This was sent originally two days ago, but trying again...
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PNG RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
Solomon Islands--"Stripping the Pacific island rain forests"
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
OVERVIEW & SOURCE
The following is a wonderfully written piece which accurately
portrays the pillaging of the Solomon Islands. It does so in a
thoughtful yet informative manner--definitely one of the best
mainstream press coverage items we have seen. This was printed in
the San Francisco Examiner and forwarded to us by a list
recipient. Note: This article as presented here is a PHOTOCOPY
and not for reprint, it is FOR CAMPAIGN INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES
ONLY. If interested in reprinting, contact the Source for
permission.
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Headline: Stripping the Pacific island rain forests
Source: SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
By John Collee
Sunday, January 1, 1995
Page A14-A15
*****
INSET
British doctor, novelist and screenwriter John Collee is working
at a hospital in the Pacific. He wrote this article for the London
Observer.
*****
Solomon Islands
ON GOOD DAYS, I finish work at 4:30 p.m. Sometimes my wife and I
take the boat and go across to Nusa Tupe, where we can sit in the
shallows and watch the sun going down. Before it gets too dark, we
head back down the side of Loga island and around the reef marker
at the entrance to Gizo harbor.
Today, as we crossed the lagoon, there was another Korean logging
ship moored there, a great rusting hulk the size of a small
factory-dwarfing the dugout canoes of the fishermen, the island's
ferry and the little group of yachts lying at anchor, dwarfing the
Catholic cathedral and the waterfront stores.
These ships have no place here. I get angry every time we see one
pulling into harbor. And we see them all the time these days. They
come in empty, get customs clearance and leave loaded with round
logs. Each ship holds 175,000 cubic feet of hardwood, or 1,000
trees. And for each of these trees, the island landowner is paid
about $18.
This must sound like a lot to the local chiefs, who believe the
supply of trees is limitless and have no concept, until it happens
to their land, of how totally a place can be stripped by modern
equipment.
So they sign the contract and are given more money than they have
ever seen in their lives, and then watch in bewilderment as the
small, determined men from Korea or Malaysia move in with their
chain saws and bulldozers and begin knocking down huge swathes of
rain forest.
Before long, the cool, green canopy behind the village has gone
and in its place is a noisy tangle of fallen timber; the rivers
are running red with sediment that flows out into the lagoon and
kills the coral reef; the villagers' gardens are destroyed, their
custom sites are destroyed and their traditional sources of food
are ruined.
What they have instead, when the company pulls out, are some
shabby prefabs, a clutch of old chain saws and outboard motors, a
shop selling beer and refined rice, and an ecosystem that will
never be the same in their lifetime, nor that of their great-
grandchildren.
You might imagine that environmentalists' pressure has put an end
to his kind of crime by now. Quite the reverse.
To quote the Financial Times of London: "The wealth accumulated
from the tropical timber industry is immense. Due mainly to
reduced logging activity worldwide, prices of most tropical
hardwoods have doubled-in some cases tripled-in the past 12
months."
In other words, it has recently become profitable for the logging
moguls to move into small Pacific island groups like the Solomons
and strip them bare.
In May, the Berjaya group from Malaysia announced that it was
"investing" $60 million in the Solomon Islands forestry industry,
for which it would be granted timber concessions of at least 1.5
million acres. Another Malaysian company, Kumpalan Emas, last year
bought the rights to a 1,170-acre concession here.
I don't know how these kinds of investments will be described when
they are floated on the stock market. No doubt the prospectus will
make them look both attractive and morally defensible. From where
I stand, they are neither.
Let me tell you about Kumpalan Emas, which operates here through a
company it owns called Silvania. These people are despoiling a
huge sector of the island of Vangunu. Vangunu is on the Marovo
lagoon, which is the largest double barrier reef lagoon in the
world and has been nominated as a world heritage site.
Last year, the Australian International Development Aid Bureau
observed Silvania's activities there and reported: "The degree of
canopy removal and soil disturbance was the most extensive seen by
the authors in any country. It appeared to be more like a clear-
felling operation."
Silvania doesn't appear to be interested in sustainability. Who
would be if you can simply rape the place and clear off with the
profits? And they're cleaning up here with frightening speed.
In the past four years, companies like Eagon and Hyundai of Korea,
or Earthmovers and Golden Springs from Malaysia, have removed 30
to 40 percent of the loggable timber in the Western province of
the Solomon Islands.
As pressure mounts to put an end to this devastation, the
companies respond by becoming more frantically destructive. In
another six years, they will have destroyed the region, and these
priceless forests that surround us here will be on sale in Europe
as coffee tables.
So what's this got to do with medicine? It has to do with medicine
because it has to do with lifestyle--a word that has become so
devalued that it implies nothing more fundamental than being able
to go for a swim after work. But, of course, lifestyle means more
than that.
The lifestyle of Solomon Islanders is something that has evolved,
like the rain forest around them, over many generations. Their
lifestyle is what guarantees their physical and mental well-being.
When you destroy the individual's lifestyle, you destroy the
individual, which is why, inevitably, the health of these
islanders deteriorates dramatically in areas that have been
logged.
THEIR FISHING AND GARDENS are destroyed, so we see malnourished
children in the hospital. Their social structure is destroyed, so
we see crimes of violence and venereal disease. Their water supply
is destroyed, so we see skin infections and water-borne diseases.
Their men become drunkards, their women turn to prostitution,
their children buy cheap sugary drinks and rot their teeth.
What the village gains in compensation is probably half a Korean
executive's annual salary. What it loses is incalculable.
The natural resources will take a century to recover. In ravaged
areas like Vangunu they may never recover at all.
I don't know what can be done about this. There should be a
worldwide embargo on the export of unprocessed timber, but there
isn't. There should be a moratorium on logging in the Pacific, but
there isn't. There should be small-scale community sawmills
whereby villagers call realize the value of their own hardwood in
a sustainable way, but there aren't many of these, either.
What there shouldn't be are logging ships in Gizo harbor. There
shouldn't be large-scale logging on small islands.
You just have to see a photo of it to know that this is not
development. It's not even legitimate business. It's a crime
against humanity, and the people who "invest" in it either must be
blind or downright evil.
###ENDS###
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