ENVIRONMENT-COLOMBIA:
Controversy over Forestry Law Simmers On
Sonia Parra*

BOGOTA,  (IPS/IFEJ) - The implementation of Colombia's General Forestry Law, enacted by the government in April, has reopened the debate on this legislation as a result of the appearance on a government Internet site of a regulation process drawn up by an international consultancy in the industry.

On the web site of the Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development, a proposal appeared last month signed by the Programa Colombia Forestal (Colombia Forestry Programme), a cooperation initiative of the U.S. International Agency for Development (USAID) administered by Chemonics International, which had explicit participation in the drafting of the law.

In the wake of a flood of criticism, the text was removed from the site.

The ministry's director for ecosystems, Leonardo Muñoz Cardona, said in an interview that the initiative was not solicited by the ministry nor does it reflect its official position, despite being presented on the web site -- but that its recommendations will be taken into account.

The Ministry of Environment is preparing a package of regulatory decrees, to be presented in mid-October. At that point, it will set a three-month period for discussion and collect the opinions presented, and then submit the bill to President Alvaro Uribe to be signed into law.

The regulation suggested by the Programa Colombia Forestal has come under fire from environmentalists, minority groups and lawmakers, who had opposed the legislation pushed through by the government.

The controversy now is focused on the basic aspects of the law: rights to land versus rights to forest cover, regulation of forest and jungle territories, administration of resources and transport of forest products.

One of the challenges to the proposal is the continuation of the concept of "vuelo forestal", or forest cover, borrowed from Bolivian legislation, which considers the forest itself -- not the land -- as a good that can serve as collateral in financial or credit operations.

During the debate on the law, the critics forced the government to exclude the application of this approach in land collectively owned by Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities. But the language reappeared in the draft law.

Muñoz Cardona assured that its application will refer only to forest plantations and that the ministry did not agree with the proposal presented by the Colombia Forestry Programme.

According to Colombia's 1991 constitution, collectively-owned territories are inalienable and free from embargo.

But if a clear ban is not defined, the necessities and, in some cases, the organisational weakness of the communities will lead to deals with individual lumber companies and exploitation of forests on an industrial scale, says activist Mariela Osorno, of Ecofondo, an umbrella organisation linking more than 100 environmental groups in Colombia.

Meanwhile, the business sectors that promoted the law are finalising initiatives, like production chains in the forestry sector, which imply an alliance with industries for the transformation, marketing and transport of goods.

Afro-Colombian communities in Tumaco, in the southwestern department (province) of Nariño, and in Bajo Atrato and Baudó, in the northwestern Chocó, say that private agents have proposed financing studies for forest exploitation, and that they themselves are working on obtaining permits in order to establish the commercial alliances set forth in the law, according to José Santos, of PCN, a network of Afro-Colombian organisations.

Another item to be dealt with is the new demarcation of forested areas.

An earlier law, passed in 1959, established seven national forestry reserves that include collectively held territories, from which 14 million hectares and 52 regional reserves of 500,000 hectares have been subtracted, according to official data.

The ministry is in the process of defining and mapping the reserves, and will do so through the autonomous regional agencies' forest regulation plans, for which it still has two years, said Muñoz Cardona.

But the minority groups, mainly the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities of Chocó and the Amazon, see a threat in that section of the law, because it opens the possibility of limiting their territories and even of partial or total loss in those cases in which land titles are still pending and where communities are being forcibly displaced as they flee the country's 40-year civil war.

Furthermore, the proposal by the Colombia Forestry Programme for mobilisation of forest products will allow removal of all the lumber from the forest without an environmental permit, said Diego Cardona, spokesman for Censat Agua Viva, a member of the international Friends of the Earth network.

"The controls dictated by Law 99 of 1993 have been left invalid, and there will be no way to know if all the wood that is sold comes from forest plantations or from natural forests that are being exploited without regulation," he said.

But the ministry spokesman responded that all forest plantations are and will be clearly identified, so there will be no risk of natural forests being logged.

Nevertheless, illegal logging is estimated on 100,000 hectares annually in this Andean and Amazonian country, whose biodiversity-rich forests cover 44 percent of the national territory of 1.1 million square kilometres.

The Colombian Attorney General and the Comptroller General of the Republic are closely following the implementation of the law, about which they have already formulated juridical observations.

"There exists a grave risk that the natural forests will have to adapt to the conditions of the market and logging, without prior existence of a regulation that guarantees their sustainability. The same thing occurred with the national nature parks, whose tourism services are being granted in concession, without basic management plans in place," Comptroller General Antonio Hernández said in a presentation before Congress during the legislative debate.

While the details of implementation of the law are being worked out, a group of organisations and lawmakers are preparing to file a legal challenge with the Constitutional Court before the end of the year, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

The litigants -- including Ecofondo, Censat Agua Viva, Semillas, PCN and the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia -- will denounce the violation of articles of the constitution and failure to comply with international conventions signed by the country related to biodiversity, climate change and wetlands, among others.

Meanwhile, Censat, Swissaid, Semillas and the Centre for Indigenous Cooperation are working with other groups on the Selva Viva (Living Forest) campaign, aimed at advising the affected communities so that they can take action in response to the law and reinforce a culture of forest conservation.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS-Inter Press Service and IFEJ-International Federation of Environmental Journalists. Originally published Sep. 30 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)