the darker side of environmentalism
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1957220,00.html
Nicaragua's green lobby is leaving rainforest people 'utterly destitute'
Crackdown on felling and exporting trees leaves Miskitos facing economic and social devastation
Rory Carroll in Alamikamba, Nicaragua
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer
For centuries the Miskito people have defended their Central American rainforest kingdom. They rebuffed invading of the Spanish settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries with the help of British muskets, from which they derived their name, and remained autonomous even when nominally absorbed into the newly formed state of Nicaragua in 1894.
During the 1980s civil war, the Sandinista government accused the Miskitos of siding with Contra rebels, using that as a pretext to herd tens of thousands of the indigenous people into camps and destroy their villages. Those who survived rebuilt their communities after the war. Now this unique community, a mix of indigenous inhabitants and African slave descendants, are facing a new threat: environmentalism.
Article continues
A logging ban introduced earlier this year is devastating the economy and fraying the social fabric of remote communities that relied almost exclusively on forestry to survive.
Villages such as Alamikamba, a collection of wooden houses on stilts in the sparsely populated North Atlantic autonomous region, which seems light years from the capital, Managua, have seen the livelihoods of loggers, boatmen and millers evaporate, leaving a cloud of depression and anxiety.
'I can't support my family any more,' said Georo Morris Fox, 29. The great-great-great-grandson of an English traveller lost his job classifying cedar trunks when the logging ban shut the local timber mill, the village's main employer.
Mirna Morales, 33, a mother of four, lost her job as a secretary and her boatman husband no longer has logs to navigate, leaving the family penniless. 'We're surviving on rice and natural remedies,' she said.
The Miskitos' plight reveals the complex dilemmas facing those who want to save forests from destruction. The value of conserving one of the most biologically diverse regions in the Americas, home to 12,000 varieties of plant and 1,400 animal species, including monkeys, macaws and herons, is unquestioned. And no one doubts urgent action is needed, since in the past 50 years half of the 12,000-square mile forest has been lost to logging and agriculture.
The Miskitos played a part, but prominent businessmen, exploiting a weak state and rampant corruption, are thought to have been far more destructive. The issue is whether the logging ban will work and whether there is another way to protect the forests without hurting the Miskitos. Last May, dramatic and disturbing television images of rivers clogged with logs prompted the government to announce an emergency 10-year nationwide ban on cutting and exporting mahogany, cedar, pochote, pine, mangrove and ceiba.
A 2003 forestry law had too many loopholes so a sweeping ban - allowing only the felling of trees that would be turned into finished wood products, such as furniture, doors and floors - was deemed the only solution.
'It is meant to act as a tourniquet to stop the haemorrhaging of the country's forests,' Jaime Morales Carazo, head of the parliamentary environmental commission, said in May. 'It's not a perfect law, but it's an emergency law and a temporary law.'
Miskito leaders denounced the ban as an attack on their way of life and a violation of their autonomy. The only beneficiaries of the exception, on finished wood products, they said, were politically connected businessmen with furniture factories. Howard Wilson, head of the region's natural resource commission, called the ban a backward step for conservation.
Surprisingly, some environmental groups have also criticised the ban, arguing that villagers who can no longer legally chop and mill selected trees will turn to illicit, uncontrolled logging and farming.
'When a truck full of logs rolls into Managua everyone - media, politicians, the people - becomes upset and says they are cutting down the country's forests, but when a truck full of cattle rolls in, nobody says a word,' said Jaime Guillen of the Rainforest Alliance. 'They don't ask where the cattle came from, which is probably pasture land that is a clear-cut and burned forest.'
The alliance advocates training some Miskitos to select between 3 per cent and 5 per cent of the trees and process them 'to maximise the value to the community. Forest management in the hands of the communities in the region is much easier to implement than simply restricting all logging,' said Guillen.
Nicaragua's green lobby is leaving rainforest people 'utterly destitute'
Crackdown on felling and exporting trees leaves Miskitos facing economic and social devastation
Rory Carroll in Alamikamba, Nicaragua
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer
For centuries the Miskito people have defended their Central American rainforest kingdom. They rebuffed invading of the Spanish settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries with the help of British muskets, from which they derived their name, and remained autonomous even when nominally absorbed into the newly formed state of Nicaragua in 1894.
During the 1980s civil war, the Sandinista government accused the Miskitos of siding with Contra rebels, using that as a pretext to herd tens of thousands of the indigenous people into camps and destroy their villages. Those who survived rebuilt their communities after the war. Now this unique community, a mix of indigenous inhabitants and African slave descendants, are facing a new threat: environmentalism.
Article continues
A logging ban introduced earlier this year is devastating the economy and fraying the social fabric of remote communities that relied almost exclusively on forestry to survive.
Villages such as Alamikamba, a collection of wooden houses on stilts in the sparsely populated North Atlantic autonomous region, which seems light years from the capital, Managua, have seen the livelihoods of loggers, boatmen and millers evaporate, leaving a cloud of depression and anxiety.
'I can't support my family any more,' said Georo Morris Fox, 29. The great-great-great-grandson of an English traveller lost his job classifying cedar trunks when the logging ban shut the local timber mill, the village's main employer.
Mirna Morales, 33, a mother of four, lost her job as a secretary and her boatman husband no longer has logs to navigate, leaving the family penniless. 'We're surviving on rice and natural remedies,' she said.
The Miskitos' plight reveals the complex dilemmas facing those who want to save forests from destruction. The value of conserving one of the most biologically diverse regions in the Americas, home to 12,000 varieties of plant and 1,400 animal species, including monkeys, macaws and herons, is unquestioned. And no one doubts urgent action is needed, since in the past 50 years half of the 12,000-square mile forest has been lost to logging and agriculture.
The Miskitos played a part, but prominent businessmen, exploiting a weak state and rampant corruption, are thought to have been far more destructive. The issue is whether the logging ban will work and whether there is another way to protect the forests without hurting the Miskitos. Last May, dramatic and disturbing television images of rivers clogged with logs prompted the government to announce an emergency 10-year nationwide ban on cutting and exporting mahogany, cedar, pochote, pine, mangrove and ceiba.
A 2003 forestry law had too many loopholes so a sweeping ban - allowing only the felling of trees that would be turned into finished wood products, such as furniture, doors and floors - was deemed the only solution.
'It is meant to act as a tourniquet to stop the haemorrhaging of the country's forests,' Jaime Morales Carazo, head of the parliamentary environmental commission, said in May. 'It's not a perfect law, but it's an emergency law and a temporary law.'
Miskito leaders denounced the ban as an attack on their way of life and a violation of their autonomy. The only beneficiaries of the exception, on finished wood products, they said, were politically connected businessmen with furniture factories. Howard Wilson, head of the region's natural resource commission, called the ban a backward step for conservation.
Surprisingly, some environmental groups have also criticised the ban, arguing that villagers who can no longer legally chop and mill selected trees will turn to illicit, uncontrolled logging and farming.
'When a truck full of logs rolls into Managua everyone - media, politicians, the people - becomes upset and says they are cutting down the country's forests, but when a truck full of cattle rolls in, nobody says a word,' said Jaime Guillen of the Rainforest Alliance. 'They don't ask where the cattle came from, which is probably pasture land that is a clear-cut and burned forest.'
The alliance advocates training some Miskitos to select between 3 per cent and 5 per cent of the trees and process them 'to maximise the value to the community. Forest management in the hands of the communities in the region is much easier to implement than simply restricting all logging,' said Guillen.
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