350 Latin America

—-In Brazil the Arc of fire operation continues to shutdown illegal logging. But in town’s that have not been raided in a while it’s business as usual again. No one knows for how much longer… (6). The hype about the rest of the world taking over Brazil continues to grow via a suggestion that the forest could be purchased in its entirety for $50 Billion (7). A new book called “Tree of Rivers” is about the history of the rainforest and how the Amazon always conquers the most invincible foreigners via bugs, snakes and disease. (8) Meanwhile near the Peruvian borders aerial photos of the last uncontacted tribes are circulating in the media as a way to prove to government / loggers that this particular forest is already claimed and must not be made available for exploitation (9). Agribusiness giant Bunge’s annual shareholder meeting was protested by Rainforest Action Network because Bunge destroys tropical rainforests to grow soy(10). In Tailandia, in the state of Para, rioters once protested the first Arc of fire raids. The article also documents slavery, exploitation and assassination of those who seek to save the forests in this region(11). Brazil’s “National Economic and Social Development Bank” has announced that they have established a fund to collect international donations for Amazon preservation. Is this REDD oriented initiative kind of like hiring the fox to guard the hen house (12)? So far the most ambitious ‘official’ protection plan for the Amazon promises to protect only 10% of what remains (13).

—-In the Dominican Republic there is an article about the Kalinago People who came to the land a century before Columbus. For a long time they successfully resisted European attempts to take their land until ultimately only 500 of them survived and they were put on a reservation with the Carib Indians (14). —-In Uruguay the world’s largest pulp mill and the mono-crop plantations that feed it have created a poisonous havoc for the frontier cities of Fray Bentos and Gualeguaychú. This article gives a solid background of the history of road blockades, lawsuits and government proceedings (15). —-In Peru oil and gas allotments now cover 75% of the country’s rainforest. (16)

Brazil:

6) TAILANDIA — Acrid smoke from charcoal production blankets this Amazon logging town with the smell of business as usual. Less than three months ago, federal agents swooped in to close sawmills, confiscate wood and smash charcoal furnaces in a government crackdown on illegal logging. But tractors are moving logs again in Tailandia, after Brazil’s renowned environment minister resigned last week and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met Friday with Latin American and European leaders seeking to combat climate change. Locals are back to turning wood scraps into charcoal. ”It’s starting up again, but it’s not like it was, and nobody knows for how long,” said Zenito Santiago de Souza, 44, who lost his job in the government raid. “They’re saying the police are coming back on the 20th.” Operation Arc of Fire was rolled out after satellite data in January projected a 34 percent spike in Amazon destruction — a political embarrassment for Silva after three consecutive years of decline. But with 70 percent of jobs in the area tied to logging, the raid left behind widespread unemployment and crime. http://www.miamiherald.com/540/story/552568.html

7) A Swedish-born tycoon who acts as a deforestation advisor to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stirred up controversy in Brazil for reportedly claiming all the Amazon could be bought for 50 billion dollars. Johan Eliasch, the 46-year-old boss of the Head sports equipment company, is under investigation by Brazilian police and intelligence services for the alleged comments and for 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of Amazon forest he is believed to have bought, the newspaper O Globo reported Monday. He reportedly made the assertions to stimulate land acquisition as part of his role as director of Cool Earth, an organization he co-founded which finds sponsors for the rainforest as a way of protecting it. “Eliasch held meetings with businessmen between 2006 and 2007 in which he proposed that they buy land in the Amazon, and told them ‘only’ 50 billion dollars would be needed to acquire all the forest,” according to a report by Brazil’s Abin intelligence agency cited by O Globo. The issue is a sensitive one for Brazil, which has been offended by statements by British politicians suggesting that the Amazon is too important to all of mankind to be left to the management of Brazil’s government alone. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday stated that “the Brazilian Amazon has an owner, and that owner is the Brazilian people.” He told a gathering in Rio de Janeiro that while he was conscious of the need to conserve the forest, “there is also need to develop the Amazon.” Brasilia has been progressively tightening laws aimed at protecting the huge forest by cracking down on illegal ranchers, farmers and loggers, and stepping up vigilance against foreigners looking to exploit its biodiversity. Eliasch, who lives in London and has an estimated net worth of 790 million dollars, stopped being a significant donor to Britain’s conservative party last September. He switched allegiance to Brown’s Labour Party, apparently winning his special consulting post in the process. Although Cool Earth has generally received positive evaluations in Britain and the United States, some accuse the organization of embarking on “green colonialism” and compounding the problems of indigenous groups living in the Amazon. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdXu7xtY-MU8FAEAhxqfV9pZJmnQ

8) Hemming’s most recent book, “Tree of Rivers,” covers ground familiar to anyone interested in the history of the Amazon. What makes the book important and, in many ways, even remarkable, are the breadth of the author’s experience and the depth of his understanding. Throughout, Hemming scatters modest references to his own extraordinary journeys. As an aside, while discussing the river’s multitude of swift, rapids-studded tributaries, he recalls that he was once nearly swept to his death in one. When explaining the potentially deadly diseases that Amazon explorers and natives alike have long suffered, he casually mentions that he has twice endured the searing fever and bone-grinding chills of malaria. Having cut trails through dense, remote rain forest, and having felt the sickening and very real danger of becoming hopelessly lost, he understands much better than most the extraordinary skill it takes for indigenous people to navigate their world. While Hemming has a deep appreciation for the beauty of the rain forest, he also understands why explorers fighting for their lives might be forgiven if they did not often stop to admire it. “Occasionally a shaft of sunlight pierces the gloom, illuminating huge blue morpho butterflies or rare colored plants that brighten the prevailing browns and greens,” Hemming writes. “But the beauty is lost on explorers having to hack through such foliage. … After a few weeks of such toil, nonindigenous men are pale, with clothes torn and boots disintegrating. Their skin is covered in bites, thorns and festering scratches, and the glands that filter insect poison from arms and legs are swollen and sore.” Outsiders’ helplessness in the Amazon, particularly in comparison with the deftness of its native inhabitants, is a recurring theme in “Tree of Rivers.” The vast difference between the two groups is immediately apparent from the earliest European explorers to arrive in South America. Francisco de Orellana’s legendary descent of the Amazon River in 1541, for instance, is a story less of triumph than of utter disaster. “These young Spaniards were the finest fighting men in Europe,” Hemming marvels. “They were invincible in the Caribbean and open parts of the Andes. But as soon as they descended into the Amazon forests they became helpless incompetents.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/books/review/Millard-t.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1212292873-gqpb
X7mlSoqrT0cTKUVunA&pagewanted=all

9) Mr Meirelles, who works for FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department, said they first encountered the group on a morning flight earlier this month and saw dozens of people dotted around a clearing with two communal huts. When they returned later the same day, the impact of the earlier flight was clear. Most of the women and children had fled into the forest, he said, and those that were left had painted their bodies, taken up arms and appeared to be on a “war footing”. Experts believe that the hostile response is a clear indication that they understand that contact with the outside world spells danger. Across the border in Peru, similar tribes are being driven from their lands by aggressive oil and mining interests and illegal loggers. Peru’s President, Alan Garcia, has openly questioned the existence of uncontacted tribes. Meanwhile, evidence of the destruction of the forest has been piling up down river in the Brazilian state of Acre, where barrels of Peruvian petrol have washed up along with debris from logging operations. “What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna, and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world,” said Mr Meirelles. After a decades-long political battle, indigenous groups now have their land rights protected under Brazilian law. The London-based charity Survival International is leading calls for Peru to act in accordance with international law and protect the tribes on its territory. Survival’s Fiona Watson, who recently returned from the region, said that Indians fleeing over the border into Brazil could be driven into conflict with uncontacted tribes already living there. “It is clear from this photograph that they want to be left alone,” she said. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-amazonian-tribe-that-hid-from-the-rest-o
f-the-world-ndash-until-now-836774.html

10) You probably haven’t heard much about the agribusiness giant Bunge. And that’s just the way the company likes it. Why? Because Bunge is burning down native old growth forests to process soy in South America and profiting from the use of slave labor. Bunge tries to hide from the spotlight and avoid responsibility. Today, your voice can help hold Bunge accountable for causing massive environmental destruction and human rights abuses. Last week Judson Barros, the director of a Brazilian environmental NGO called FUNAGUAS, and I confronted Bunge CEO Alberto Weisser directly at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in New York. We held a rally outside the meeting and then the two of us went inside to tell the CEO, and the company’s shareholders, that burning native forests to process soy and profiting from slave labor–both well documented Bunge practices–are not just illegal, but morally unacceptable for any corporation. The audience was stunned to even hear such accusations, and the CEO’s response to my statement was simply appalling: he told me “thank you, but I’d like to say that Bunge is entitled to its earnings from plantations that use of slave labor.”How could he have such a cavalier and repugnant attitude? Because he–and Bunge–have never been challenged to act responsibly before. Today is our day, your day, to change that forever. Send a letter to Alberto Wiesser today and tell him that you want Bunge to stop burning forests at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and stop profiting from slave labor immediately. The company needs to know that we?re all watching and that we demand change and accountability now. With your help, we’re going to shine the brightest light we can on a company that’s spent more than 100 years hiding from the public. It’s time we tell Bunge it can’t hide its destruction and abuse anymore. Andrea Samulon, Rainforest Agribusiness Campaigner http://www.ran.org

11) At a remote sawmill in Tailandia, an Amazonian backwater, a crowd of police and environmental agency officers gathered recently. This was the beginning of a grass-roots clampdown on illegal loggers in Brazil. In February 2008, just before Arc of Fire was launched, loggers in the town of Tailandia rioted, making it impossible for environmental agency workers to begin the crackdown. The loggers burned tires and attacked buildings, fearing the loss of their livelihoods if logging practices were brought to an end. The state of Para has some of the worst human rights abuses in Brazil. People are trafficked from across the impoverished northeast of the country to work in slavelike conditions in the sawmills, illegal charcoal ovens and cattle farms. They usually work in horrific conditions, with no basic rights and existing on roughly $5 a day. If they try to seek help from the authorities, they are threatened with death. Ecologists are viewed with extreme suspicion, and they risk their lives coming up against loggers and ranchers. Environmentalists have tried to blow the whistle on the illegal deforestation and the widespread abuse of human rights that accompanies it. One such environmentalist, Dorothy Stang, was murdered in 2005 for her work in Para. The U.S. nun was killed for drawing attention to the workers’ living conditions and highlighting the environmental damage caused by the loggers. The cattle rancher who was accused of ordering the killing was recently released following a retrial. The acquittal caused outrage among Stang’s family members and human rights activists, and left many questioning the transparency of the Brazilian justice system. Many other activists have been forced into hiding, having fled death threats from landowners. One man in Tailandia — who gave his name as Joao — painted a distressing picture of his existence. He works under difficult conditions; searing heat while making charcoal in one of the town’s illegal ovens. “We’re all afraid of being killed,” he said. Under the guard of the federal and military police, employees from Brazil’s national environment agency have to assess which wood is logged legally and which illegally. Officers clutching tape measures and working under the unwelcome gaze of the sawmill workers climb tree trunks and check documents for falsification. Faking documents to produce a land ownership certificate for clearing forests is a common practice in these parts. For years, environmentalists have complained vociferously about the absence of security forces to stop corruption at the local government level. http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4947776

12) Brazil’s state-run development bank announced it will establish a fund to collect international donations for Amazon preservation initiatives, reports Reuters. Luciano Coutinho, president of the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES), told reporters the first contribution will come from the Norwegian government. In January Norway said it would contribute $500 million per year to slow global deforestation. Coutinho said Norway may pledge up to $200 million in the first donation to the fund. In February the Brazilian government said it would seek up to $1 billion per year in donations from the governments of industrialized countries and corporate sources. At the time it said that contributors will not be eligible for carbon credits that may be generated by “avoiding” deforestation under a mechanism — known as REDD — ratified at climate talks in Bali last December. The trees of the Amazon rainforest store 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon, according to calculations by scientists, but deforestation accounts for about 70 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions primarily result from forest conversion for agricultural expansion — notably beef and soy production — in the Amazon. Daniel Nepstad, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Institute, estimates the cost of reducing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to nearly zero within a decade would be $100 million to $600 million per year under a program involving carbon credits for forest conservation (REDD). Tasso Azevedo, director of the Brazil’s forestry services, estimates the country needs about $2 billion annually to stop illegal deforestation of the Amazon. It is unclear whether Azevedo’s estimate accounts for income generated under a REDD framework. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0529-brazil_fund.html

13) An ambitious plan to put more than 10 percent of Brazil’s Amazon forest beyond the grasp of loggers and agribusiness could slash carbon emissions by 1.1 billion tons by mid-century, according to a study released Wednesday. Deforestation in the tropics accounts for 20 percent of global emissions of CO2, making it the second largest driver of global warming after the burning of fossil fuels. Amazonia alone accounts for nearly half of those emissions, and 65 percent of the Amazon forest is in Brazil. Researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts calculated that the areas pegged for protection under the Amazon Region Areas Program (ARPA) stock some 4.6 billion tons of carbon, equivalent to 20 times the annual emissions of Germany.The ARPA network, slated for completion in 2012, would cover 12 percent of Brazil’s tropical forests. They then estimated how much carbon would be released into the atmosphere over the next four decades if the designated areas were not protected — a total of some 1.1 billion tons of CO2. The report was presented in Bonn at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, where more than 6,000 representatives from 191 countries have gathered to map out a plan for saving the planet’s “Brazil is trying to battle illegal logging, but as long as the demand for the wood remains strong, they have a very hard time doing anything about it,” said Saskia Richartz, policy director for biodiversity at Greenpeace. Brazil’s new environment minister, Carlos Minc, took up his functions Tuesday in a government increasingly split over how to balance preservation and development in the Amazon rainforest. More than 11,224 square kilometers (4,333 square miles) of Brazil’s tropical forest disappeared last year. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080529-139472/Protected-forests-in-Braz
il-could-cut-billion-tons-of-CO2

Dominican Republic:

14) They came in canoes carved from single tree trunks a century before Columbus, and for generations they resisted European attempts to take their lands. But the tide of history was against them, and gradually they retreated deeper into the mountainous rainforests of their island until barely 500 remained. It was an enlightened British administrator, Sir Henry Hesketh Bell, who secured a reservation for the last Carib Indians in a remote part of Dominica in 1903, and it has been a remarkable success story for a community that has increased six-fold. They call themselves the Kalinago People, and they live in one of the most naturally bountiful places on Earth. This rumpled quilt of live volcanoes swathed in primary rainforest is so fertile they say if you plant an umbrella it will bear fruit. Perhaps not, but the island is a riotous assembly of vegetation in which avocados, apples and limes jostle for space with giant chatagnier trees, cocoa, mangoes, enough root vegetables to feed an army and a chef’s cornucopia of spices and herbs. Throw in jungle hikes to spectacular waterfalls and hot sulphur springs, world-class scuba diving and laid-back people unspoilt by mass tourism, and you have the essence of a natural adventure park far from the Caribbean stereotype of glitzy hotels on palm-fringed beaches. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/centralamericaandcaribbean/dominica/2049243/Dominica-the-Car
ibbean’s-lost-world.html

Uruguay

15) The conflict over the construction of a pulp mill just over the border in Uruguayan territory has gone has gone beyond a governmental or local debate from the neighboring frontier cities of Fray Bentos and Gualeguaychú, because of the mill’s possible contamination effects. The conflict has expanded to a vast literary movement, the making of a film and even a video game with a clear message of xenophobia. The controversy began at the end of 2004 when then Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle Ibáñez (2000-2005) authorized companies Botnia and Ence, from Finland and Spain, respectively, to construct pulp-producing plants on the outskirts of the city Fray Bentos — across the border in the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú — on the eastern coast of the Uruguay River that borders both countries. As a result, the Gualeguaychú population — 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Buenos Aires, in the Entre Rios province — formed an assembly, condemned the possible environmental damage the plant could cause and, after obstructing transit on the bridge joining the two nations on several occasions, permanently cut transit on Nov. 20, 2006 in order to impede commercial trade and tourist travel to Uruguay. After entering the political agenda of the country, especially the Argentine government’s, the assembly members went forward with their final objective of halting the factory projects — a goal that at first won over Argentine sympathy, but since Botnia began producing at maximum capacity in November 2007, many consider the demand unrealistic. During a moment of tension when political conservatives from both countries sought to exacerbate nationalist sentiments, well-known Argentine filmmaker Eduardo Montes Bradley produced “The Great Simulator,” a provocative documentary found insulting toward the Gualeguaychú population, which was never even released for showing in Argentina’s commercial theaters. The documentary accused Gualeguaychú inhabitants of being accomplices in the contamination caused by seven other pulp mill factories located in the opposite side of their province, on the Parana River. “Though it was a clear and reprehensible act of censorship on the part of the distributing companies, this hurt nationalist sentiment silenced everyone. During a case of extreme nationalism that received no governmental criticism, a video game from an anonymous programmer — largely successful in Internet sales —proposed that Uruguayans use machine gun to eliminate the Gualeguaychú assembly members who for 19 months have been blocking the transit of persons and goods on the binational bridge.http://www.latinamericapress.org/Article.asp?lanCode=1&artCode=5627

Peru:

16) The Peruvian Amazon, a region that holds some of the most pristine and biodiverse rainforests on Earth, continues to face an unprecedented wave of new oil and gas exploration. Peru recently released eight new Amazon oil blocks as part of its 2008 bidding round. According to analysis by Save America’s Forests, that brings the total to 64 oil and gas blocks in Peru’s vast Amazon region. “Oil and gas blocks now blanket nearly 75 percent of the Peruvian Amazon,” said Dr. Matt Finer, staff ecologist at Save America’s Forests in Washington, DC, who is now in Peru. “That is over 123 million acres of megadiverse rainforest, roughly the size of California and Maine combined.” These blocks are auctioned by the state oil company Perupetro as license contracts for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons. They now sprawl across both protected areas and indigenous territories. “Hydrocarbon blocks now overlap 20 protected areas,” said Cesar Gamboa, president of the Peruvian nongovernmental organization Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales. “Thirteen of these protected areas preceded creation of the oil blocks and the overlap is illegal due to the lack of compatibility studies required in the Protected Areas Law,” Gamboa said. “Virtually all of the blocks overlap titled indigenous peoples lands,” said Robert Guimaráes Vasquez, vice president of the Peruvian indigenous organization AIDESEP. “Moreover, many of the blocks overlap the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.” An analysis by Save America’s Forests indicates that 58 of the 64 blocks overlay titled indigenous lands and 15 overlap the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. These isolated peoples, so named due to their deliberate avoidance of the outside world, are extremely vulnerable because they lack resistance or immunity from outsiders’ diseases. The Peruvian government, in 2003, reduced royalties to promote investment, sparking a new exploration boom. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-28-01.asp