Governments, big business, World Bank and IMF under investigation

By Paul Brown

London, England, May 29— A devastating report about the destruction of tropical forests by multinational companies has been suppressed for three years by the European commission and World Wide Fund for Nature.

The report named companies prepared to bribe and bully their way to lucrative logging concessions. It also blamed the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for inducing countries to sell their forests for a quick cash return to pay off debts to western countries.

The European commission, which paid the researchers nearly £200,000 for the work, was fearful of the repercussions if they named names and asked for a second version with the names taken out —but even this version was watered down.

A third version still makes clear that EU funds being poured into developing countries to ensure forests are carefully managed are frequently being wasted. Forest laws were enacted but no action taken.

The well-respected authors from the World Resources Institute and WWF said they were so disturbed by what they found that they recommended a moratorium on all further logging in 11 countries —Cameroon, Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa; Belize, Surinam and Guyana in the Caribbean rim; and Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific rim. This should last until bribery scandals had been investigated and proper environmental standards enforced, they said.

They also recommended an end to EU aid until these issues were addressed —but no action has been taken. The report says: “The new investments [by Asian multinational companies] have been concentrated in countries with generally weak or outdated environmental and social laws and little enforcement capacity. The governments of these countries are easy pickings to foreign investors as they have weak forest services, poor monitoring capacity, inefficient tax collection and auditing capacity, and in some cases widespread bribery and corruption.

“Many of the countries are suffering severe economic difficulties with large foreign debts, high inflation and unemployment. In the majority of countries studied, decision making is controlled by a small group of powerful people or clans within the government that look at primary forests of their country as a short-term source of personal revenue, not as a productive ecosystem which can generate social, economic and ecological benefits on the long term for the entire country and its people.”

The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon and Belize were all named as suffering large-scale corruption. “In some countries administrative procedures facilitate widespread corruption. Senior officials in countries such as Papua New Guinea have been shown to be taking decisions to award logging rights in exchange for bribes.”

The report says although European companies have in the past indulged in bad practices the scale of the new incursions was much larger and that: “The logging itself is often very careless, with high collateral damage to the surrounding forest. The roads built to extract the timber, often hundreds of kilometers long, create access to frontier areas that facilitate the entry of commercial hunts, farmers, miners and others who cause further environmental damage.” The companies frequently end up in violent clashes with local people and native tribes.

It blames the main donors to these countries — the World Bank, Japan, the EU, France, Germany, the UK and the US — for failing to enforce their own rules to promote forest conservation and responsible management. In fact, the World Bank and IMF make things worse by imposing monetary reform on the countries, the report says. These countries are urged to allow in multinational companies, and governments are urged to sell their forests for cash to pay back debts.

The report says if substantial action is not taken soon by governments, donor agencies and investors, as well as environmental and social pressure groups, much of the remaining virgin primary forests in the Caribbean rim, Central Africa and Pacific will be lost within five to 10 years, due to the expansion of unsustainable logging operations.

The original report was completed in 1997 and the EU cleared a twice-revised version for publication, printing 5,000 copies. Its press launch in July last year was blocked by the WWF, some of whose employees had carried out the research. The organization feared that some of the governments concerned, particularly Malaysia, would close down WWF offices.

A weaker version of the report has now been prepared and, because the European commission refused to foot the bill, the WWF pulped the original 5,000 copies and has paid to print 2,000 of the latest version.

The organization claimed in a statement to the Guardian that it had to correct some “inaccuracies” and hopes this new version will be published in July.

The Guardian has seen the first three versions of the report —including the original draft that details the names of companies and individuals involved in bribery scandals. The main authors of the report are Nigel Sizer, an expert for the World Resources Institute in Washington and Dominiek Plouvier, a forestry consultant who works for WWF in Belgium. All of their work was peer-reviewed in the countries concerned and by other forestry experts before being submitted.

Sizer said: “Of course I was deeply disappointed that the report was not published. A few things were corrected in the peer review process. We were very careful about the conclusions we drew in the report. The commission was concerned and asked some of the names to be removed but I stand by everything that appeared in the drafts. My reputation and that of the Institute depends on getting things right. Lack of accuracy was not the reason the report was withheld.”

A commission spokesman said: “We asked originally for some of the names to be removed and for some revisions but were satisfied with the later versions of the report. It was WWF that intervened to prevent publication last year. The new version of the report has now been delivered by them and will be distributed to interested parties when a list has been drawn up.” Officials of the commission would now consider the report’s findings.

WWF’s senior forest officer, Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, said WWF had been anxious to name names but was concerned that many of the companies were Asian and the organization did not want to appear to be Asian-bashing. After the Asian financial crisis, the report was held up for updating.

Source: The Guardian