Massive Temperate Rainforest Logging Project in Chile Called Off

VICTORY

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

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.

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Title: Environment-Chile: Massive Cascada Logging Project Called

off

Source: InterPress Service

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.

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