Subject: Outrage Growing over Chilean Forest Mega-Project
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
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6/26/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
Following are two updates relating to the rising outrage in regard to
plans by Boise Cascade to make wood chip from Chilean native forests.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title: ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Forest Mega-Project Sows Discord
Source: InterPress Service, via econet ips.english conference
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: June 10, 1999
Byline: Natalia Pinilla
PUERTO MONTT, Chile, Jun 10 (IPS) - A chipboard factory that would
process around one million cubic metres of wood annually from native
forests, to be built in Ilque - 20 kms south of this southern Chilean
city - has environmentalists up in arms, both at home and abroad.
Residents of the small town of Ilque, population 700, as well as the
city of Puerto Montt - located 1,044 kms south of Santiago - are
divided over the Cascada Chile factory, to be built by a local
subsidiary of the U.S. Boise Cascade Corporation.
The conflict over the projected factory has had repercussions both
within and outside Chile, mobilising environmentalists to speak out in
defence of forests of native species of trees jeopardised by the
activities of large logging companies.
In the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, second-grade teacher Maria
Gilfillan was accused by Boise Cascade of teaching her students ''bad
things'' when she encouraged them to write to the company to protest
its plans in Chile.
But ''it's not enough to teach about the importance of rainforests,''
responded Gilfillan. ''We have to do something to help protect them.
The letters were very polite. The children expressed their concern
about the forest and asked Boise Cascade to find a way to make their
chipboard without destroying Chile's forests.''
Plans for the project began in May 1997 when the Chilean company
Maderas Condor and Boise Cascade set up an association to create the
Puerto Montt Industrial Company. But a series of lawsuits has brought
the project to a standstill.
Cascada Chile's detractors - including environmental and civil society
groups, small business owners, and parliamentarians - charge that
influence-peddling ensured approval of the project by the
Environmental Commission (COREMA).
The Puerto Montt Industrial Company is being sued for 800,000 US
dollars by the State Defence Council for the destruction of Conchales
de Ilque, an archaeological monument, caused by the company's heavy
machinery during road construction.
The initiative has the backing, however, of local and regional
authorities, business groups and residents of Ilque and Puerto Montt,
who see the project as a source of jobs and progress for one of
Chile's poorest areas.
The Puerto Montt Industrial Company says the project - in which some
180 million dollars are to be invested - will directly create 200
jobs, plus another 1,500 indirectly, not to mention the 700 workers
needed to build the factory, which according to company
representatives will operate ''using clean technology, without harmful
environmental effects.''
According to the original project, the factory was to be completely
supplied by wood acquired from third parties. But in February, Italo
Zunino, one of the owners of Maderas Condor, indicated that 50 percent
of the supply would come from native forests owned by the company.
Ilque is a town of traditional fisherfolk, small-scale farmers and
salmon fishery and shellfish farm workers.
Cascada Chile ''is a terribly harmful project that calls for the
construction of a port on one of Puerto Montt's cleanest bays,'' high
school teacher Carmen Cortes, owner of the local shellfish farm and
president of the Ilque Defence Committee, told IPS.
Nor is the company offering any guarantees for the recovery of native
forests, she argued. ''I don't think farmers are going to re-plant
their land with native forest so their grandchildren can turn around
and sell it. They'll undoubtedly re-plant with exotic (faster-growing)
species such as pine and eucalyptus.''
Hans Kossman, executive of the Patagonia Salmon Farming Company in
Ilque, maintained that the logging project was incompatible with
salmon farming, ''a business that is already employing 140 people from
this town.''
Cascada Chile will be the ''largest factory of its type in the region,
and will absorb a quantity of trees equivalent to the total now being
processed by all similar companies from Puerto Montt to Valdivia (200
kms to the north),'' warned Ricardo Caceres, a lawyer.
But Rene Barriga, president of the Cascada Chile Project Coastal
Support Committee, which claims 530 members, told IPS that
construction of the plant would provide Ilque with telephones, jobs
and better roads.
And Alejandro Larenas, co-ordinator of the Cascada Chile project,
asserted that ''this is an historic opportunity to really educate the
public and to do something that benefits small-scale forest owners.''
Larenas dismissed the idea of developing tourism in the native
forests, as proposed by Caceres and Horts George, president of the
Ottwei-Chile Foundation, on the argument that ''the country can't
afford to have a forest and not touch it in order to just look at
it.''
Rabindranath Quinteros, governor of the region and president of
COREMA, stated that he was in favour of the project because it would
create new sources of employment and add value to native forests, and
gave his assurances that ''an investment project that damages the
environment would never be allowed.''
But representatives of the international environmental watchdog
Greenpeace warn that Cascada Chile ''represents a serious risk to the
native forest and its biodiversity,'' and that the project's approval
revealed ''a legal vacuum for the assessment of projects that utilise
native forests.'' (END/IPS/tra-so/np/ag/ld/sw/99)
Origin: Montevideo/ENVIRONMENT-CHILE/
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[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
ITEM #2
Title: BC's Chile Project Faces New Obstacles
Environmental Agency Puts Restrictions on Cascada Chile
Source: BOISE WEEKLY
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: June 17, 1999
Byline: Jimmie Langman
The obstacles in the path of the Boise Cascade Company's Cascada Chile
project are increasing, even as Chileans opposed to the project are
banding together with U.S. environmental groups and bringing their
message to this country (see "Boise Cascade's Big Plans for Chile," BW
Mar. 11-17).
On Wednesday, June 9, Mauricio Fierro, a tourism consultant from
Puerto Montt, Chile, near the site of the huge project, kicked off a
month-long U.S. tour with a talk at Boise State University entitled
"Boise Cascade: Get Out of Chile's Rainforests."
Meanwhile, Chile's environmental agency, the Chilean National
Environmental Commission (CONAMA), has imposed new restrictions on the
proposed $180 million wood-chip and oriented-strand-board export
project planned for the tiny southern Chile bayside community of
Ilque.
CONAMA has issued three main directives; although they do not stop the
project, they may slow down and change the company's plans.
Foremost, CONAMA has ruled that Cascada Chile, a joint endeavor of
Boise Cascade (60 percent) and the Chilean firm Maderas Condor (40
percent), must finance a detailed study by an independent auditor
showing how the project will guarantee that all the wood it uses will
come out of sustainably managed forests.
CONAMA also said that the study, to be completed within one year, must
take into account all ecosystem functions of the forests, such as
biodiversity protection, water resources protection and soil quality.
The results of this study must be incorporated into any future forest
management plans of the Cascada Chile suppliers in order for them to
be approved by Chile's forest service (CONAF).
Second, CONAMA ruled that Cascada Chile must construct a barrier to
prevent hydrocarbon contamination of the adjacent salmon farm in the
Ilque bay owned by the Patagonia Salmon Farming Company. Cascada Chile
plans call for construction of a deep-water port adjacent to the
fishing company's salmon farm.
Third, CONAMA rejected a Cascada Chile request to increase the amount
of wood chips it may process each year at the plant. The company had
requested an increase from 925,000 cubic meters of wood annually 1.23
million cubic meters.
For its part, Cascada Chile is putting a happy face on the CONAMA
rulings.
"The decision of CONAMA is good news," said Fernando Encinar of the
Burston-Marstellar public relations agency, the spokeperson for the
Cascada Chile project in Chile. "We need to study the decisions some
more, but we think it upholds the January decision by the regional
environmental commission approving the project."
The opponents of Cascada Chile, which include workers, environmental
groups and the nation's tourism and salmon industries, believe however
that the new CONAMA restrictions at minimum validate their long-stated
concerns. They also see the decision as the beginning of the end of
Cascada Chile.
"This is a step forward for our efforts to halt this terrible,
disastrous project," said Adriana Hoffmann, national coordinator of
the environmental group Defenders of the Chilean Forests. Her agency
is part of an international coalition of environmental groups,
including Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, the Native Forest
Network, American Lands and the Public Information Network, opposed to
Cascada Chile.
Hoffmann said that Cascada Chile's request to increase its annual
consumption of wood clearly revealed to CONAMA the company's
irresponsible attitude toward the fate of Chile's forests. "The
sustainability of this project is already questionable due to its
giant size and they request an increase in their consumption of our
forests.
This company [Cascada Chile] has no respect or concern for our
nation's cultural or natural patrimony."
Hoffmann says that environmental groups will continue to try to halt
the project in Chile's courts.
Salmon farmers are not happy with the decision, however. "Even though
CONAMA is asking to install some type of barrier against pollution
from the port to the farms, there hasn't been any discussion if such
barriers really work," insisted Hans Kossman, owner of Patagonia
Salmon Farming SA, a major employer in Ilque. "I don't think they are
suited for permanent protection. This is a very technical question,
and we will have to see what type of barrier is going to be proposed
by Cascada."
Salmon fishing is a huge industry in the region. Investments total
about $1 billion, and salmon fishing and processing employ some 20,000
people. However, there are no laws protecting salmon habitat.
Supporters of Cascada Chile argue that it will create many much-needed
jobs in the region and boost the local economy. In Boise, however,
Fierro charged that "This project only benefits Boise Cascade and
their Chilean partner Maderas Condor but costs all Chileans,
destroying thousands of current and future jobs [in salmon fishing and
tourism] for a few jobs in their plant."
The latest environmnetal requirements for Cascada Chile come on the
heels of an announcement by Chile's State Defense Council, the
equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General's Office, that it is suing the
company for approximately $823,000 as compensation for damaging a
culturally significant archaeological site at Ilque bay.
Last year, the company allegedly bulldozed a strip of land 10 feet
deep and 360 feet long by five feet wide that was filled with human
artifacts at least 6,000 years old.
Angel Cabeza, executive secretary of Chile's National Monuments
Council, reports that this archaeological site could contain artifacts
even older than 6,000 years. "We don't know yet, as an excavation
still has not been done," he said.
Many archaeologists also say that the Ilque site may be related to the
very significant archaeological site found at Monte Verde, located
just a few miles away. The ancient human artifacts discovered at Monte
Verde are confirmed by the world's scientific community as being
12,500 years old, the oldest in the entire Western hemisphere.
Jimmy Langman is a free-lance writer based in Santiago, Chile.
Additional reporting for this story was provided by BW intern Jesselin
Anthony.
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