afield,
to Africa, Central America and inevitably, to the Amazon, the
world's
largest rainforest and home to a third of the planet's tropical
timber.
Firms
from Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea have already negotiated
generous
logging concessions from the governments of Guyana and Suriname on
Brazil's
northern border. The World Resources Institute warned recently
that
concessions offered by Suriname to Malaysian and Indonesian loggers
could
bring about social and environmental upheaval, while costing the tiny
nation
tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues given away as tax
incentives.
Environmentalists
say it was only a matter of time before the Asians turned
their
sights on the vast forests of Brazil.
In
August, WTK was finalising the paperwork involved in its purchase of
300,000
hectares of forest in a remote region of the Amazon on the Jurua
River.
The land lies in Amazonas state which has so far been spared the
intense
logging that has destroyed large areas of neighbouring Para.
WTK
also purchased this year a sawmill in the city of Manaus and is
currently
doubling output to 2,000 cubic meters a month. Richard Bruce, who
has
spent 25 years drawing up forest management plans for firms seeking
logging
permits, was hired by WTK to produce a plan for Jurua.
"All
the attention that the Asian companies have been getting means there's
going
to be a lot of people watching their every move," Bruce said, adding
that at
28 cubic meters per hectare, WTK's plans for Jurua are modest.
But
management plans, which set down how a company intends to harvest its
concessions,
commonly turn out to be worth less than the paper they are
printed
on. Timber is often felled illegally on Indian lands, and not from
the
concession areas stipulated in the permits, and some types of more
controlled
woods, like expensive mahogany, are passed off as other species.
A
report, commissioned this year by the Brazilian government, surveyed 34
logging
companies in and around Paragominas, the biggest timber center of
the
Amazon. Not one met the requirements of the International Tropical
Timber
Organization by which Brazil has promised it will comply by 2000.
"It
would not be an exaggeration to state that the timber industry in the
Paragominas
region is purely extractive: there is no management of any
sort,"
the report declared.
The
study highlighted the short-term outlook of the owners of the logging
companies
in Paragominas. One company official was quoted as saying he
thought
the concept of sustainable logging was "a farce" because "in 30
years I
won't be here any more."
But a
WWF-funded project in Paragominas proves sustainable logging,
harvesting
and sawing is economically viable. In 1993, half a 200-hectare
research
area was logged using traditional methods while the rest was
harvested
by drawing up a forest inventory, selecting the most suitable
logs
and felling them with the least possible damage to nearby trees.
The
project showed management cuts waste by half and encouraged faster
regeneration
of logged areas, reducing by up to 50 percent the time needed
for a
second harvest. Most important, the new methods produced a profit
margin
13 percent higher than traditional logging. Research has now been
extended
to 30 logging projects across the Amazon.
But the
industry sticks to its old ways. Many logging companies are near
bankrupt
and say they cannot afford to invest in management techniques.
Others
simply do not see the need, with forests stretching over an area
still
the size of Western Europe and the government unable to enforce its
laws.
The
prospect of the Asian loggers setting up operations with the industry
in such
a precarious state has put the government on alert. "The investment
of
hundreds of millions of dollars in the Amazonian logging industry could
be
disastrous given the conditions we operate in," IBAMA (National
Institute
for Environment) president Eduardo Martins said.
Martins
said all timber produced by the Asian logging companies would be
inspected
to make sure it complied with the terms of their logging permits.
Likewise,
all logging permits in the Amazon are being reviewed and a
crackdown
on corruption within IBAMA is under way.
But
environmental groups remained unconvinced the government has the means
to
prevent the kind of damage that has obliterated many of the world's
forests
where major loggers have been active.
"We
know the Asians have a bad track record on sustainable logging and
we're
concerned the same thing doesn't happen here,"said Batmanian of the
WWF.
"But the Malaysians are going to be no worse than the Brazilians if
the
government doesn't enforce the law."
*Annic
Johnson is a British journalist based in Brazil
###RELAYED
TEXT ENDS###
This
document is a PHOTOCOPY and all recipients should seek permission from
the
source for reprinting. You are
encouraged to utilize this information
for
personal campaign use; including writing letters, organizing campaigns
and
forwarding. All efforts are made to
provide accurate, timely pieces;
though
ultimate responsibility for verifying all information rests with the
reader. Check out our Gaia Forest Conservation
Archives at URL=
http://forests.org/gaia.html
Networked
by:
Ecological
Enterprises
Email
(best way to contact)-> gbarry@forests.org