SUNS 4300 Tuesday 13 October 1998
ENVIRONMENT: EU PROJECTS HURT FORESTS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
London, Oct 11 (IPS/Dipankar De Sarkar) -- European aid projects worth billions of dollars are ruining the environment in developing countries and pushing indigenous tribes to the margins, a new report says.
The report by the Rainforest Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, says Third World projects funded under the European Union's aid programme and administered by the European Commission are:
* Wrecking the environment of developing countries, including threatening globally important tropical rainforests and destroying local communities;
* Breaching the European Commission's own guidelines and procedures meant to protect the environment and vulnerable people; and * Operating behind a "veil of secrecy, such that members of the public and even European governments are unable to obtain key information on the use of EU money on Third World schemes."
"The European Commission has been utterly complacent about the environmental and social impacts of its Third World development programme, attempting to hide behind a veil of secrecy and
unaccountability," said Simon Counsell, Director of the Rainforest Foundation.
"European governments must end this disgraceful abuse of taxpayers' money, and either bring about a radical shake-up of the European Commission or withdraw its funding for such damaging schemes," he added.
The report, the result of an 18-month investigation, says European Commission projects have led to the eviction of communities from traditional forest lands in Uganda, the banning of traditional farming techniques in the indigenous Palawan areas of the Philippines and increased hunting, logging and poaching in Cameroonian forests as a result of road construction.
In addition, poor policies have added pressure on forests in Nigeria and Ghana, it says.
The environmental group says key reasons for the low quality of the EU projects are secrecy and the lack of consultation.
"While other international agencies have been opening their doors to scrutiny, the European Commission still largely operates behind a veil of secrecy," the report says.
Requests for important information about aid projects, such as environmental impact assessments, are "routinely refused, apparently in contravention of the Commission's own Code of Conduct on public access to information."
Consultation with local communities in project areas is rarely carried out - often the locals get to learn of a project only "when the bulldozers arrive in their villages," the Foundation charges.
It gives the example of an EU-funded project in the Upper Orinoco-Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve in southern Venezuela - at 83,000 sq km, the world's largest formally protected area in rainforests.
Although the reserve is home to three indigenous peoples - the Yanomami, Sanema and Ye'kuana -- none of their members were consulted in designing the project, which aims to protect the region's natural resources and prevent logging and mining. As a result, tourist camps in the reserve have been a source of dispute and a military airstrip has come up in the heart of a Ye'kuana community, angering villagers.
"Most seriously, the project has been very slow in delivering actual benefits to the Indians," the report says.
"Despite a desperate health situation, with mounting mortalities from falciparum malaria and respiratory infections, no action has yet been taken to provide medical assistance to the Upper Orinoco communities, nor has any action been taken by the project to expel Brazilian miners
illegally operating in the headwaters along the border (with Venezuela)."
A second project, for a major road in southern Cameroon, is said to have suffered because of an almost complete absence of consultation with locals.
The project is funded by a mechanism called Stabex, which seeks to guarantee African, Caribbean and Pacific countries a degree of stabilisation in their earnings through the export of commodities.
Dependency on export earnings from commodities means decreases in international commodity prices hits them hard.
The road runs from Ampiel to Lomie, on the edge of Dja Biosphere Reserve -- home to a large population of Baka pygmies.
Research carried out for the Rainforest Foundation has shown that there was almost no consultation over the project. "More than half of the local people only knew of the project when machines started to arrive in their villages," the report says.
According to the NGO, the road has resulted in increases in logging activities by European logging companies, poaching, prostitution, health problems, pollution and crime.
But the European Commission's Director General for Development, Philip Lowe, criticised some of the conclusions of the report, saying the Cameroon road was "vital to providing access to health centres, education for children and getting agricultural produce to the market."
"The road is critical to Cameroon's development -- its not simply to hack into tropical forests. It's been a traditional route for many years," he told IPS on the telephone from Brussels.
"The underlying cause is poverty itself. There's very little economic development around. And indigenous people represent 10 percent of Cameroon's population. There are a maximum of 40,000 Baka pygmies. Their traditions have to be preserved, but the future needs of the other 360,000 people (in the area) need to be looked after as well.
"Environment is not just for trees and animals, but also for man," he added.
Simon Counsell of the Rainforest Foundation, taking exception to Lowe's remarks about pygmies, said it was "tantamount to saying that because they are in a minority, their welfare doesn't matter. It's a preposterous and obscene suggestion. Baka pygmies are the most impoverished people in Cameroon. They are living on the very margins of society."
He said his organisation was concerned about both environmental and social aspects of development, whereas European Commission projects are "planned from Brussels, using experts who are not familiar with local societies and therefore often get it wrong."
Lowe claimed the substance of the Foundation's criticism was already contained in audit reports carried out and funded by the European Commission itself -- a claim denied by Counsell.
Lowe added that the Commission has recently made it mandatory for all development schemes to submit a prior environmental impact assessment, prepared in consultation with local communities.