Maya Indians to Washington in Bid to Defend Their Rainforests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

12/7/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Leaders of the Maya communities of Toledo, in southern Belize, are

traveling to Washington D.C. "to state their case against logging

concessions carved out of their traditional lands, and the Belizean

government's plans to pave a major highway through the country's dense

rainforests." The Maya are in the process of filing a lawsuit with

the Belizean supreme court which challenges the government's right to

"grant logging concessions on their ancestral lands." Malaysian

logging companies are once again expanding their reach. This item was

posted in the newsgroup alt.save.the.earth.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

From: ENVIRO@salata.com (Environmental News)

Date: 04 Dec 96 20:39:36 GMT

Newsgroups: alt.save.the.earth

Subject: Mayans go to Washington to oppose logging concessions

This message sent to the Bz-Culture Mailing List from Mike Gundy

<mike@allradio.com.bz>:

WASHINGTON, (Nov. 29) IPS - Maya Indians from Belize are to visit

Washington next week in a bid to defend their rainforest homes from

loggers, according to Indian rights lawyers here.

Leaders of the Maya communities of Toledo, in southern Belize, hope to

meet with politicians and financiers here, to state their case against

logging concessions carved out of their traditional lands, and the

Belizean government's plans to pave a major highway through the

country's dense rainforests.

Represented by pro-bono lawyers from the Indian Law Resource Center

(ILRC), the Maya are filing a lawsuit in the Belizean supreme court to

"defend their land rights and challenge the government's authority to

grant logging concessions on their ancestral lands," according to a

statement.

Since 1993, the government has granted at least 17 long-term logging

concessions in Toledo district to foreign-owned companies. The

concessions cover some 224,600 hectares and cut deep into traditional

Mayan lands, according to maps produced by the Maya Mapping Project

under the auspices of the University of California, Berkeley.

The largest concession was granted to Atlantic Industries, a Malaysian

timber company, for a reported 60 cents per acre. The concession

engulfs 10 Mayan villages that are home to nearly half of the Mayan

population, according to leaders of the Toledo Alcaldes Association

and the Toledo Maya Cultural Council.

Atlantic Industries already has constructed a sawmill described in

press reports as one of the country's largest. Built without first

obtaining the environmental impact assessments required under Belizean

law, the sawmill is situated alongside the Belize Southern Highway and

seems set to be the centerpiece of what Mayan leader Julian Cho calls

"a massive industrial export-oriented logging industry."

The Maya say they were not consulted before the concessions were

granted. They see the government's actions not only as motivated by

profit, but as an attempt to preempt the indigenous communities'

efforts to win legal title to their lands.

Like many rainforest countries, Belize has no laws recognizing

ancestral land rights, according to the Maya.

The Maya equate these rights with the right to survival.

Archaeologists say that, around 900 A.D., there were about one million

Maya in what is now Belize. They first came into contact with

outsiders -- Spanish conquerors -- in 1508. Today, there are about

14,000 Maya left in Belize -- about 7 percent of the population.

"If the Belize court does not grant an injunction before the logging

season resumes in January, the Maya will file a petition with the

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," part of the Organization

of American States, according to the ILRC.

The Commission's findings are not enforceable, the ILRC concedes but,

the group says, "it is a highly respected body that can exert powerful

moral authority to level the playing field in cases involving

indigenous people."

Following meetings with lawyers from the ILRC and Washington-based

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) last week, the Inter-American

Development Bank (IDB) agreed to stall Belize's application for a

$28.2 million loan to widen and pave the Southern Highway, according

to the NRDC's Arturo Garcia-Costas.

Instead, the Bank wants the Belizean government to "investigate the

probability of wholesale environmental and cultural destruction" if

the highway is completed, according to the ILRC.

But the highway project already has received funding from other

sources, including Kuwait, the British Overseas Development

Administration (ODA), and Taiwan.

Appreciative of the IDB's stand, the Maya nevertheless are nervous the

highway's other backers will step in and provide the financing needed

to complete the project. The Belizean government is understood to

oppose the IDB's conditions.

"Our clients are not against paving the road," ILRC director Steven

Tullberg told IPS. "They're not against change, but they're very

serious about not being pushed aside or run over."

Over the past five years, several of Southeast Asia's largest forestry

conglomerates have sought out forest-rich countries that, like Belize,

need investors and largely are unable to monitor logging operations.

These firms "are going global because they have already logged through

most of the quality forest in their countries, and their governments

have put in place policies to protect what remains," according to the

ILRC.

In Belize, they are particularly interested in Mahogany trees, which

grow throughout the forest now under attack. Studies estimate that

3,000 sq. feet of forest is leveled for logging roads and machinery

to harvest each mahogany tree, environmentalists say.

Belizean officials insist the logging will remain small-scale and

selective, and will be governed by a 1994 forest management plan

which, they say, was written with the help of the British government

to widespread acclaim.

However, many of the national forest inspectors charged with

supervising the logging themselves have fallen to the budget axe, say

environmentalists and journalists who visited the area in September.

The national forest plan is being violated under the government's

nose, according to environmental groups' action alerts on the Internet

and press reports. Prohibited species and untagged trees in prohibited

areas have been cut down; roads have been bulldozed through prohibited

areas; and logging has continued through the rainy season,

accelerating environmental damage.

Deforestation claims some 7.5 million hectares a year in Latin America

and the Caribbean and the forests remaining in Central America and

Mexico are being destroyed at "the highest rate of any subregion in

the world," according to the IDB's latest annual report on the

environment and natural resources. The major reasons for this include

"weak timber concession allocation resources."

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