Honduran indigenous community in standing forest area.

By MARIA FIALLOS

TEGUCIGALPA -- Illegal logging of Honduran forests is a well-known fact and a serious problem the country has not been able to overcome and, which is increasingly getting worse. Year after year, newspapers, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), private citizens and even some government officials denounce illegal truckloads of precious hardwoods seen or seized on rural highways; unauthorized shipments of logs originating in remote jungle areas; the murder of environmentalists and indigenous leaders who attempt to halt the degradation of natural areas; and the destruction of vast tracts of protected areas, amongst others.

Annually, "an estimated 75 to 85 percent of the hardwood and 30 to 50 percent of the coniferous wood extraction in Honduras is clandestine," according to the findings of the study "Governance and Poverty Implications of Illegal Timber Trade in Central America," one of the first systematic analysis of the dynamics of illegal logging in the region.

What can be defined as clandestine lumber? According to this study, forest production can be divided in three areas: legal, legalized and illegal production. Legal production is lumber extracted and transported with a legal permit and in adherence to current laws pertaining to forest management plans. Legalized production is lumber produce, that possesses all the necessary legal documentation, pays corresponding taxes and is registered in official forestry statistics, but which in practice has been produced fraudulently, without following the authorized permit and ignoring forest laws and regulations. Sometimes, producers encountering problems in legal production take this route. "Many times obstacles in complying with legal requisites or legal barriers are so great that producers find it just about impossible to comply with all the legal requirements," says Filippo Del Gatto, a forestry expert and one of the principal contributors to the study. Other times legalized production is planned and pertains to the so-called "lumber-laundering market." Illegal production, by contrast, is carried out in a completely clandestine manner, acquires no forestry permits, pays no taxes, and is not included in national statistics.

Legal barriers in the forest sector often favor and perpetuate illegal logging. These barriers not only present obstacles for legal production, but also induce and stimulate illegal activities. The most relevant barriers to legality in the Honduran forest system include: land tenancy insecurity, a defective and inconsistent legal framework, lack of information, and economic factors. At the same time, the low risk associated with clandestine activities serves to stimulate them. Little or no penalty for forest crimes, the slim chance of detection, public institutions vulnerable to corruption and strong ties between those who carry out different illicit activities all serve to produce significant incentives to operate outside the legal framework.

Reducing these incentives would therefore facilitate the prevention of illegal logging and the current reform of the forest sector in Honduras is an excellent opportunity to do so. "Just the fact that the government allowed this study to be carried out, and has cooperated so fully, demonstrates transparency and interest at high levels to overcome the problem," said Del Gatto.

THE CONSEQUENCES

According to the report the illegal lumber trade causes enormous economic losses to the countries of the region, erodes formal government mechanisms, produces negative impacts on the rural poor, discourages sustainable forestry activities and damages forest resources of the region.

ECONOMIC COSTS

Currently, the World Bank estimates that developing country governments are losing some US$10-15 billion annually due to illegal logging.

In Honduras, government losses range between US$11-18 million a year, from uncollected taxes (production, extraction and income) of illegally extracted wood, and the negatives impacts of illegal logging upon the public expenditure and donations for forest management.

Indirect losses are the degradation of forest resources, the loss of biodiversity and the economic costs of social conflicts often caused by uncontrolled production that sometimes even erupt in violence, and the loss of private investment in the forest sector due to the current insecure investment climate.

Other economic impacts not included in this amount: the reduction in the auction price of wood offered by the Honduran Corporation for Forestry Development (AFE-COHDEFOR) due to illegal market supply that drives the price down; loss of revenue from uncharged sales tax and export tariffs, as well as the unpaid taxes of legalized or laundered production. In this last case, two important examples include non-commercial licenses, in which non-taxable legal production supposedly destined for domestic use is introduced into the commercial process; and misleading classification of hardwoods, for example declaration of mahogany that pays Lps. 480/m3 for piojo that only pays Lps. 90/m3.

At the same time, the gross value of illegal wood production was estimated between US$55-70 million a year. This amount is based on an estimate of national consumption compared to the supply of raw materials. In the case of hardwoods, Honduran enterprises (large and small) consume between 165,000 and 175,000 cubic meters of round wood a year, while registered hardwood forest production is estimated at between 30,000 and 40,000 cubic meters of round wood a year. A difference of 125-145 thousand cubic meters a year, corresponding to 75-85 percent of the supply and worth a moderately estimated US$30 million. Illegal coniferous production was estimated from 350,000 to 600,000 cubic meters, or 30-50 percent of the total yearly supply of this wood, worth between US$25-40 million.

GRAPH

LOSS OF GOVERNANCE

Illegal logging fuels corruption and undermines the rule of law. In terms of governance impacts, illegal logging contributes to the corruption of the relevant government institutions. Middlemen and madereros (wood producers) possess a disproportionate amount of power in the different levels of decision making, possible due to the support of influential power groups. Central government institutions, as well as municipal governments are vulnerable and incapable of exercising their role, frequently due to outside interests, thus weakening the public forestry administration and control mechanisms.

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Illegally harvested mahogany boards on their way to market down the Rio Paulaya, western limit of the Rio Platano Biosphere, Colon. Honduras


Maps demarcating Central America’s indigenous territories
Reveal correlation between native lands and standing forests


Explorers and cartographers have elaborated thousands of maps of Mexico and Central America over the centuries, but few have bothered to demarcate the boundaries of the lands or identify the communities populated by the region’s original inhabitants. In February, a collaboration among the Center for Native Lands in Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society, indigenous organizations and researchers, resulted in publication of a revealing map that should be a powerful tool not only to the cause of indigenous rights but also to biodiversity conservation.

The map pinpoints locations of indigenous communities whose names never appear on conventional maps, such as the Nahoa and Texiguat in Honduras and the Matagalpa, Nahua, Sutiaba, Nicarao and Chorotega, who live on the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Further, the map shows the distribution of forest and marine resources in the region, extending from southern Mexico south through Panama. Superimposing the natural resource map over the location of indigenous lands makes clear what conservationists have long known: there is a strong correlation between indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity.

According to Amilcar Castaneda, field coordinator for the Center for Native Lands, a program of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C., one of the map’s principal objectives is to formally recognize the region’s indigenous people and help them gain legal title to their lands. “The indigenous do not have access to public participation,” he says. “There is no specific policy with regard to their territories, and if there is, it is something that’s imposed, not derived from their actual needs.”

The map, printed in the February National Geographic edition for Central America and Mexico, as well as in the magazine WorldWatch, is a more comprehensive follow-up to a precursor published in 1992. Research for the new map was not impeded by lack of access to indigenous communities, much more problematic during the years of civil unrest throughout much of Central America and southern Mexico in the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Geographer Luis Tenorio served as team leader in Costa Rica for the map project and also helped elaborate the 1992 map. He points out that the new map is the first that depicts indigenous traditional uses of marine resources from southern Mexico to Panama. He says it’s also the first map developed together with the indigenous people of the region and for that reason, it “shows their vision and reality, including the names of their villages in their own languages.”

Tenorio notes that in spite of the fact that there is a clear correlation between indigenous populations and forest cover throughout Mesoamerica, directors of biodiversity conservation initiatives and resource development projects seldom bother to consult with indigenous people. “Many times megaprojects like hydroelectric plants, mines, road construction and oil pipelines impinge on indigenous territories without taking into account the residents of that land,” he says.

The problem is aggravated, he says, because so many indigenous groups live on land not recognized as theirs by governments, or they migrate from one country to another, continuing a centuries-old practice that never heeded borders established by Spanish colonists.


According to Native Lands, in the last decade the majority of indigenous people in Mesoamerica – who make up some 23 percent of the region’s population — have formed organizations and mounted campaigns to press governments for legal titles to their territories. While they struggle to survive in countries that long have marginalized them, Mesoamerica’s more than 60 different indigenous groups can now wield new maps to help them claim stewardship over natural resources that are as endangered as their own cultures and traditions. – Eco-Exchange