MisiÃ³n Arbol: Reforesting Venezuela

July 21, 2006

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By: Michael Fox - Venezuelanalysis.com

The forests of the world continue disappearing at a rate like never

before seen on the face of the earth. Currently, over 13 million

hectares (32 million acres) are destroyed annually in a race for more

arable land, housing, primary resources, and as an effect of global

warming. Venezuelan trees have not been spared, and according to the

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, over the past five

years Venezuela has ranked among the top 10 countries with the highest

deforestation rates on the planet.[1] However just two weeks ago,

Venezuela began to fight back.

On Sunday June 4th, President Hugo Chavez launched " Mision Arbol "

(Tree Mission) from Guaraira Repano or Mount Avila looming over

Venezuela's capital, Caracas. While planting dozens of trees with

members of Venezuela's newly formed Conservation Committees, Chavez

explained, " If you are going to utilize a tree, you have to do it

with consciousness and respect for the environment. If you cut down a

tree you need to plant 10 more. "

Mision Arbol is an attempt to combat the deforestation of Venezuela,

with a vision of " generating in the Venezuelan population an

environmental consciousness about the importance of the forests,

ecological equilibrium, and the recuperation of the degraded spaces as

a result of the predominant model of development. "

The goals are simple: in five years, collect 30 tons of seeds, plant

100 million plants, reforesting 150,000 hectares of land. Luckily they

are not starting from scratch. Last September, Venezuela launched

their National Productive Reforestation Plan, which has now essentially

grown into Mision Arbol. Well along phase one, they have already

collected 15,000 bags of seeds and, according to Chavez, already have

15 million seedlings growing in nurseries, under the second phase of

the program.[2]

These are huge steps towards reforestation, but Venezuela has its work

cut out for it. Between 1982 and 1995, Venezuela suffered an average

annual deforestation of over 260,000 hectares, or about 1% of its

forests per year. Certain areas were especially devastated with

several states losing a third or more of their wooded regions. Zulia,

a volatile western state bordering Colombia, and the heart of the

Venezuelan oil industry, lost over half of its forests in a little over

a decade.[3]

" South of the lake [Maracaibo, in Zulia state] is totally

deforested, " said Americo Catalan recently, Director of Forest

Investigation and Projects, of the Venezuelan Ministry of Environment.

" In the TurÃ©n Forest Reserve, it's ridiculous. There is almost no

forest left. It's a forest reserve without a forest... In Ticoporo

and Caparo, it's nearly the same situation. "

Catalan is the director of the most extensive Venezuelan forest studies

over the last 25 years, and affirms that the number one cause of

deforestation in Venezuelan is by far agricultural expansion, or the

destruction of the forests to be used as agricultural or farm land.

The World Resources Institute verified in their 1998 report on

Venezuela's forests, All The Glitters Is Not Gold, that " by 1994,

1,262 illegal occupants affected 39 percent of the Ticoporo Forest

Reserve; 44 percent of the Caparo Forest Reserve had been occupied by

illegal squatters. " [4]

Logging (illegal and permitted), fire and mining also play important

roles in the deforestation of Venezuela. Southern Venezuela is

considered one of the five major tropical wilderness hotspots in the

world, but mining, logging and the resulting deforestation has already

started to take its toll.[5] The Imataca Forest Reserve, located in the

region of Guyana is a 3.6 million hectare reserve, which is home to no

less than 19 different indigenous peoples, but it could also hold the

largest gold ore reserves in all of Latin America. Since the 1980s,

logging and mining companies have become increasingly more active in

the region, and the Venezuelan government has responded by ceding them

higher percentages of the territory. In 2004, Chavez signed in to

affect decree 3,110 which designated a total of 72% of the massive

reserve for mining and logging use, thus highlighting the difficulty of

attempting to reconcile the competing development and conservation

interests.[6]

Interestingly, before the 1950s, forest cover in the Venezuelan llanos

(plains) actually grew as a result of the huge migration to the cities,

which turned Venezuela in to the most urbanized country in Latin

America. But from 1950 to 1975, Venezuela's forests were

" drastically reduced " due to development, roads and increased

population.[7] Under this model, President Chavez' current

" revolutionary " policies of attempting to move people back to the

" interior " while building thousands of homes for those in need, may

also be further encroaching on the nation's forests, although it is

still too soon to tell.

Nevertheless, Catalan believes that deforestation rates in Venezuela

have actually diminished since studies were done in the 1990s, because

of the creation of the Areas Under Regulations of Special

Administration (ABRAE).

The first ABRAE were formed in Venezuela in 1983 to protect and

conserve the nation's land and resources in National Parks, Reserves

and Protected areas. By 2001, 362 ABRAE had been set up representing

46% of the total territory of Venezuela, and one of the largest

extensions of " protected " land in Latin America.[8] Almost a third

of Venezuela's forests are protected under the ABRAE system, but not

all of the forests are protected in the same way. Unfortunately, only

15% of the total protected area actually has " rules for appropriate

use. " [9] With the lack of regulation, inherent corruption and the

rules left open to interpretation it appears that many of the ABRAE

designations are protected only on paper, and it is easy to see how in

Venezuela, there can exist a " forest reserve without a forest. "

Venezuela's Forest Inventory

About half of Venezuela is forested, equaling just under 50 million

hectares. But over 80% of the forests are located south of the Orinoco

River, which cuts an almost perfect diagonal through Venezuela from the

southwest to the northeast. Interestingly, compared with Brazil, which

is experiencing exponential amounts of forest destruction and land

encroachment in to its massive Amazon region, Venezuela's Amazon,

although much smaller, is still fairly well intact. Most of the

Venezuelan deforestation has occurred north of the Orinoco River, which

makes sense, since that's where most of the Venezuelan population

lives.

Catalan has just finished the latest comprehensive forest study of the

Amazon and Bolivar states, which are both located south of the Orinoco

River and together register a total of 32 million hectares. The

investigation makes up part of the National Forest Inventory, which

they plan to finish next year, and will be the first comprehensive

national forest study in the history of Venezuela and, they hope, one

of the most extensive in all of Latin America.[10]

The last two Venezuelan forest studies where carried out in 1982 and

1995, and were far from complete, and not entirely comparable, which is

part of the difficulty of attempting to analyze the state of

Venezuela's forests. Different organizations have different

statistics according to the resources and methodology used to calculate

the forest cover.[11] But, since there has never been a complete

inventory of Venezuela's forests, it is difficult to say what the

actual situation really is.

Which is part of the problem. Catalan doesn't necessarily agree with

the FAO statistics, or their ranking Venezuela as one of the countries

with the highest deforestation rates in the world. " The FAO gets all

their figures from us, " he says, " and then they make their own

estimates according to arbitrary information. "

National Productive Reforestation Plan

Regardless of whether or not Venezuela is on the top10 list,

deforestation is a problem and that's what Mision Arbol and the

National Productive Reforestation Plan are working to combat. What's

interesting is their strategy.

In alignment with goals of the " Bolivarian Process, " which is

attempting to pass power and responsibility in to the hands of the

local community, Mision Arbol attempts to plant understanding, tools,

and resources in local communities in order to conserve and reforest

the nation's territory through productive projects. The Mission

states:

" With the protagonistic participation of the communities, who

organize in conservation committees and cooperatives, and under the

concept of endogenous development, contribute to the process of

conservation of watersheds and traditional forested zones. "

According to Miguel RodrÃguez, the Venezuelan Vice-Minister of

Environmental Conservation, the Mission is focused on rural communities

that have been forced to move into the hillsides because of a lack of

land, " bringing with them, deforestation, as a consequence. "

" We are proposing a Productive Reforestation plan. You can't tell

a campesino to conserve the valley, because he's going to respond

that he has to eat, but you can find a product which can be cultivated

along with the trees, " said Rodriguez " In the country, there has

been reforestation, but productive reforestation is another thing. The

communities are always looking, like workers, to form plantations, but

this is different, we are looking for them to take charge, that it

becomes part of their environment and of their life. "

As a result, the heart of the mission is without at doubt the newly

formed Conservation Committees, whose goals are to develop productive

projects for the conservation of the environment, and their own

sustainability. Since last September, 831 Conservation Committees have

been formed with a total of 10,532 members across Venezuela. So far,

468 community projects have been organized on nearly 8,000 hectares of

land, beginning with seed collection, nursery plantation, education

programs, and the planting of trees and agricultural products such as

coffee and cacao.[12]

So far, this year, the Conservation Committees have received about a

fifth of the $23 million budget for the Reforestation Plan and they

just held their first national meeting of general coordinators on Mount

Avila, last month.[13] But it is still too early to say if the

Conservation Committees and Mision Arbol will be able to carry out

their mission and offset the increasing deforestation and ensure the

healthy existence of Venezuela's critical ecosystems and habitat.

The Future

Nevertheless, the World Resources Institute (WRI) might be able to lend

a little insight in to what the future may hold. Last year, WRI

released a report entitled The Wealth of the Poor, in which they

suggested that in order to more effectively manage ecosystems and

diminishing poverty, communities should be given more control over the

management of their local environment.

" Stewardship of nature is also an effective means to fight

poverty, " explains the report, " When poor households improve their

management of local ecosystems-whether pastures, forests, or fishing

grounds-the productivity of these systems rises. When this is

combined with greater control over these natural assets, through

stronger ownership rights, and greater inclusion in local institutions,

the poor can capture the rise in productivity as increased

income. " [14]

According to WRI, Mision Arbol could be on the right track, but

important questions remain. Is there a conservation or reforestation

plan outside of the promotion of the conservation committees? How do

they plan to protect the vital watersheds and forests that may not be

directly supported by the Conservation Committees? How to reconcile

the competing interests of development, resource extraction, and

conservation? Only time will tell, but in the meantime it appears that

the mission is a good step in the direction towards reforestation,

environmental conservation, and building environmental consciousness in

Venezuela. And that is what Jacqueline FarÃa, Venezuelan Minister of

the Environment seemed to stress on the inauguration day of Mision

Arbol, when she declared, " We are now going to change all of the

Venezuelans in to conservationists. "

Former Forest Ethics Campaigner, Evan Thomas Paul, helped with the

research for this article, http://del.icio.us/evanthomaspaul/venezuela

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