Forwarded to the "forest@listserv.funet.fi" -list from "biodiv-l@ftpt.br"
by "Jarmo.Saarikko@metla.fi". Because this deals with forestry, I thought
this might be of interest to the readers of the forest list. Please, if
you comment or reply to this, make sure that your send a copy to the
original author at "jcenteno@ciens.ula.ve" and to the "biodiv-l@ftpt.br"
list.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 95 08:08:50 EST
From: CENTENO . JULIO CESAR <jcenteno@ciens.ula.ve>
To: Multiple recipients of list <biodiv-l@ftpt.br>
Subject: DEFORESTATION OUT OF CONTROL IN VENEZUELA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEFORESTATION OUT OF CONTROL
IN VENEZUELA
According to FAO, during the decade of the 80s
Venezuelan forests disappeared at the rate of
1600 hectares a day
JULIO CESAR CENTENO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND
Despite its wealth in natural resources, Venezuela is going through one
of its most dramatic historical junctures, reflected in its financial and
political instability, and in the growing impoverishment of its
population. This process has become particularly obvious since 1982, when
a steep devaluation of the currency was unleashed. The inequalities in the
distribution of the costs and benefits of national development have become
more acute. Over the last 15 years, the proportion of the population
living in extreme poverty increased from 25 percent to nearly 50 percent.
Average real income felled by 45 percent. The value of the bolivar, the
national currency, dropped by a factor of 40, from 24 cent of a dollar in
1982 to only 0.6 cents of a dollar today.
Inflation in 1994 peaked at 71 percent, one of the highest in Latin
America, while the external debt reached unprecedented levels, equivalent
to 70 percent of the gross national product. Over the past 20 years,
Venezuela has paid over 60 billion dollars in the service of the external
debt, which net value has in turn increased during the same time to 39
billion dollars. It drains 20 to 30 percent of the income received from
all exports each year. The external debt is one of the most significant
obstacle to national development. It is distributed between the central
government (29 billion), decentralized government enterprises (6 billion)
and the private sector (4 billion).
DEFORESTATION
The impact of the economic and political instability on the country and
its population has been magnified by the erosion of the country's natural
resource base. According to the United Nations' Food and Agricultural
Organization, between 1981 and 1990 the average annual deforestation in
Venezuela increased to more than double the level registered in the 1970s,
reaching an average of 600 thousand hectares a year, the equivalent to
1600 hectares each day during the whole decade. Six million hectares of
forests were lost between 1981 and 1990, an area larger than Costa Rica,
50% larger than Switzerland, and nearly as large as Ireland. The average
rate of deforestation (1.2% a year) during the 80s was twice as high as
that of Brazil, three times that of Peru, and almost double the average
for all tropical countries in South America taken together.
About 90% of the population lives in the half of the country north of
the Orinoco River. About 60 percent of the original forest cover on this
half of the country has already been lost. Remaining forests cover now
only one fifth of the surface north of the Orinoco, fractioned into
severely degraded lots. As a consequence, most of the population must now
endure a persistent and growing shortage of water, for domestic
consumption, the irrigation of agricultural land, or the production of
electricity. This shortage is aggravated by the deterioration of the water
distribution networks.
Other legacies of the pronounced deforestation which has taken place
north of the Orinoco river include the irreversible destruction of a
valuable and significant part of the country's biological heritage,
increases in both the intensity and severity of droughts and floods, and
the growing scarcity of a wide variety of products traditionally supplied
by forests, such as firewood, medicines, food and construction materials.
DEFORESTATION AND THE EXPANSION OF AGRICULTURE
Deforestation in Venezuela is due primarily to the expansion of the
agricultural frontier Almost three quarters of all forest loss registered
during the 1980s can be directly related to the expansion of agriculture.
Most of the original forests in the states of Apure, Aragua, Carabobo,
Cojedes, Miranda, Lara, Falcon, Tachira, Merida and Zulia disappeared
through this process. Even areas formally delimited as permanent forests,
such as parts of protected areas, or areas set aside for the production of
industrial timber, have been destroyed. Nothing is left of the forest
reserve of Turen, which originally covered 116.000 hectares. Only small
fractions remain of the forest reserves of Ticoporo, Caparo, San Camilo or
Rio Tocuyo. What remains is severely degrades, for the most part invaded
for the practice of survival agriculture, or by agroindustries and cattle
ranchers. Limited are the possibilities of survival by the end of the
century for many of these forest relics.
In the state of Barinas, where some of the remaining rain forests of the
northern half of the country are located, mercenaries of the land trade
and distribute parcels covered by forests with absolute impunity. These
parcels are meant for conversion to agriculture, often located inside
forest reserves, a national patrimony. The front line "invaders", mostly
landless peasants, are frequently manipulated to trespass public land into
private ownership. Affected forests are first creamed of their most
valuable timbers. They are then burned. After a few years of agricultural
activity, no matter how superficial or precarious it may be, the property
of the land is transferred to the invading peasants by application of the
"agrarian reform" law. The land is then sold, at meager or symbolic
prices, to the landholders, politicians, cattle ranchers or local
caudillos, who incited and supported the original invasions.
THE EXTRACTION OF COMMERCIAL TIMBER
About 20 per cent of the deforestation registered during the 80s is
associated directly or indirectly to timber extraction. Although only a
few trees are harvested per hectare, up to a third of the biomass is
either destroyed or severely damaged during logging. Logging companies
are allowed to virtually eliminate the full growing stock above the
established minimum cutting diameters, which have in turn been arbitrarily
established based on assumed growing rates. The remaining forest, creamed
of the most valuable species and severely damaged, becomes open ground for
its final conversion to agriculture. This conversion process seems, at
this stage, particularly competitive and convenient, specially in light of
the delicate dependency of the country on imported food, and the explosive
combination of the concentration of land ownership with rampant poverty
and the excessive pressure of the foreign debt on the limited economic
resources available. Timber extraction has thus become the first phase of
a process which eventually leads to the clearing of the forest.
Logging concentrate on the extraction of a handful of highly valuable
species, in what may often be considered salvage operations prior to
forest clearings. This is indirectly but firmly encouraged by the
government, through the application of insignificant stumpage prices.
Despite steep increases of the stumpage value during 1993 and 1994,
precious timbers are at present valued at between three and five dollars
the cubic meter in the form of extracted logs, while their commercial
value ranges from 140 to 260 dollar the cubic meter in the internal
market. The most valuable timbers produce significantly higher profits, a
powerful disincentive to the extraction of lesser known species, or to
efforts in opening up markets for them.
Sustainable management has been officially interpreted as equivalent to
sustainable yield. Logging companies are therefore allowed to include in
the calculations of future yields the production expected from plantations
of monocultures established within the boundaries of their concessions.
They are also allowed to replace the production originally associated to
an exhausted precious timber, with a new species or group of species of
lesser comercial value. There is virtually no incentive for the
sustainable management of the ecosystems, or for a fair possibility that
the original production potential of the most valuable timbers will be
maintained.
Ironically, stumpage volume and prices are quantified based on a
fictitious unit of measurement called the official cubic meter, equivalent
to about two thirds of a real cubic meter in the form of logs. This is a
special form of subsidy, which has cost the country about 75 million
dollars in uncollected taxes over the last 10 years alone. Since a third
of the extracted timber is considered to lack any value, the enormous
levels of waste associated to the timber industry end up as additional
externalities absorbed by all members of society.
THE THREAT TO THE VENEZUELAN AMAZON
The new scenario for deforestation in Venezuela is now the state of
Bolivar, in the venezuelan Guayana, a natural extension of the Amazon. The
state of Bolivar is 24 million hectares in size, as large as the United
Kingdom. It is covered by natural tropical forests over 70 percent of its
surface. Since 1987, nearly three million hectares of natural and pristine
forests have been leased to timber concessionaires there. The new national
development plan (1996-1999), recently presented to the country by the
Bureau for Coordination and Planning of the Presidency [CORDIPLAN],
proposes to expand timber concessions to nearly 12 million hectares. All
new concessions would be located in the state of Bolivar, which forests
are known as much for their particularly wealth in biodiversity, as for
their unique fragility. However, past experience in the country indicates
that sustainable forest management for the production of industrial timber
has been, for the most part, more of a myth than a reality. Natural
forests set aside for the production of timber have been normally
exploited as if they were mines, causing extensive and unsustainable
damage to the resource base. In the state of Bolivar, the threat
associated to timber extraction is complemented by the devastating impact
of uncontrolled alluvial gold mining in the same areas.
COVER-UP AND TOOLS FOR DEFORESTATION
The natural resources of the country are being plundered and destroyed
unescrupulously for short term profit, with the complicity of national and
local authorities. The agrarian reform, often used as an excuse to cover
up for this destruction, is a farce hidden behind the devastation of the
national forest heritage. Despite 30 year of "agrarian reform", Venezuela
is one of countries in Latin American with the highest concentration of
land in a handful of privileged landholders. According to the agricultural
census of 1988, only six percent (6%) of the landholders owned seventy
percent (70%) of the agricultural land. While seventy-three percent (73%)
of the landholders had to share only four percent (4%) of the land.
The landless, invading peasant, often used as an instrument of
destruction in the deforestation process, is also the victim of the
unbearable levels of poverty affecting the majority of the population,
specially in rural areas. While, according to the World Bank, Venezuela
imports half the food it consumes. The tendency is therefore for even
further large scale losses of the forest heritage, unless radical
political, social and economic changes are implemented.
Deforestation in Venezuela has become a threat to the ecological
stability of the country, and therefore to sustainable economic and social
progress. It could thus be considered a crime against our children and
their descendants.
September 1995
________________________________
JULIO CESAR CENTENO
PO BOX 750
MERIDA - VENEZUELA
TEL - FAX : 074-714576
EMAIL: jcenteno@ciens.ula.ve
_________________________________
Mail converted by
MHonArc 1.1.0