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
