Chain Saws Invade Eden

By EUGENE LINDEN/PARAMARIBO

From high atop a massive bald rock called the Voltzberg, visitors to Suriname can look in awe at the same sight that greeted explorer Sir Walter Raleigh 400 years ago: an emerald forest that seemingly stretches to infinity in all directions. Even though the world has 11 times as many humans as it did in Raleigh's day, the north coast of South America still contains one of the largest unbroken tracts of tropical forest left in the world. Fewer than 50,000 people live in a natural kingdom larger than California that encompasses nearly all of Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana and is buffered by virgin rain forest in Brazil and Venezuela. Some parts of the woodland are so isolated from civilization that monkeys are more curious than fearful when they encounter humans.

That may soon change. The governments of Guyana and Suriname have begun to open huge tracts of forests for logging by timber and trading companies from Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia. Conservationists around the world are horrified at the prospect, aware that in southern Asia the loggers have ravaged forests, leaving a legacy of eroded hills, silt-choked rivers and barren fields. If such exploitation cannot be prevented in sparsely populated countries like Guyana and Suriname, the environmentalists ask, can deforestation be stopped anywhere? For thousands of years, deforestation has presaged the fall of civilizations. Now, for the first time, humanity is facing the consequences of forest destruction on a global scale.

As the international logging juggernaut lurches toward Suriname and Guyana, several conservation groups have chosen to make a stand in this unspoiled part of the world. Some, like Washington-based Conservation International, are trying to show the two governments that large-scale logging is not the only way to get income from these magnificent forests. Another possibility is prospecting for natural medicines produced by the area's trees and flowers. San Francisco's Rainforest Action Network and Britain's World Rainforest Network have taken up the cause of the region's indigenous peoples threatened by logging. Even the World Bank, whose investments have led to deforestation elsewhere in the tropics, has become involved, encouraging Guyana to slow down the pace of logging and look at alternative means of development.

Only circumstance has protected the Guyanas, as the region is called, from the chain saws and bulldozers leveling forests elsewhere. Though colonized centuries ago by the British, Dutch and French, the area became known for its penal camps and slave rebellions and never had enough appeal to draw huge numbers of European settlers. Today the population of Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana totals only 1.3 million people, nearly all of whom live in coastal cities. Up to now the city dwellers have put little pressure on the forests or the few thousand indigenous Amerindians who live in the woodlands. But economic hardship and the lure of logging revenue have begun to make the region's natural treasures more vulnerable.

Suriname has been in political and financial turmoil almost from the time it gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975. At first the Dutch and other foreign donors gave the new country generous aid, but they cut back sharply in the 1980s when Suriname suffered a series of coups and massacres. The violence culminated in a six-year civil war that led to the fall of the military regime of Lieut. Colonel Desi Bouterse in 1992.

Though peace holds at the moment, international donors are reluctant to resume large-scale aid until the government of President Ronald Venetiaan puts its tottering economic house in order. Production is in decline, the unemployment rate tops 20% and per capita annual income is only $500. Rather than risk public unrest, the government provides generous subsidies for fuel, food, water and telephone service. But the budget now exceeds revenues by 150%, and the government has been looking for easy sources of foreign exchange.

So officials were receptive in August 1993 when an Indonesian investment group named N.V. MUSA Indo-Suriname asked to buy the rights to Suriname's trees. Cash-starved regimes are fond of selling timber concessions because they can put money in a treasury at little immediate cost to the government, while other industries can take years to produce results. Timber operations often ultimately drain more money than they yield by burdening a nation's infrastructure and degrading precious natural assets, but it is easy for a sitting government to ignore these costs because they become a problem only for subsequent administrations.

The MUSA group boldly asked for timber rights to more than 15 million acres of Suriname, nearly one-third of the country. The Venetiaan administration avoided a messy political debate by instead granting a smaller concession of 375,000 acres near the Guyana border. MUSA then began logging without specifying how it will abide by Suriname's strict forestry code. Experts claim that the only profitable way to harvest MUSA's particular stretch of rain forest would be to clear-cut the region, leaving behind a wasteland. Other Asian interests have also put in timber bids. The Malaysian investment group Berjaya Group Berhad is trying to secure rights to 7.5 million acres in Suriname.

Neighboring Guyana, also desperate for quick cash, has granted huge concessions to Asian logging consortiums. The former British colony, a victim of years of Marxist economics, is poorer than any other Latin American nation except Haiti and is staggering under a $2 billion foreign debt load, an amount 10 times its gross domestic product. In 1991 the government of President Desmond Hoyte granted a Malaysian-Korean joint venture called Barama Co. Ltd. the rights to log 4.2 million acres in the country's northwest. When voters elected former Marxist Cheddi Jagan as President in 1992, Guyanese conservationists urged him to revoke that concession; instead Jagan toured Southeast Asia at Barama's expense, and his government is considering bids that would put roughly 75% of Guyana's timber under foreign control.

And what will Guyana get in return? Not much, if the agreement with Barama | represents a precedent. Barama was granted a five-year tax holiday and will make only modest royalty payments. Within five years, this concession is expected to produce $20 million to $30 million annually for Guyana, but conservationists argue that this is a pittance for sacrificing nearly 10% of the country.

Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, argues that Guyana should consider development alternatives that produce income while leaving the forests in place. He notes that the country might receive royalty income equivalent to what will be generated by the Barama concession should even one species of tree yield a chemical that turns into a successful pharmaceutical compound. Another option is an ecotourism business that would take visitors to Guyana's spectacular natural wonders, including Kaieteur Falls. Unfortunately, outsiders have come up with few other suggestions. Says a World Bank official: "It's incredibly frustrating to think that there are so few alternatives to logging at present."

Both Guyana and Suriname have a coterie of conservationists who are aware that the area possesses something special in this crowded world. Says Brigadier General Joe Singh, chief of staff of Guyana's army and an influential voice in his small nation: "There is a commitment here to make sure that Guyana does not repeat the mistakes of other countries." To see examples of these mistakes, President Jagan need only take another look at the forests of the Asian nations bidding for Guyana's and Suriname's timber. And this time he might ask why consortiums from nations that once contained some of the largest tropical rain forests on earth now must look for wood 11,000 miles from home.