Saxakali Magazine V2N1
Environmental
Issues:
Introduction
Guyanas Natural Resources:
"Free" for Whom?
Empowerment of Local People
Follow-up
In the Guyanas today (see map) political ploys in the guise of economic development exposes a policy of political expediency and lack of responsibility to the people of the region. This is clearly evident in behind the scenes, secret decisions to auction-off and give away all of the countries lands to foreign interests. Right now the governments of Guyana and Suriname are considering bids that would put over 80 percent of the region's forest under foreign control.
According to the Bretton Woods Reform Organization, the people of the region are poised to lose, forever, major portions of their natural base at a token and untimately meaningless price from multinational corporations. At the rate at which logging is presently being conducted, the forests will all be gone in eight to ten years.
These lands, if they belong to anyone at all, belong to its people and no individual or government has the right to give away concessions over public territory without the consent of its people. These concessions are granted in an atmosphere of secrecy and the people are given no opportunity to be part of the decision-making process. Such governments do not represent the interest of the people, and such actions are clearly those of an imperial power serving the interest of colonialists.
How else could the butchers of Malaysia and Papua New Guinea have been invited to rape the region's virgin forest? Companies like Barama Company Limited (BCL), the new Asian owners of Demerara Timbers Limited (DTL), Buchanan, Beriyaya and others. These companies operate in addition to local logging companies like Mazarali, Case Timbers and others.
MUSA, an Indonesian investment group is clear-cutting 375,000 acres of forest in Suriname near the Guyana border. The Berjaya Group Berhad of Malaysia is trying to secure rights to 7.5 million acres in Suriname. In 1993 the South Korean and Malaysian owned Barama company which has distinguished itself by stripping forests in Sarawak, East Malaysia, was granted concessions by the government of Guyana to undergo timber operations on 4.2 million acres of primary tropical forest.
The Barama concession in the Northwest District of Essequibo alone equals to about ten percent of the entire country. In addition to the land grant, the company have been granted a five year tax holiday, minimum royalty payments, and the right to export unprocessed timber, tax free. And in return after five years Guyana gets a measly 20 million dollars anually.
Furthermore, the Barama company get its labor as cheap as possible, and there are no workers' rights, health care, insurance, accident coverage, pension schemes, and so on. With the continued devaluation of the Guyanese dollar, Barama will make even more money off the forests and backs of Guyanese people because the royalty payments are fixed for the next twenty years. Barama in turn sells the timber to Japanese and US companies like Georgia Pacific at a hansome profit.
In 1989, 2.4 million hectares of Guyana'a 14 million hectares of loggable forests were being exploited. Today, contracts for more than 9.1 million hectares have been signed and a further 4 million hectares are in the pipeline. The royalty rates and acreage fees for these lands are ridiculously low, one-twentieth of the US cent per acre.
Environmentalism aside, these are not sound economic or social policies. At best, it represents the desperate actions of politicians to generate cash for cash-starved economies and therby maintain their claims of ligitimacy to the people and the World Bank. At worst, it exemplifies a continuation of the political corruption the region has known since independence. Now not only are the people of the region forced to suffer to full the pockets of so called leaders and maintain them in power, but now the trees, animals and land will be distroyed as well.
These nations' uncaring bureaucrats operate without regards to the people's support. They rely instead on ethnic support and the politics of division which prevents the people from having a common voice or to achieve harmony in development. These politicians also capitalize on a majority of the people who view their forests as expendable "wild bush" - this very land that have given birth to a diversity of life, where many call their homes, and think of as sacred soil.
Guyanas Natural Resources: "Free" for Whom?
The region's natural environments - rich in forests, animals and minerals - are considered by politicians and bureaucrats in charge of the state as readily available, "free" resources which should be used for economic development of the nation and people. This concept of "free" is misleading. It is not free to the people who live there and who can only lease it from the government. It is not free for the animals and other lifeforms to exist and survive there. On the contrary, it is the animals, forests, and the culture and lives of people and communities which are "free" for exploitation.
In the Northwest region of Essequibo in Guyana, the beautiful forests given to Barama is inhabited by five Amerindian communities. Families have been evicted from their land and the traditional hunting, fishing, and farming lands of the Amerindian communities are being destroyed. Barama claimed that that environmental damage in these areas was often caused by gold miners operating without supervision in the region.
However, Barama officials failed to mention that there is virtually no monitoring of Barama's operations in the region as well. The Guyana Forestry Commission has only five trained foresters and a small budget. How can they keep track of 9.1 million hectares of forests? As a result, illegal logging and corruption is on a rampant scale. In addition, there are no national forestry standards which all companies must abide by.
The officials in control of the state think it is they who own the precious resources of the region and they have actually placed a value on the diversity of life, plants, species, and human cultures which exists in the region. Entire ecosystems in are reduced to the value of one plant, hardwood timber, and negotiated for sale to multinationals. The rapid rate of deforestation in Guyana have not only led to exploitation of the Amerindian people, logging workers and so on, but have also caused an outbreak of malaria. Right now, there are 20,000 to 30,000 cases of malaria in the country, and that figure is rapidly increasing.
How has this absurd policy of ecological disaster benefit anyone besides the greedy multinationals and government officials? Have the distruction of our resources been translated into any benefit or freedom to and for the people and for those who are forcibly displaced by development? The Guyanese people are still waiting for the trickle-down benefits from all these foreign ventures. Moreover, yet again the experience of development reveals a process of explotiation and riches for a few, and nasty by-products like ethnocide of indigenous peoples, environmental distruction and extermination of infinite lifeforms and resources.
We support actions aimed at protecting the people and environment in all of the Guyanas and the Caribbean. The children of these lands have inherited the responsibility to protect their land and they will no longer support a legacy of grossly irresponsible government over their region. We demand an end to the colonial mentality which governs us; an end to deforestation, and to social and political marginalization. We demand the right to choose our own development path and the right to control our own natural resources. We demand an end to the domination and oppression of the people and environment by the state.
We join the Guyana Amerindian Peoples Association (APA), Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and a host of other organizations in demanding an end to further concessions and a recognition of Amerindian land rights. Instead of an ecologically distructive forest policy, we demand a socially and economically productive forest policy which respects Amerindian land rights and protects bio-diversity. Rather than large-scale, very distructive projects, we should encourage small-scale, community based projects which are more sustainable.
We must work together to apply pressure on the governments, so that they will be forced to formulate polices which strengthens the rights and economic opportunities of the people, rather than foreign companies. Please help us to address these urgent issues and to protect and conserve our mutual interests.
Write a letter to the Presidents of Guyana and Suriname saying that you are opposed to the granting of concessions to any and all of the regions' forests and urging them to do everything in their power to preserve the regions' environment; indicate that you will follow up and monitor their action and ask for a response.
President,
Office of the President of
Guyana,
New Garden Street, Queenstown. Geogetown, Guyana
President,
Office of the President,
Kleine Combe Weg 1, Paramaribo, Suriname.
Although you come in thousands from
the sea,
Although
you walk, like locusts, in the street,
Although you point your guns straight at my heart,
I clench my fist above my head,
I sing my song of Freedom
Martin Carter
Amerindian Land Rights Now 
Copyright
© 1994. [Saxakali]. All rights
reserved.
Revised: July 11, 1997.