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Forest Dwellers Face Annihilation
Jun 16th
Forest Dwellers Face Annihilation.
Campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon fear a group of as yet uncontacted indigenous peoples in a remote corner of the rainforest face "annihilation" after a court overturned state efforts to protect them from logging firms. The supreme court ruled that the company can continue logging in the densely forested area at the Pardo river in north-west Mato Grosso state, which borders Bolivia.
In his ruling, Judge Luiz Fux said that the company Sulmap Sul Amazonia would suffer "irreversible damage" if logging was banned. The group of hunter-gatherers, known by a neighbouring group as the "little people" was first sighted in the 1980s, but workers of the government’s indigenous peoples protection agency, known as Funai, only found signs of a hurried departure in their abandoned villages when sent to contact them. Arrows, hammocks, baskets of nuts and footprints have been found, but no direct contact has been made, as the group flees into the forest.
Funai won a court order in 2001 banning entry to an area bigger than Greater London around the villages to allow time for friendly contact. But armed loggers were seen inside the area in 2002, and a Funai camp was later burned down. Clandestine roads were built as the loggers defied the ban, claiming that there were no longer indigenous peoples living in the area. "These Indians will be annihilated if we don’t act now," said Sidney Possuelo, head of a special unit established by Funai to contact and protect such groups from the aggressive advance of loggers, ranchers and settlers.
There are thought to be more than 40 such groups of isolated indigenous peoples across the Amazon region. Another group of nine or 10 people, living in four huts, was spotted recently in Rondonia state, also on the Bolivia border, during a government helicopter flight.
The rights group Survival International, which is campaigning to save the Rio Pardo peoples from loggers, has called on the government to fulfil its constitutional duty to protect them, saying the "the annihilation of a tribe, however small, is genocide."
Logging firms, both domestic and foreign, are spearheading the advance of other business interests deeper into the undisturbed forest. Deforestation is running at record levels as a result. Official figures put last year’s total deforestation at 10,000 square miles, larger than Wales. Some government analysts believe that even this is an underestimate.
Rain forest carbon credits poposal
Jun 16th
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Request for forest carbon credits.
Rainforest protection should be added to measures to prevent global warming, a seminar of climate experts from more than 150 countries has heard in Bonn.
The proposal, from Papua New Guinea, could open the way to a major expansion of the attempts to limit climate change.
ISLAND OF NEW GUINEA
Has world’s third largest rainforest,
after Amazonia and CongoThe German meeting, organised by the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is the first international attempt to look into what to do when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
Plush red armchairs on the podium, for TV-style question and answer sessions after each clutch of presentations, underline the deliberately informal style of discussions here.
It is all part of the effort to avoid the diplomatic rancour that usually seems to afflict such get-togethers.
It’s all carbon
The forestry proposal from Papua New Guinea ran counter to the pattern of most of the discussions.
While other developing countries rejected any spreading of responsibilities beyond the industrialised countries already signed up to the Kyoto Protocol – "you caused the problem, so you show us how to fix it first" being the essence of the argument – Papua New Guinea actively welcomed the chance to be held accountable for greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the destruction of its rainforest.
Its position comes down, in part, to the success of the carbon emissions trading scheme launched in Europe earlier this year.
A tonne of carbon saved from the atmosphere now comes
with a price tag – and Papua New Guinea argues that its rainforest
carbon is as good as any coal or oil burnt in the West."A tonne is a tonne is a tonne," declared the PNG
ambassador to the UN. But at the moment, there is no way developing
countries can trade avoided rainforest destruction on the international
market.The role of forests in moderating climate change has long been recognised. Trees absorb some of the carbon dioxide that causes global warming; and cutting them down removes that benefit. What is more, the burned wood and degraded land left behind becomes a source of additional greenhouse gases.
In the past, however, the complexity of quantifying the
amount of rainforest destruction, let alone any change in the rate of
destruction, led to the issue being sidelined under the Kyoto Protocol.There may be reluctance to re-open an issue that has
been extensively debated in the past. But the Papua New Guineans say
the response has been strong, and they believe many other rainforest
countries are interested in the scheme.‘Fair and equitable’
It has been estimated that perhaps a quarter of all
greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the destruction of
rainforest; and that if aims to limit global warming to 2C (the
European target) are to succeed, forestry has to be included in the
discussion, PNG believes.We want to save our rainforest, runs the PNG argument, but you have to help us pay for it.
And PNG does not want to wait until 2012 – "there won’t be any rainforest left to save if we do," it says.
"Kyoto does not allow developing nations that reduce
deforestation emissions to get credit. Kyoto unfairly discriminates
against rainforested developing nations who seek to participate within
the world carbon market," ambassador Robert Aisi told the meeting."Tropical rainforest nations deserve to be treated
equally. If we reduce our deforestation, we should be compensated for
these reductions, as are industrial countries."The compensation we seek is access to the world’s carbon markets, but on a fair and equitable basis."
Rainforest shamans
Jun 15th
How did rainforest shamans gain their boundless knowledge on medicinal plants?.
The short answer — no one really knows
Rhettt A. Butler, mongabay.com
May 14, 2005
Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long been aware that rainforest dwellers have an astounding knowledge of medicinal plants. Kaiapo shaman in the Amazon.
For thousands of years, indigenous groups have extensively used rainforest plants for their health needs — the peoples of Southeast Asian forests used 6,500 species, while Northwest Amazonian forest dwellers used 1300 species for medicinal purposes. Today pharmacologists and ethnobotanists work with native healers and shamans in identifying prospects for development of new drugs. The yield from these efforts can be quite good — a study in Samoa found that 86% of the plants used by local healers yielded biological activity in humans — and the potential from such collaboration is huge with approximately one half of the anti-cancer drugs developed since the 1960s are derived from plants.
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