12/05: WLL Newsletter #39 - 12th May 2006 - Part II
Second part of Woodland League Newsletter #39 - 12th May 2006
Continued from
http://www.woodlandleague.org/newsletter/index.php?itemid=51
5(d). IN THE NEWS - International
DYING TRIBE TAKES ON TIMBER GIANTS OVER LOST HABITAT
By Richard Lloyd Parry and Devika Bhat
'Your suppliers are killing us,' Asian forest dwellers tell a British lumber group.
ONE of the world’s poorest and most isolated tribes is pleading with a British company to stop using timber from their home in the rapidly disappearing Borneo jungle.
Chiefs of the Penan, Asia’s last nomadic people, have written to the head of the lumber company Jewson Ltd, appealing to him to stop buying wood from the Samling Group, a Malaysian company accused of stealing the Penan’s lands and destroying their forest.
“By purchasing Samling timber, you and your company are making yourselves part of the crimes committed against us,” says the letter, arranged by a Swiss NGO, to Peter Hindle, Jewson’s managing director. “The Samling group is extracting timber from our forests against our declared will and without our consent.
“Despite our repeated protests, Samling does not respect our boundaries, continues to encroach on our traditional land and disregards our native customary rights.”
The headmen of 17 communities on the Baram river in the Malaysian state of Sarawak have signed the letter with their thumb prints, since most of them are illiterate.
The Penan are the human equivalent of an endangered species: the last hunter-gatherers in Asia. For thousands of years they have lived in the deep interior of Borneo, the world’s third largest island, surviving by hunting wild animals and harvesting jungle plants. From the ipoh tree they extract poison for their blowpipe arrows. Only a few hundred continue to live a fully nomadic life beneath temporary shelters too simple even to be called huts. Most of the 9,000 Penan have settled down in simple villages to a life of hunting combined with rice farming.
Many have been forced to abandon their nomadic traditions because of the destruction of their habitat by logging companies. Trees are pulped into plywood and sold on to construction companies for use in hoardings and building sites.
There has been a rainforest in Sarawak for ten million years, but in the past 45 years more than 90 per cent of the virgin jungle has been logged.
“Without our forest, we, the Penan, cannot survive,” the chiefs wrote. “We depend on the clean water from our rivers, the wild boar we hunt in the forest and the fruits and the jungle produce we collect.”
The area from which Jewson’s plywood originates includes the last patch of primary rain forest in Malaysia. Logging destroys the forest plants, food for men and the animals they hunt, while the animals flee from the noise of the chainsaws. Those that remain are hunted by the logging workers.
Deprived of plants and trees, the soil washes down into the rivers that become polluted. “When we set up road blocks to stop the company from entering into our land, Samling attempts to bribe some individuals to split our communities and buy their way into the concession,” the letter says. In 1990, the Prince of Wales called the Penan victims of “collective genocide”.
There is nothing illegal about Jewson’s purchase of the Borneo plywood. It is sold with the approval of the Malaysian Timber Certification Council, which has approved Samling’s logging operations in the middle and Upper Baram river. But the Penan leaders complain that the council has ignored an unresolved law suit asserting their land rights.
Jewsons said last night that the region’s wood accounted for a “very small” portion of its sales. In a statement, the company said that it promoted best practice in timber procurement and was keen for the case involving the Penan to be heard and the situation resolved.
(c) Times, May 05 '06
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DOUBLE FOREST AREA UNDER LOCAL CONTROL, GROUP SAYS
OSLO, Norway - The world should double the area of forests under the control of local communities by 2015 as part of an effort to combat poverty, a new international group said on Wednesday.
The Rights and Resources Initiative, backed by several governments and conservation groups, called for "an unprecedented effort to strengthen local rights to own and use forests and fight rural poverty, prevent illegal logging, and protect biodiversity."
"The group aims to assist communities and governments to double the global forest area under community ownership and management by 2015," it said.
UN goals for halving poverty by 2015 could not be achieved unless governments helped the 1.6 billion people who depended on forests for their livelihoods, it said.
"That includes some 350 million indigenous and tribal people who depend on forests for food, housing, heat, and medicine," it said.
Their rights were often eroded by logging or by forest clearances by rich land owners or governments, it said.
It said that local communities, including indigenous residents, now managed at least 370 million hectares of forest -- an area larger than India. In total, forests cover about 30 percent of the earth's land area.
Andy White, coordinating the initiative from the United States, said that the situation for forestry ownership was feudal because governments had tight control. Local people could often do a better job. FEUDAL
"Governments control the land and people who depend on forests often have few rights," he told Reuters. "The situation is like Europe in the 14th century or quite like the situation in the United States 100 years ago."
Ninety percent of forests in Africa were government owned, he said. He said that local communities were often more efficient at managing forests than government or logging companies.
"Local communities are not saints but they can probably do a better job in managing the forests," he said. Needed reforms of laws, mapping and so on would probably cost at least a billion dollars and take years to achieve.
The RRI said its founding partners included the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research and Washington-based Forest Trends. It has funding from countries including the United States, Britain, Canada and Sweden.
"Significant legal and other barriers persist," said Achim Steiner, Director-General of the IUCN.
"This initiative aims to support communities and governments in addressing these barriers on a global scale, building on the momentum that is already under way."
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
(c) Reuters, May 04 '06
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==========================================================
6. WOODLAND LEAGUE CONTACT DETAILS
www.woodlandleague.org
Andrew St. Ledger, PRO,
+353-(0)87-9933157
Brendan Kelly, Liaison Officer,
+353-(0)91-687778 (evenings)
+353-(0)86-1529176 (mobile)
brendankellywoodlawn@yahoo.ie
Ciarán Hughes, Secretary,
The Woodland League,
c/o Caherawoneen, Kinvara, Co. Galway, Ireland.
+353-(0)87-9652992
woodlandleague@yahoo.ie
Yahoo! Discussion Group:
http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/woodland-league
woodland-league-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/rfpii
BACK TO CONTENTS
==========================================================
Continued from
http://www.woodlandleague.org/newsletter/index.php?itemid=51
5(d). IN THE NEWS - International
DYING TRIBE TAKES ON TIMBER GIANTS OVER LOST HABITAT
By Richard Lloyd Parry and Devika Bhat
'Your suppliers are killing us,' Asian forest dwellers tell a British lumber group.
ONE of the world’s poorest and most isolated tribes is pleading with a British company to stop using timber from their home in the rapidly disappearing Borneo jungle.
Chiefs of the Penan, Asia’s last nomadic people, have written to the head of the lumber company Jewson Ltd, appealing to him to stop buying wood from the Samling Group, a Malaysian company accused of stealing the Penan’s lands and destroying their forest.
“By purchasing Samling timber, you and your company are making yourselves part of the crimes committed against us,” says the letter, arranged by a Swiss NGO, to Peter Hindle, Jewson’s managing director. “The Samling group is extracting timber from our forests against our declared will and without our consent.
“Despite our repeated protests, Samling does not respect our boundaries, continues to encroach on our traditional land and disregards our native customary rights.”
The headmen of 17 communities on the Baram river in the Malaysian state of Sarawak have signed the letter with their thumb prints, since most of them are illiterate.
The Penan are the human equivalent of an endangered species: the last hunter-gatherers in Asia. For thousands of years they have lived in the deep interior of Borneo, the world’s third largest island, surviving by hunting wild animals and harvesting jungle plants. From the ipoh tree they extract poison for their blowpipe arrows. Only a few hundred continue to live a fully nomadic life beneath temporary shelters too simple even to be called huts. Most of the 9,000 Penan have settled down in simple villages to a life of hunting combined with rice farming.
Many have been forced to abandon their nomadic traditions because of the destruction of their habitat by logging companies. Trees are pulped into plywood and sold on to construction companies for use in hoardings and building sites.
There has been a rainforest in Sarawak for ten million years, but in the past 45 years more than 90 per cent of the virgin jungle has been logged.
“Without our forest, we, the Penan, cannot survive,” the chiefs wrote. “We depend on the clean water from our rivers, the wild boar we hunt in the forest and the fruits and the jungle produce we collect.”
The area from which Jewson’s plywood originates includes the last patch of primary rain forest in Malaysia. Logging destroys the forest plants, food for men and the animals they hunt, while the animals flee from the noise of the chainsaws. Those that remain are hunted by the logging workers.
Deprived of plants and trees, the soil washes down into the rivers that become polluted. “When we set up road blocks to stop the company from entering into our land, Samling attempts to bribe some individuals to split our communities and buy their way into the concession,” the letter says. In 1990, the Prince of Wales called the Penan victims of “collective genocide”.
There is nothing illegal about Jewson’s purchase of the Borneo plywood. It is sold with the approval of the Malaysian Timber Certification Council, which has approved Samling’s logging operations in the middle and Upper Baram river. But the Penan leaders complain that the council has ignored an unresolved law suit asserting their land rights.
Jewsons said last night that the region’s wood accounted for a “very small” portion of its sales. In a statement, the company said that it promoted best practice in timber procurement and was keen for the case involving the Penan to be heard and the situation resolved.
(c) Times, May 05 '06
BACK TO CONTENTS
DOUBLE FOREST AREA UNDER LOCAL CONTROL, GROUP SAYS
OSLO, Norway - The world should double the area of forests under the control of local communities by 2015 as part of an effort to combat poverty, a new international group said on Wednesday.
The Rights and Resources Initiative, backed by several governments and conservation groups, called for "an unprecedented effort to strengthen local rights to own and use forests and fight rural poverty, prevent illegal logging, and protect biodiversity."
"The group aims to assist communities and governments to double the global forest area under community ownership and management by 2015," it said.
UN goals for halving poverty by 2015 could not be achieved unless governments helped the 1.6 billion people who depended on forests for their livelihoods, it said.
"That includes some 350 million indigenous and tribal people who depend on forests for food, housing, heat, and medicine," it said.
Their rights were often eroded by logging or by forest clearances by rich land owners or governments, it said.
It said that local communities, including indigenous residents, now managed at least 370 million hectares of forest -- an area larger than India. In total, forests cover about 30 percent of the earth's land area.
Andy White, coordinating the initiative from the United States, said that the situation for forestry ownership was feudal because governments had tight control. Local people could often do a better job. FEUDAL
"Governments control the land and people who depend on forests often have few rights," he told Reuters. "The situation is like Europe in the 14th century or quite like the situation in the United States 100 years ago."
Ninety percent of forests in Africa were government owned, he said. He said that local communities were often more efficient at managing forests than government or logging companies.
"Local communities are not saints but they can probably do a better job in managing the forests," he said. Needed reforms of laws, mapping and so on would probably cost at least a billion dollars and take years to achieve.
The RRI said its founding partners included the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research and Washington-based Forest Trends. It has funding from countries including the United States, Britain, Canada and Sweden.
"Significant legal and other barriers persist," said Achim Steiner, Director-General of the IUCN.
"This initiative aims to support communities and governments in addressing these barriers on a global scale, building on the momentum that is already under way."
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
(c) Reuters, May 04 '06
BACK TO CONTENTS
==========================================================
6. WOODLAND LEAGUE CONTACT DETAILS
www.woodlandleague.org
Andrew St. Ledger, PRO,
+353-(0)87-9933157
Brendan Kelly, Liaison Officer,
+353-(0)91-687778 (evenings)
+353-(0)86-1529176 (mobile)
brendankellywoodlawn@yahoo.ie
Ciarán Hughes, Secretary,
The Woodland League,
c/o Caherawoneen, Kinvara, Co. Galway, Ireland.
+353-(0)87-9652992
woodlandleague@yahoo.ie
Yahoo! Discussion Group:
http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/woodland-league
woodland-league-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/rfpii
BACK TO CONTENTS
==========================================================