Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: March 6, 2000
Byline: Abraham Lama
LIMA, Mar 6 (IPS) - Malaysian logging companies, which have already
chopped down the forests in their own country and are currently
exploiting more than 1.5 million hectares of forest in Brazil, have
now set their sights on Peru's Amazon jungle.
''With the support of several representatives of Peruvian logging
companies, the Malaysian group is lobbying Congress and maneuvering to
delay and gut the bill on forests and fauna, which was to be enacted
last year,'' said Roger Rumrrill, an international consultant on
matters involving the Amazon jungle.
''The bill, which made it through the parliamentary commissions months
ago, was on the verge of approval by Congress last November when a
mysterious hand wiped it off the agenda, without any explanation,'' he
explained.
Peru has 72 million hectares of naturally-growing forests, 70 percent
of which are located in the Amazon jungle region, which Peru shares
with Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, and which accounts for
more than 57 percent of Peru's total territory, or 739,672 square kms.
While awaiting passage of the bill on forests and fauna, which
encompasses laws on protected areas, natural resources, conservation,
biosafety and the sustainable exploitation of biological diversity,
the Peruvian government is administering the economic exploitation of
the jungle by decree.
''The decrees on the economic exploitation of the Amazon region have
always been, and continue to be, erratic. We hope the bill on forests
and fauna will establish a strategic orientation for the development
of that region, which forms an important part of Peruvian territory,''
said Reynaldo Trinidad, editor of the magazine 'Agro Noticias'.
Rumrrill maintained that the decrees on the exploitation of Peru's
Amazon jungle issued in the past two years have favoured large foreign
investors and hurt small and medium-sized logging concerns.
''Today, the requisites for potential concessionaires of jungle areas
- 500,000 dollars in bid bonds and five million dollars in investment
- leave out local businesses which fail to form associations with
foreign groups,'' he said.
''That means that in the new legal context, the way is paved for
concessions of more than 200,000 hectares,'' said Rumrrill.
Local environmentalist Dar-o Zapata said, meanwhile, that ''logging in
tropical forests is very different from logging in Canada or Europe.
And the foreign investors interested in investing in the Amazon have
generally acted in other countries in a depredatory manner.
''Three Asian countries have been the greatest pillagers of forests in
the past quarter century: Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines,''
he added.
Rumrrill pointed out that in Brazil's Amazon region, three Malaysian
companies had been granted a concession equivalent in size to half of
the territory of Belgium.
''Environmentalists have denounced the governments of the states of
Para and Amazonas, in international campaigns, for having allowed the
entry of the Malaysian logging firms,'' which have a bad reputation,
he said.
The Malaysian firms ''are very aggressive. In their country they
demonstrated their capacity to corrupt government officials, and they
are suspected of having made their way in Brazil with similar
methods,'' he added.
According to Rumrrill, in Peru the companies had already won over
Congressman Luis Campos Baca, a biologist by training and the chairman
of the Commission on Ecology, the Environment and Amazonia. After
being invited to Malaysia last year, the lawmaker returned convinced
that Peru should imitate Malaysia's forestry model.
Luis Lopez Guerra, the chairman of the National Forestry Chamber,
disagreed with Rumrrill however, and called for greater facilities for
large-scale investment in the Amazon region.
''The legal framework in effect is outdated and does not promote
business,'' said the representative of the logging sector. ''And
concessions are for very short periods of time, sometimes only a year,
which leads concessionaires to act in a depredatory manner to take the
fullest advantage in the shortest possible time.
''In consequence, only 0.5 percent of Peru's Amazon forests are being
exploited,'' he added.
While logging activities account for just one percent of gross
domestic product, or around 500 million dollars, with adequate
legislation promoting business opportunities, Peru could export more
than three billion dollars a year, Lopez Guerra asserted.