UPDATE
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Cambodia’s Logging Halt, What Next?
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01/05/02
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Below is more coverage of Cambodia’s suspension of all
logging; which
though long overdue, is
nonetheless of great significance. A
precedent has been set that
governments can and will shut down
predatory logging. However, the question looms – the logging
pause
is a means towards what
ends? Will Cambodia blow the opportunity
to
pursue community based
ecologically sustainable forest development
and protection, or choose
instead to return to once over intensive
industrial forestry for log
exports by foreign multinationals as
Papua New Guinea has done? The former means ecosystems and national
economic benefits potentially
forever, the latter always ends in an
economic and environmental
bust. Tropical countries would be well
advised to shut down the once
over predatory logging industry – a
global scourge that has spread
rapidly and now threatens all the
World’s remaining large primary
forests. For the sake of their
and
humanity’s future, they must
boldly seize perhaps the last
opportunity to sustainably and equitably use, maintain and restore
their vast ancient
rainforests.
It is too bad that IMF and World Bank policies in regard
to forests
lack consistency and rarely are
successful. In Cambodia they have
held out for fundamentally
reforming forest management as a condition
for economic loans, correctly
realizing that there can be no long-
term economic advancement
without ecosystems and resources. In
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea both organizations pursue
discredited
and failing reform efforts that
subsidize industrial harvests of
dwindling primary
rainforests. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
routine
grows tiresome, and is not
abetting rainforest conservation.
There can be no economies without ecosystems.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Blue
Planet: Cambodia's logging halt
Source: Copyright
2002 United Press International
Date: January 4,
2002
Byline: JOE
GROSSMAN, UPI Science News
The Cambodian government, under heavy pressure from
international
lenders, has ordered all
commercial logging suspended.
Increased deforestation, flooding attributed to forest
destruction
and low government tax
collections from logging all contributed to
lenders' concerns. The order was
effective as of Jan. 1.
Logging operations in Cambodia's forests have gone on in
a flagrantly
illegal manner for years,
according to observers there. Government
officials, military personnel
and police have participated in illegal
logging operations by large
timber companies or engaged directly in
their own illegal logging
activities. Highly prized rosewood and teak
have often been the targets. Ty Sokhun, chief of the forestry
and
wildlife department in the
Cambodian agriculture ministry, told
United Press International, "The remaining
concessionaires (logging
companies) must present new
forest management plans and reach a new
agreement with the government.
We have not yet reached the
agreements. They have not yet
finalized their management plans. Their
management plans are not in
place yet."
Sokhun said the government
ministry of agriculture and forestry,
therefore, decided to suspend
the logging. No concessionaire has a
permit to log at this time, he
said.
Sokhum said there may be legal
action taken to attempt to get around
the agriculture department's
ruling, adding he had no idea when
logging might begin again.
According to the Cambodian Agriculture Ministry
directive,
"Suspension of Forest Concession Logging
Activities," no new logging
licences
will be issued until the timber companies gain "approval of
a new forest concession
management plan consistent with legislation
and technical regulations."
The Philippines, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea have used
logging
moratoriums during the past 10
years as a means to try to stop
illegal logging.
Matters were brought to a head in 2000 when massive
flooding occurred
and largely was blamed on
widespread deforestation. The floods
destroyed about 15 percent of
the rice crop, one-third of
roads, 3000 bridges, 1000
schools and 170 health centers, according
to the Asian Development Bank.
Many subsistence farmers lost their
entire rice crop.
"Those forests are like a huge sponge. When the
torrential monsoon
rains come, they slow it down,
they soak it up and then they release
it slowly throughout the
year," Glen Barry, president of Forests.org
Inc. in
"These forests hold the top soil in place and they
adsorb the water.
When they are gone, you get increased deforestation, soil
erosion and
flooding," said Barry, an
expert on the tropical rainforests of
Flood damage far exceeded any government revenue obtained
from
logging operations, and as a
condition for further lending, the
International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development
Bank said
forest management plans must be
enforced. An IMF spokesperson told
UPI, "The fund supports the suspension of logging
activity until
sustainable management plans
have been approved by the government."
In November, the IMF noted the progess
made in 2001 in the
establishment of a national
forestry law but called on
"accelerate the
restructuring of forestry concessions as a condition
for completing discussions for
the current review of its borrower
status."
A spokesperson for the Asian Development Bank in
failure to meet management plan
requirements might only affect the
bank's lending to natural
resource projects and would not affect
other lending, for example, in
the health and education sectors.
After years of civil strife,
capital resources.
Eva Galabru, country director
for
environmental and human rights
organization Global Witness, spoke
with UPI from her office in
e-mail.
"This temporary moratorium on logging is not
unexpected, nor does it
come as a surprise. If anything,
it comes three years too late," she
said.
Galabru said big timber
companies are involved in logging in
prohibited areas, evade taxes on
cut timber, understate harvest
volume and take prohibited
trees, and added completely illegal
operations flourish. Armed men,
often from the military or military
or local police, operate in
remote areas, she said. The timber is
processed directly in the forest
and Galabru said political groups
also raise money through illegal
harvests.
"The larger-scale type of illegal logging we see is
committed by the
concessionaires themselves,
often in collusion with government
officials," she said.
"This is mainly possible because there is no
real verification system."
The widespread harvesting also is cutting into the lives
of tens of
thousands of local people whose
livelihoods have depended on some
species for the aromatic oils
and valuable resins that they yield.
"No one knows exactly how much forest cover is being
lost each year,
nor even how much is left in
country was forested. The
government continues to use this figure,
though by now it could
halved," Galabru said.
One conservationist who has worked in
years told UPI part of the
problem is the government forest monitors
are paid only the equivalent of
about $25 per month, but fees they
get from the logging companies
can be 10 times that or more. With so
much money coming from the
timber industry to the inspectors, it has
been difficult to maintain an
honest system, the conservationist
said.
If the logging company does not like the way the
inspector counts
trees, they will contract with
another forest inspector, he added.
Jake Brunner, a senior director for mainland
Conservation International, told UPI logging operations
have been so
aggressive there is relatively
little value left in the more
accessible areas of
logging led not only to
deforestation but to illegal hunting as
poachers use the newly cut
logging roads.
The current concession system was drawn up in 1995,
during a period
in which the armed forces were
basically living off the land and
receiving no pay, Brunner told
UPI. They formed an alliance with the
logging companies.
"The military were involved with the logging, they
were involved in
the protection, they were
involved in the taxation, they were
involved in everything,"
Brunner said. "Their influence was pervasive
and it remains strong. One of
our challenges in southwestern
has been to neutralize the
effect of the military. We believe if you
didn't sort of cut off the top
of the pyramid, the generals and other
officers who are making money
out of the system, you had no sort of
freedom or political space on
the ground to carry out standard forest
management workforce patrolling
functions."
Brunner, who has spent time in
while tensions increased greatly
as a result of efforts to halt
illegal logging, no activists
were killed as a result of the effort
to move soldiers out of areas
where they were protecting and
facilitating the illegal
operations.
Brunner said, "(Cambodian Prime Minister) Hun Sen cannot be seen to
be flaunting international
expectations in the forestry sector
because that has attracted a lot
of attention. I expect that Hun Sen
finds himself in a rather
difficult situation. On the one hand, he
wants to rein-in the military,
on the other hand he needs to keep
them onboard, happy and with
enough sort of liquidity, with enough
money in the system, to maintain
their lifestyle. I'm talking here
about the senior officers."
Brunner said in this sense "the Cambodian military
is no different
than it was in the 60s and
70s."
square miles.
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