Destructive Asian logging multinationals

Destructive Asian logging multinationals move west into Guyana MV Greenpeace meets with Guyanese indigenous peoples

Guyana, South America, October 1, 1994 (GP)
As foreign logging companies set their sights on Guyanese forests in South America, Greenpeace today joined representatives of the country's indigenous peoples to support their fight for the forests.

The logging companies, notably from Malaysia and South Korea, look set to repeat the damage they wrought on forests across the Pacific -- in Papua New Guinea, Soloman Islands and Vanuatu -- where those governments are proving unable to control the foreign multinational companies to carry out unsustainable logging, destroy forest habitats and alienate indigenous people from their lands.

Guyana's Amerindian People's Association (APA), which consists of representatives from 46 Amerindian communities across the country, invited the vessel MV Greenpeace to Guyana. Greenpeace will join the APA when they meet with Guyana's President Thcheddi Jagan today.

In January, the APA were among many groups calling for a freeze on the handing out of logging concessions by the Guyana Forestry Commission until the commission could effectively regulate the timber industry.

In 1989, only some 2.4 million hectares of Guyana's 14 million hectares of loggable forests were being exploited. Today, contracts for more than 8 million hectares have been signed and a further 4 million hectares are in the pipeline. The Guyana Forestry Commission has only five trained foresters and a small budget.

"It is blatantly obvious that the Commission is incapable of controlling this massive expansion of logging," said Greenpeace forests campaigner Bill Barclay. "They have dished out concessions to these companies virtually no regard to the environment or the Amerindian communities."

Many of the companies moving into Guyana are in conflict with indigenous people in Sarawak, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands and Canada.

Canadian companies seeking access to Guyanese forests also have a poor record of environmental destruction, and are in conflict with workers and indigenous communities.

"These companies are bad news," said Barclay. "They 'cut-and- run', exhausting forests and wrecking local communities -- all for obscene profits which leave the Pacific countries as fast as they're logged. They now look set to do the same here."

Guyana has given the logging companies secure and extraordinarily beneficial contracts, allowing them tax holidays, minimal royalty payments and the right to export unprocessed timber.

Says the APA's Jean La Rose: "We are concerned while all indications point to foreign companies reaping the benefits of the forest, more and more of our land is being whittled away before us and we are receiving little in the long term."

For more information, contact:
Bill Barclay of Greenpeace International on the mv Greenpeace in Guyana on ++874 1300310, or Jean La Rose of the APA tel/fax ++592 261789

Editor's notes
The MV Greenpeace's visit to Guyana is part of a tour highlighting forest destruction in the Americas. After Guyana, the vessel will sail to Brazil for a tour along the Amazon.

http://www.infodrom.north.de/~joey/Greenpeace/guyana.html