This is another fascinating article, which was highlighted on the front page of one or another of the papers I read. It describes in great detail the complexity of factors in doing the right thing, and how it impacts on the livelihood and very existence and survival of certain people.
Ul can tell you about the communities along the western Mexican coast who held sea turtles in high importance in their lives, until they were made to stop harvesting them as they came ashore to lay their eggs.
Read more of the article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052000940.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
"Papuans Idle After Buzz Of Prosperity Falls Silent
Indonesia Crackdown Ends Timber Harvest
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 21, 2006; A19
SIGERAU, Indonesia -- It was afternoon, and Yulianus Tiri lounged on a shady bench next to his house, nursing a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
Tiri recalled wistfully how the Malaysian timber merchants came to town and paid Tiri and other native Papuans for rights to log in jungle that their clans have long considered their own here on the island of New Guinea, in one of Southeast Asia's great tracts of tropical forest.
"People bought televisions, washing machines, CD players -- you could do karaoke in your own home!" the Sougb tribe member exulted, his bare feet swinging beneath him.
But then the Indonesian government was alerted by environmentalists that the forests, once thick and green, were being ravaged by the timber merchants' chain saws. So the government cracked down last year, sent the foreigners fleeing and yanked the licenses that had been issued by the provincial governor.
"And now -- " Tiri said, holding out his empty hands.
As the world's tropical forests shrink in the face of economic development, many environmentalists say that the best way to defend what remains is to give the impoverished local peoples who live in their shadow limited rights to cut trees for their own profit. Millions will be lifted from poverty this way, advocates say, and will acquire along the way an incentive to preserve most of the wood for future generations.
From Mexico to China and Indonesia, governments are adopting this approach. But the results can be unwelcome: scarred forests and shattered communities. Advocates say problems arise from lack of government foresight, unclear or conflicting laws, exploitation by unscrupulous timber barons and the villagers' own lack of sophistication in dealing with the outside world.
"Indonesian law recognizes traditional rights, but clear regulations on how that's going to work have never been developed," said David Kaimowitz, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research, based in Bogor, Indonesia.
Most of the world's tropical forests are government-owned and -managed, despite long-standing claims to the forests by local peoples and the limited ability of governments to protect them, said Andy White, president of the Rights and Resources Group. It is a coalition of conservation and anti-poverty groups, including the forestry research center, that this month launched a global campaign for stronger community rights to forests."
Hi Kara, good to see you.
