English Priest Stops Amazon Logging Giants in Their Tracks

[sintax]

English priest stops Amazon logging giants in their tracks
By Hugh O'Shaughnessy and Colleen Toomey

29 May 2005

A mild-looking, bespectacled Catholic priest, born in Portsmouth, educated at Oxford and now working in the Peruvian rainforest, is behind an important victory for local people over the logging companies laying waste to large stretches of Amazonia.

A year ago Father Paul McAuley, now 57, helped some 70 of his parishioners in the little settlement of Mazan, on one of the Amazon's main tributaries, to seek an injunction to protect large swathes of rainforest, containing valuable tropical timber. Last week a court in Iquitos, the capital of Peruvian Amazonia, ordered a halt to the government's sale of 40-year leases of forest land for only 22p an acre.

<snip>

Fr McAuley said the privatisation of the rainforest was part of a scheme demanded by the World Bank and other financial institutions of the Peruvian President, Alejandro Toledo, a former World Bank employee, as a condition for loans. Though he succeeded the enormously corrupt Western-backed autocrat, Alberto Fujimori, in 2001 on a wave of popular enthusiasm, Mr Toledo has himself been tainted by reports of widespread government corruption.

<snip>

Campaigners say the logging companies' activities ruin the livelihoods of local peoples by destroying vegetation, frightening off the wild creatures they hunt and poisoning the rivers where they catch fish. Recently Peru fined Pluspetrol, an Argentine oil company, more than $1m for its pollution of the Corrientes, an Amazon tributary, and ordered it to shut 14 of its wells. The river is estimated to have received vast quantities of pollutants every day for the past 34 years from Pluspetrol and its predecessors.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=642318

[Robbien]

1. Yay! There have been so many losses in this fight, it is good to hear

about a win.

The WTO and IMF should be declared enemies of the planet.

[AmyDeLune]

2. Kick for the Trees! n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Hope he fares better than the nun, Dorothy Stang, did in Brazil.

People who haven't taken the time to get informed on right-wing aggression against the people of Latin America may find it's a good time to start noticing the big business/political/military interests ALWAYS start terrorizing and murdering the clergy, educators, union workers, students, farmers. At one time they labeled them "leftists," and it appears now they are content to hang "environmentalist" on them with great reeking disdain.

How hard is it to believe the organization lead by Donald Wolfowitz is responsible for promoting this unforgivable destruction for profit?

From the article:

Although Peru signed up to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which includes flora and fauna, in 1975, a year before Britain did, timber is sold with no reference to the treaty, which was put in place to reduce deforestation. To evade regulations, some Peruvian woods are sent to the US through Mexico. "There's timber laundering as well as money laundering," said the priest, who served at a slum parish in Lima before moving to Iquitos.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Dorothy Stang

She is often pictured wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "A Morte da floresta é o fim da nossa vida", or "The death of the forest is the end of our life".

[Judi Lynn]

4. Kick.....

[Roland99]

5. The power of few! Bravo!

[T_i_B]

6. English priest stops Amazon logging giants in their tracks

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=642318

A mild-looking, bespectacled Catholic priest, born in Portsmouth, educated at Oxford and now working in the Peruvian rainforest, is behind an important victory for local people over the logging companies laying waste to large stretches of Amazonia.

A year ago Father Paul McAuley, now 57, helped some 70 of his parishioners in the little settlement of Mazan, on one of the Amazon's main tributaries, to seek an injunction to protect large swathes of rainforest, containing valuable tropical timber. Last week a court in Iquitos, the capital of Peruvian Amazonia, ordered a halt to the government's sale of 40-year leases of forest land for only 22p an acre.

The judgment could affect logging operations all over the region, but the English priest, who has received celebrity endorsement for his campaign from television cook Delia Smith, says he is concerned that the authorities have as yet taken no steps to enforce the decision. "The government first sold off the oil to foreign companies, then the forests, and now they say they'll be selling off the rivers," he told The Independent on Sunday. "The authorities are supposed to make economic, social and environmental surveys before timber concessions are granted, but none has been carried out."

Since April last year the government in Lima and the local authorities of the department of Loreto in Iquitos have decreed the sale of concessions over 12 million acres. Timber merchants bought 7.3 million acres. In the next round, 23 million acres were due to be put under the hammer.

[salin]

7. This is so important. And takes such spine. Those companies cutting

the trees are ruthless and murdering obstacles has been a longstanding tactic.

[rodeodance]

8. a nun who does the same work was brutally killed a few months

ago---after working for some 20 years or so for this cause. Lots of money to be made. He best watch his back.

[stlsaxman]

9. 22p- you mean, like- 22 pennies? An ACRE?!?!?!?

surely if they meant Pounds it would be 22 BPS (British Pounds Sterling)

Jesus Fucking Christ- THAT is criminal!

If I didn't need to keep my day job to keep payments on my mortgage I would join Father Paul McAuley in a second!

The article lists no Trust or Organization assisting this cause... anyone know of one that supports his efforts? All i can do is send a donation... :banghead:

[bennywhale]

10. 22p means pennies. A p is never used to indicate pounds.

Why don't us DUers club togaether and buy a sit load of land from them at 22p an acre and then just give it over to locals, or just leave it to stand as forest?

[d.l.Green]

11. That's a GREAT idea! But I'm sure that the WTO "regulates" who gets to

get those leases...

[bennywhale]

12. Yeah there'll be tick boxes, like are you going to rape the land of

all natural resources making profit at the expense of all other consderations. If yes sign here.