RSPO Grievance - SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund

Generally:In their introduction they speak now of overwhelming support, but they said that since thebeginning of the project. How come that they now acknowledge that there was a opposition?As for their highlighted items: SGSOC’s concession area does not include: (a) any protected areas; (b) areaspreviously protected or (c) areas that were scheduled or planned to be protected by theGovernment of Cameroon (GoC) under any short-- or long--term plans.First is to mention that monocultural projects of this scale almost certainly exert a very harshpressure on all areas nearby. Recent scientific studies found out that neighboringagroindustrial projects put a lot of stress and pressure on protected areas nearby. A project thisbig with a size of about 100 000 football fields in the middle of 4 protected areas whichbelong to one of the oldest remaining rainforests of Africa will certainly be not good for thebiodiversity, not to mention the fragmentation and isolation of these PA's through cut-downsof the connecting forests.Especially point (c) is wrong as nearly the whole eastern part of the concession overlaps withthe planned Forest-Management Unit 11-007 and 11-008 as shown in the map (Attachment 1).The Image shows a forest management unit, which is part of the permanent forest domainaccording to Cameroon law. The concession has definitely an impact on the realization of thisplanned protected area. The Project area is with on the land suggested by WWF in the Korup Master Plan assuitable for agricultural development The “Agricultural development"in the Korup Master Plan does not mean that agroindustrialshould extend in this area. It concerns small holder community development"agricultural, agro-forestry, livestock and fishing development"with improvement ofrural roads, water and health schemes and including also out grower schemes fromPAMOL.More recently WWF Cameroon published new reports 1 warning that projects such as SGSOCare damaging Cameroons wildlife and forests. Commercial logging by contract with the Government of Cameroon has been extensiveundertaken throughout the SGSOC Concession and is currently on goingMost if not all previous loggings were done selectively by cutting only good trees and leavingmany others behind. The forest can constantly recover if the logging is managed in asustainable way. Animals and Plants can use these trees, local NFTP such as bushmango ormedicine can grow in these forests as well. Large Parts in the western parts of the Ndiandivision have never been commercial logged and are still primary undisturbed forests. Thiscan be seen in the company’s ESIA (Attachment 2) and also through an analysis of the intactforests in the region (Attachment 3). Intact forests are forests, which show no sign ofsignificant human activity and are large enough that all native biodiversity can bemaintained 2 . We used GIS Data provided by the Intact forest landscapes Mapping Team 3 .1http://www.pfbc-cbfp.org/doc_rech_en.html2 http://www.intactforests.org/concept.html