National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #12-98 Rainforests for Sale: Logging and Globalization
March 25, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9812.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. This week on Making Contact--

Christopher Hatch: Demand a halt to the destruction of the Amazon, and more broadly demand a global ban on the loss of any more of our old growth forests around the world.

Agua Fresca: At some point real soon, some region or some particular state is going to develop a legally sanctioned program to grow industrial hemp that will work.

Phillip Babich: Only 22% of the world's old-growth forests remain intact. In the United States, that percentage has shrunk to 4%. Despite this decline, and the ecological risks associated with deforestation, multinational companies are chopping and paving their way through Latin America's rainforests. On this program, you'll hear from activists who are struggling to protect indigenous lands and resources. Also a report on an alternative to timber: hemp. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

Old growth trees are used for a variety of products including plywood, made of tropical hardwood, mahogany, and teak. Pulped old growth goes into toilet paper, camera film, and cigarette filters. As accessible ancient forests dwindle, timber companies are logging in some of the most remote and biologically diverse regions of the globe to find materials for these consumer items. One such place is the Amazon rainforest. Correspondent Sue Supriano spoke with indigenous leaders and environmentalists about this trend.

Sue Supriano: A report issued this year by the government of Brazil states that the Amazon region is being deforested at record levels. In 1995 alone, timber companies logged over 10,000 square miles of trees.

Christopher Hatch: The Amazon rainforest has properly been called the lungs of the Earth for years, and there is good reason for that. We are talking about a rainforest of almost unimaginable size, of unimaginable biodiversity, of complexity of life, home to indigenous peoples, a rainforest almost the size of the continental United States. The destruction of this rainforest will be, no exaggeration, will be the greatest natural catastrophe in human civilization. It is not something that history will judge us kindly for.

Sue Supriano: Christopher Hatch is the director of Rainforest Action Network's Old Growth Campaign.

Christopher Hatch: Brazil is, you know, trying to attract foreign investment, trying to assure foreign investors that all is safe, and, you know, it's a huge problem right now. They are attracting all these big logging companies moving in to build big mills and increase their logging capacity. We're talking primarily, actually, about companies moving in from Southeast Asia, where they're experienced in logging tropical rainforests, and they've pretty much logged what they had to log already. So they've wiped out what they had at home and now they are moving from Malaysia into Amazonas and other states in Brazil.

Sue Supriano: Beto Borges, also with the Rainforest Action Network, says that the Brazilian government has been enticing foreign companies to log in its forests as a result of neo-liberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

Beto Borges: Brazil has controlled its national industry and allowed foreign capital to invest in Brazil by creating foreign-owned plants to manufacture goods that can be manufactured in Brazil, by a Brazilian industry, and that has, in itself, been a very favorable incentive for the foreign capital, and which has been very costly to the Brazilian industrial sector. The fault is not only that of Brazil, but also the international community at large, principally the so-called G-7 countries, or the world's most wealthy nations. These nations are responsible for the pillage of natural resources in Brazil throughout the history of its country.

Christopher Hatch: The immediate affects of destroying the rainforest are felt by the indigenous people, by the local people who loose their home lands, and their livelihoods of course.

Sue Supriano: Christopher Hatch.

Christopher Hatch: Less immediate affects are felt as the web of life, known to science as biodiversity begins to unravel. 50 percent of the world's species are to be found in the rainforest. I mean this is the home of the web of life on our planet. It is also a critical part of the climate moderating systems of our planet.

Amalia Dixon: As indigenous people, we are not prepared to confront this change of system of life. Because, this means -- global economy for us means we have to change our way of living.

Sue Supriano: Amalia Dixon is a native Meskito woman from the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. She says heavy logging in that region has adversely affected her culture and community, which has been traditionally self-sustaining.

Amalia Dixon: The government in our country gives them permission to come into the land and start working, exploiting the riches, whatever -- the forests especially, because the Atlantic coast is the richest region in Nicaragua. And I also know that in Central America, Nicaragua has the biggest forest -- rainforests -- which, at this moment, is under a threat, because now that these companies are finding out, and of course with the opening of free trade, they -- everybody is trying to come in. In 20 years time Nicaragua will [be] without anything, which is a great destruction. And this is part of our life, because people -- as native people -- we use our lumber, cut the trees and like that, but we are not the companies, so we do use because of our needs and we also will sell some of our -- what we cut and whatever, but it is nothing like the companies are doing.

Sue Supriano: Dickson adds multinational timber companies are displacing whole villages.

Amalia Dixon: When they go into these territories to take the trees, there are still some communities in the jungle. And when they go in like that they will say, "Okay you have to move, you have to leave this place, because we pay to take whatever is there. The plants are there, so you can't be part of this territory, or you'll have to leave this place and go away," and like that. So, there have been violation of the rights of people, especially the Sumo people. The Sumo Indians have been suffering a lot lately.

Beto Borges: We have two very important reasons to promote indigenous rights in Brazil and other countries, throughout Latin America and beyond.

Sue Supriano: Beto Borges.

Beto Borges: That is one of the human rights. The other one is biological conservation, or conservation of biodiversity. In my mind, it is the most efficient way to conserve with biodiversity is to work with the local people, who've been the real stewards of the land, for generations. And the local I mean the traditional forest people.

Sue Supriano: To clear land for farming and cattle grazing some small farmers and cattle ranchers burn large sections of forest. Beto Borges of Rainforest Action Network says that in Brazil this practice has contributed significantly to deforestation.

Beto Borges: The burning though is now being considered even worse than cutting the forest, per se. Because, as you cut the forest, or as you do what they call selective logging a lot of the under story vegetation is damaged, and therefore it is dried up and when it coincides with a phenomenon, such as El Nino, which in the case of Brazil, made it warmer, as opposed to colder, as elsewhere in the world, forest fires can really get out of control in a gigantic scale. So scientists are now estimating that the real rate of deforestation, in fact, is twice of what satellites are telling us from up high in the sky. Because, what satellites are not catching is what's happening to the under story.

Christopher Hatch: There is a strong movement in Brazil to try and stop this. People are fighting back really very intensely; and we're trying to stand in solidarity with those folks.

Sue Supriano: Christopher Hatch.

Christopher Hatch: They're having quite a success. Recently, the Brazilian government put a moratorium and put on hold some of the concessions that they had already given out and were planned to give out. So there's hope here. And the groups on the ground in Brazil are doing great work. And if American consumers will kick in and refuse to buy old-growth wood and paper products, we think there is a real chance to save a lot of the Amazon. Beyond that, we fully encourage people to write to the government of Brazil, to write to your own local Congressional representatives, because so much of the deforestation activity in Latin America is either directly funded or facilitated in different ways by the US government, and demand a halt to the destruction of the Amazon, and more broadly to demand a global ban on the loss of anymore of our old-growth forests around the world.

Beto Borges: We have nowadays the technology to restore areas that have been degraded.

Sue Supriano: Beto Borges.

Beto Borges: There are a lot of people working on that, and also indigenous peoples can be a great source of information as to how to restore mother earth. Of course, provided that we respect their human rights in the first place.

Sue Supriano: Amalia Dickson.

Amalia Dixon: This is something that is going to continue, and we as people have to continue also. It's hard.

Sue Supriano: For Making Contact, I'm Sue Supriano.

Phillip Babich: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want to get in touch with any of the organizations you hear about on this program, please give us a call. It's toll-free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes or transcripts. That's 800-529-5736.

In Mexico, the government has passed new laws to attract foreign investment, a boom for US timber and paper companies looking to replenish depleted supplies of wood back home. According to correspondent Kent Paterson, Mexico's revised policies concerning land distribution have pitted not only private interests against local communities, but also small landholders against each other. Despite the country's move towards privatization, says Paterson, about three-fourths of Mexico's forests are still under communal ownership.

Kent Paterson: Beginning about 100 years ago, US companies began cutting trees in the northern Sierra Madres of Mexico, and then shipping product by rail to the United States. The corporations were later expropriated during the 1910 Revolution, when Mexico embarked on a nationalist-oriented development course. But political winds shifted and recently some US firms have shown a renewed interest in the Chihuahua forests.

Maria Teresa Guerrero is an organizer with the Independent Chihuahua Commission in Solidarity in Defense of Human Rights. She explains how indigenous land owners of the San Alanzo community, or ejidos, came to her office in 1997 complaining of illegal timber harvesting on their land. The group then filed a complaint with Mexico's environmental attorney general, known as Prolfrepa. They charge San Alanzo's administrators with illegally harvesting an endangered tree species and small pines, partially in order to fulfill their contract with international paper companies. Prolfrepa later upheld sections of the complaint in order to halt to the logging.

Maria Teresa Guerrero: The campesinos charge that there was excessive cutting of short green pines in order to supply a contract that had been signed between International Paper Company and the ejido. There was an investigation to see if this complaint would stand up. Sure enough, there had been illegal cutting. Pines were being cut outside the harvesting zones, and pines without markings were being cut. There were instances in which the regulations were being violated. All pines that are cut have to be within a certain area.

Kent Paterson: International Paper wasn't fined, because the firm went through contractors. However, the company now says it's stopped purchasing timber in Chihuahua. Spokesman Neal Lincoln, claims the legal problems in San Alonzo have little to do with the decision. Lincoln says the business was unprofitable at a time where the price of paper has dropped.

Neal Lincoln: We originally started that project in an effort to see if it would be financially feasible to provide fiber from that part of the world to some of our mills in the United States, and basically came to the conclusion that while there is a lot of potential there right now it doesn't make economic sense.

Kent Paterson: But the San Alonzo case was only one of several controversies involving International Paper in Mexico during the last two years. Another flap involved the passage of the 1997 Forestry Law. According to reports in the Mexican press, International Paper lobbied high officials of the Mexican government to initiate the new legislation. Spokesman Neal Lincoln says his company's activities have been exaggerated. But he adds that the paper processor views the forest reform as positive and is keeping experimental plots in Mexico. The new law gives tax-breaks and subsidies to investors of large forest plantations.

Neal Lincoln: Well, it provides the kind of incentives necessary to get an industry started and the recognition that industrial forestry is an appropriate use of land. Those are two key factors that are critical in getting an industry like that started.

Kent Paterson: The 1997 legal reform is the culmination of a 15-year restructuring of the Mexican forestry industry. During this time, Mexican wood imports were allowed duty free into the United States. Collectively owned ejidos were allowed to be privatized. And in order to compete in the international market, businesses rushed to modernize. But, just prior to the signing of NAFTA, four years ago, the industry was on the verge of collapse. Maria Teresa Guerrero.

Maria Teresa Guerrero: Mexico went into the free trade agreement with a big disadvantage in terms of technology. We brought two things to the free trade agreement: one was cheap labor, and the other was natural resources. Because of this, our laws are changing to welcome foreign capital. Right now, our natural resources are up for grabs. In this case the forest. Why is this? Because the ones that have an interest in our forests are the big companies. In this case, International Paper Company, which is the biggest landowner in the United States. They want to buy the forests with contracts to purchase secondary material. But they're also interested in plantations, because they have to ensure the supply of their raw material until 100 years from now.

Kent Paterson: The streets of Chihuahua, Mexico, were transformed into a battlefield last spring as clubs cracked and rocks flew between police and indigenous residents from the Tepehuan community of Monte Verde. The Tepehuanies had traveled hours from their collectively owned forest land, known in Mexican law as an ejido. They were protesting the management of the ejido by an administrator who had allegedly embargoed their machinery and property. [The] Monte Verde incident highlighted a wide-spread problem in rural Mexico. Conflicts over the ownership and control of forest lands.

In other parts of Mexico, including the southern state of Guerrero, conflicts abound between forest ejidos over land ownership boundaries. Severo Ario Sable is the president of the Supreme Council of the Peoples of the Filo Mayor and the independent organization that claims to represent 30,000 residents of the southern Sierra Madres. He says disputes between towns sometimes break out in violence.

Severo Ario Sable: What's happening is since the forest doesn't belong to anybody, the two towns that are in conflict are finishing each other off. Their smuggling the wood, taking it out, and cutting it up. They're doing many things and finishing off with the forest because of the problem over land ownership.

Kent Paterson: In the neighboring state of Oaxaca violent feuds also continue over ownership of the forest. According to a 1996 report by the non-profit group Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, dozens have died in recent years in fights over these timber rich lands. Earlier, in the 1970s, an armed guerrilla insurgency arose in part because of the land battles. Currently, the Mexican government is promoting greater foreign investment in the forestry industry. But until management and ownership issues are cleared up, foreign participation is likely to aggravate existing conflicts and create new ones over the control of the land and its resources. I'm Kent Paterson reporting.

Phillip Babich: An alternative to wood and fiber from trees is hemp, a by-product of the cannabis plant. Unique in its versatility and strength, hemp has been used by people around the world for centuries to provide fabric and building materials. Since hemp is derived from the plant that produces marijuana, its cultivation in recent decades have been controversial, especially in the United States. Correspondent May Jerril spoke with hemp activists in Colorado.

May Jerril: This saw biting into plywood used for an exterior siding panel could just as easily be cutting hemp particle board. Heather Easterday is with the Oxford Hemp Exchange in Missouri. Her company has made hemp particle board from bales of hemp that were grown in Canada.

Heather Easterday: My partners in industrial ag-innovations conventions actually created a hemp particle board. They have created a low, medium, and a hard density board. The low density would be great for like acoustical panels or insulation. The medium density is probably comparable to a masonite-type siding. The medium density and the hard board were both made utilizing 100% hemp stalk and the cellulose, the inside shredded hemp-stalk, and then it was put together using a soy-based resin.

May Jerril: But cultivating hemp has been illegal in the United States since passage of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. According to Tom Blanco, an attorney who has researched hemp laws, industrial grade hemp should have never been confused with other varieties of cannabis that are cultivated for mind-altering effects. International law, says Blanco, differs from US law in that it allows for the cultivation for industrial hemp.

Tom Blanco: The United States is bound by the United Nations single convention on narcotics drugs, which is signed by most of the nations in the UN. So too, are all these other countries that are producing hemp. That treaty says the controls for marijuana do not apply to cannabis that is produced for fiber and seed. And that is what we are terming industrial hemp. So these other countries are not violating their international treaty obligations, maintaining the prohibition against marijuana, per se, but are still producing industrial hemp, fiber and seed under the international convention.

May Jerril: Blanco reviewed transcripts of Senate debate over the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

Tom Blanco: Back in 1937, and in 1945, after the Hemp For Victory Campaign, the members on the Senate and the Congressional panels, they were actually asking the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. One Senator asked, "You know, it's clear that the Senate when we passed this drastic piece of legislation wanted to make sure that we were not putting the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in a position to destroy the legitimate hemp industry." The head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics says, "Which of course, the Bureau does not want to do."

May Jerril: Cloth, paint, fuel oil, and food are just some of the common by-products derived from the hemp plant. Also, many people are fascinated with hemp's utility as a fine writing paper. Some of the world's oldest books are printed on hemp paper. The Rethink Paper Project of the Earth Island Institute's Emily Miggins.

Emily Miggins: When production managers and companies or teachers in classrooms wake up and decide what type of paper products they are going to use, they really don't think about it, but they don't wake up wanting to cause environmental damage and harm to the world. If we could offer them alternatives that were economical and viable to virgin wood-based old growth forest tree flesh, I'm sure that they would choose it. And industrial hemp is one of those things that we need here in the United States to make that happen.

May Jerril: At the state level there have been some efforts to legalize hemp. Agua Fresca, former Colorado State Representative introduced an industrial hemp bill in 1996. He says that heavy lobbying by law enforcement organizations pressured some legislatures to change their votes at the last minute, killing his bill.

Agua Fresca: I had commitments from committee members in support of the bill in a number that would have passed the bill out of this committee. What we saw happen, I've never seen before. Certain law enforcement agencies showed up in mass, that articulated a case to some of the committee members that were previously supporting the bill, that made committee members concerned about their political future. I'm not sure what was lobbied to them precisely, but I saw something happen that I've never had happen with me before, and that is committee members that had committed yes votes with no further discussion to me whatsoever vote no on the bill. I've never done that to a fellow member and have never had it done to me before today. And that's not to be derogatory to those committee members, but it points out to us the terribly emotional pressure that was put on those elected officials to stop supporting the bill.

May Jerril: Last year, Colorado State Representative Kay Alexander sponsored a bill to legalize the study of a variety of fiber crops in Colorado, including hemp, but after intense lobbying, again from law enforcement organizations, this bill also failed to win enough support. Although Representative Alexander was planning to sponsor another bill this year, she has withdrawn it, citing pressure from law enforcement in an election year. Emily Miggins of the Earth Island Institute, says the argument by law enforcement that industrial hemp poses a threat to our youth is outlandish and ridiculous.

Emily Miggins: A lot of times what I want to say is -- to these men, and it's a lot of men that we're hearing from today -- OK you're worried about your 15-year-old. Spend more time at home educating them, and also educate them about the global deforestation taking place. And if your worried about a drug-free future, I hope you're also worried about a future with oxygen it in, for your great-grandchildren.

Agua Fresca: At some point real soon, some region, or some particular state is going to develop a legally sanctioned program to grow industrial hemp that will work.

May Jerril: Former Colorado Representative Agua Fresca.

Agua Fresca: That particular state is going to reap tremendous economic benefits as obviously the textile mills, the waferboard plants, and all other hemp processors are going to locate in that place. I'm convinced, after studying the proposal for industrialized hemp, that this has potential of being a multi-billion dollar -- that's billion with a b -- billion dollar industry, here someplace in the country. It's going to happen. The question is when and where.

May Jerril: In Colorado, activists are formulating a ballot initiative to legalize hemp and cannabis for industrial and medical use. For Making Contact, I'm May Jerril in Boulder, Colorado.

Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at deforestation and possible alternatives. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to the Fund for Investigative Journalism for partially funding our segment on deforestation in Mexico by Kent Paterson. I'm Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this weeks program call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts, or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs. That's 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. Our producers our David Barsamian, Phillip Babich, and Denise Graab. Our senior advisor is Norman Solomon. And our executive director is Peggy Law. Our theme music is by the Charley Hunter Trio. For everyone at Making Contact, thanks for listening.