Sådan konkluderer dyster rapport fra bl.a. den britiske vagthund, Global Witness. Et indviklet netværk af hemmelige og ulovlige tømmerkontrakter omfatter næsten halvdelen af de bedste skove og en berygtet koncern er ankommet.
A quarter of Liberia’s total landmass has been granted to logging (tømmer) companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits, an investigation concludes.
The investation was undertaken by Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), reports Global Witness on its website Tuesday.
Unless this crisis is tackled immediately, the West african country’s forests could suffer widespread devastation (ødelæggelse), leaving the people who depend upon them stranded and undoing the country’s fragile progress following the resource-fuelled conflicts of 1989 to 2003.
The new logging contracts – termed Private Use Per-mits – now cover 40 percent of Liberia’s forests and almost half of her best intact forests.
They have given companies linked to notorious (berygtede) Malaysian logging giant Samling unparalleled access to some of Liberia’s most pristine (urørte) forests.
Samling and its subsidiaries have been involved in numerous cases of illegal logging in countries around the world, from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea.
Designed to allow private land owners to cut trees on their property, Private Use Permits are being used by companies to avoid Liberia’s carefully-crafted forest laws and regulations.
Companies holding these permits are not required to log sustainably (skånsomt) and pay little in compensation to either the Liberian Government or the people who own the forests for the right to export valuable tropical timber.
“Godt nyt for tømmerselskaberne, dårligt nyt for alle andre”
“Private Use Permits are great news for logging companies. They are very bad news for pretty much everybody else in Liberia,” said Robert Nyahn of Save My Future Foundation.
“Some communities will receive less than one percent of their timber’s value, while very little revenue will reach state coffers”, noted he, adding:
“Since the end of Liberia’s war we have worked with the Government and international partners like the United States, the EU and the World Bank to ensure the Liberian people get sustainable benefits from their forests. These Private Use Permits severely undermine these reform efforts.”
During the country’s bloody conflicts (to borgerkrige 1989-96 og 1999-2003), timber exports were used to buy guns and former President Charles Taylor treated the forests as his personal bank account.
Since 2003, as part of an extensive post-conflict reform process, the US has committed a reported 30 million US dollar to promoting the rights of forest residents.
The EU and the Liberian Government have also recently negotiated a groundbreaking trade agreement meant to ensure that Liberia provides legal timber to European markets.
The briefing warns that the current crisis threatens to undermine these efforts, as well as devastating the country’s forests.
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Begynd fra: “The investigations by Global Witness, SAMFU and SDI show that:”
