Day 241 - 26 Apr 96 - Page 53


     
     1        "But to blame colonising peasants for ... and burning the
     2        rainforest is tantamount to blaming soldiers for causing
     3        wars.  Peasant colonies carry out much of the work of
     4        deforestation in Central America, but they are mere pawns
     5        in a general's game.  To understand the colonists' role in
     6        deforestation, one must ask why these families enter the
     7        rainforest in the first place.  The answer is simple,
     8        because there is no land for them elsewhere".
     9
    10        Then I will move on to the next column, the first full
    11        sentence starting "according to":  "According to the United
    12        Nations' Food and Agricultural Organisation, in Latin
    13        America as a whole seven per cent of the landowners control
    14        a surprising 93 per cent of the arable land.  In Guatemala,
    15        for example, 2.2 per cent of the population own 70 per cent
    16        of the agricultural land mostly in the form of coffee and
    17        banana plantations and cattle ranches".
    18
    19        Then I will move on to the next column, under "Export Beef
    20        Production".  I will read three paragraphs there.  "With
    21        colonisation comes the third stage of tropical
    22        deforestation in Central America.  During this final stage
    23        land cleared by Indian and immigrant farm families is
    24        absorbed by individuals or companies who use it to produce
    25        export crops, sugar cane, bananas, pineapples, coffee, oil
    26        palm or beef cattle.
    27
    28        "In Central America the most dominant and most destructive
    29        of these export crops is beef.  Peasant families who
    30        colonise rainforests in Central America usually intend to
    31        remain on the land indefinitely, but as geographer, James
    32        Parsons, has pointed out 'after one or two crops of maze,
    33        rice or manioc are harvested from the forest clearing,
    34        declining soil fertility, invasive weeds and noxious
    35        insects combine to force the colonists to sell out to a
    36        second wave of settlers or speculators who follow behind,
    37        consolidating small holdings into larger ones for the
    38        exclusive purpose of raising the beef cattle'.
    39
    40        In this sense, Parsons continues, the crops planted by the
    41        forest farmers serve as a transient stage between forest
    42        clearing and pasture land, thus the pioneer families
    43        receive a few years of crops in exchange for converting the
    44        rainforest to grassland for the benefit of someone else".
    45
    46        It may be worth noting that the chart on that page, page
    47        14, includes the current rate of loss and total area of
    48        what he calls undegraded rainforest in mid 1982, which for
    49        Guatemala, undegraded rainforest, is 26,3000 square
    50        kilometres, of which 600 square kilometres was being lost 
    51        each year; for Costa Rica, it was 6,000 square kilometres 
    52        of which 600 square kilometres were being lost each year. 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  16,000.
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:  Is it 16,000?
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is 16,000 square kilometres, Costa Rica.
    59
    60   MR. MORRIS:  Yes, of which 600 square kilometres was lost each

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