Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

events was the subject of much concern, particularly as logging concessions covering
vast areas of forest were awarded to enterprises connected with Asian companies,
many of which had histories of wreaking environmental, social and political havoc in
other countries in which they had operated (Colchester 1991).
Almost seventeen thousand square kilometres of forest awarded to the joint
Malaysian-Korean Barama company was estimated to have incorporated the lands of
around 1,200 Amerindian people, including four titled communities and numerous
untitled settlements (Colchester 1994; Forte 1995a: 5). While the presence of the
company brought a much-needed source of employment, some of which went to local
Amerindians, it has also had many negative effects. Barama's activities led to
pollution of water sources, and the company forcibly relocated the community of
Orenoque without providing compensation or adequate replacement housing. By
1997, local objections were sufficient to provoke the lodging with the government of
a petition on behalf of around 4,000 people thus affected (Forest Peoples
Programme 1997).
Outside its concession, Barama has been the source of widespread hardship in at
least one other Amerindian village - Orealla on the Correntyne River - from which it
contracted to buy timber to make up shortfalls in production from its concession
(Henfrey 1995). This community was systematically manipulated and swindled by
Barama, whose practices included claiming to have rejected substantial proportions of
timber loaded onto and transported by their barges while providing no evidence of its
unsuitability, and persistently recording timber volumes substantially less than those
measured by the loggers themselves. As volumes of timber were calculated using a
formula according to which the radius of a log was one quarter of its girth, giving a
result somewhat less than two-thirds of the actual value, the company clearly paid for
only a fraction of the wood it actually received. Foreign timber dealers with whom the
community has dealt with since have turned out to be even more crooked. Orealla's
village captain told me that one buyer, an agent claiming to represent the notorious
Oregon-based timber firm P and S, had defaulted on debts of GYD 20 million for
timber purchases, and around GYD 2 million further in unpaid wages. Appeals by the
community for government assistance led to the former Minister of Amerindian
Affairs abetting the buyer's fraudulent behaviour, the two collaborating in pressuring
village officials into accepting the company's non-payment. Other Amerindian
communities involved in commercial forestry have reported similar experiences (e.g.,
Sizer 1996: 208). Overall, a long-standing historical pattern seems to have been
perpetuated by the changes in the timber industry over the past decade. Amerindian