TICKING THE RIGHT BOXES OR OFFSETTING RESPONSIBILITY[1]
By Chris Lang and Timothy Byakola, published by WRM, December 2006
The global climate is changing. As the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the climate becomes less stable. If the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets were to melt, then millions of people would be forced from their homes. If we are to prevent runaway climate change then we need to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. This means leaving most remaining fossil fuels in the ground.[2] In his book “Heat”, George Monbiot argues that this requires a cut of 60% in global climate emissions by 2030 and a cut of 90% in the North.[3]
But as the urgency of climate change increases, so does reliance on “market solutions” to deal with the problem. The carbon market nearly doubled in size from US$11 billion in 2005 to US$21.5 billion in 2006. But there was no equivalent reduction in carbon emissions. “As the carbon market has soared, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise – a stark indication that a more pragmatic and direct approach to cutting emissions is urgently needed,” points out Ethan Green of Rising Tide North America.[4]
One of these market solutions is to plant trees. While trees grow they absorb carbon. But compared with the amount of fossil fuel below the ground and the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, trees cannot absorb carbon fast enough or for long enough. Fossil fuels, which have been stored for millions of years below the earth, only emit carbon to the atmosphere when they are dug out and burned. Once the carbon is above the ground, it circulates between vegetation, water, soils and air. Trees store carbon for a relatively short period. The carbon stored in trees is released after a few years to the atmosphere. Trees die and decay. They can be attacked by pests. During heat waves they can go up in smoke and flames. They can also be cut down and used as fuel, or made into furniture, buildings or paper, none of which are long term carbon stores.
In 1994, a Dutch organisation called the FACE Foundation signed an agreement with the Ugandan authorities to plant trees on 25,000 hectares inside Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda (see Box: “FACE: The facts“). Another Dutch company, GreenSeat, sells carbon credits from Mount Elgon to people wanting to offset the emissions caused by flying. GreenSeat explains on its website:
“When we decide to fly we can’t get around the pollution (CO2 and other gases) that this causes, but we can compensate for these emissions by investing in renewable energy projects and by planting and protecting trees that ‘soak up’ the CO2 as they grow.”[5]
A “compensation module” on GreenSeat’s website tells us that just US$28 would cover the costs of planting 66 trees to “compensate” for the 1.32 tonnes of CO2 emitted during a return flight from Frankfurt to Kampala.[6]
Alex Muhweezi, IUCN’s country director in Uganda, is enthusiastic about the FACE project and sums it up as follows: “FACE gets a license to continue polluting – we get to plant some trees.”[7]
For many in the North this is a dream come true. We can continue our massively polluting lifestyles with a clean conscience. But, as George Monbiot points out,
“Any scheme that persuades us we can carry on polluting delays the point at which we grasp the nettle of climate change and accept that our lives have to change. But we cannot afford to delay. The big cuts have to be made right now, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to prevent runaway climate change from taking place. By selling us a clean conscience, the offset companies are undermining the necessary political battle to tackle climate change at home.”[8]
When we look at the FACE Foundation’s tree planting project in Uganda, however, another set of problems is revealed. The FACE Foundation is storing its carbon in trees planted on someone else’s land.
- FACE stands for Forests Absorbing Carbon-dioxide Emissions.
- The FACE Foundation was set up in 1990 by the Dutch Electricity Generating Board N.V. Sep.
- The aim was to plant 150,000 hectares of trees to absorb and store carbon to offset emissions from a new 600 MW coal-fired power station to be built in the Netherlands. The plantations, “for reasons of land availability and cost-effectiveness”, are to be planted predominantly in the South.
- Since 2000, FACE has been independent of N.V. Sep.
- In 2002, FACE, Triodos Bank and Kegado BV set up Business for Climate to sell carbon credits from FACE Foundation’s forest projects and to generate funding for the maintenance of the projects.
- In 2006, Business for Climate was renamed Climate Neutral Group.
- GreenSeat, one of the members of the Climate Neutral Group, advertises the UWA-FACE project at Mount Elgon to sell carbon credits to offset emissions from flying.
The FACE Foundation’s largest project is the FACE Programme for Forestation in Ecuador (FACE-PROFAFOR). According to FACE, the project “takes advantage of land that is not being used and that could generate income to the local economy.” The initial goal was to plant 75,000 hectares almost entirely with exotic tree plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes. This figure was later reduced to 25,000 hectares of which 22,000 hectares has been planted, and 20,000 hectares certified under the Forest Stewardship Council system (by SGS).
A report by Acción Ecológica points out that because the trees are drying out the soils, there is actually more carbon released than stored in the areas planted under the FACE PROFAFOR project. When Ricardo Carrere visited the area in 2004, he found that some areas planted with trees had burned down, pine trees had yellow needles, many trees were growing poorly and many had been damaged by grazing animals (rabbits, hares, cattle or horses). Few trees were more than two metres high. Carrere estimated that the average height of trees in the six year old plantation was one metre.
Acción Ecológica’s research found that local communities who had entered into contracts with the FACE Foundation to plant the trees were actually worse off as a result of the project. Villagers have lost grazing land. When one community found that its involvement in the project had cost the community US$10,000, it attempted to get out of the agreement with FACE, but the project engineer told them, “You cannot rid yourselves of the agreement, the Commune is mortgaged.”
Sources:
FACE Foundation website.
Carrere, Ricardo (2004) Some observations made during a visit to FACE plantations in the Paramo, August 2004.
Granda, Patricia (2005) “Carbon Sink Plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes. Impacts of the Dutch FACE-PROFAFOR monoculture tree plantations project on indigenous and peasant communities”, Acción Ecológica and World Rainforest Movement.
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In Uganda, the FACE Foundation works with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), the agency responsible for managing Uganda’s national parks. The UWA-FACE project involves planting a two to three kilometre-wide strip of trees just inside the 211 kilometre boundary of the National Park. To date, 8,500 hectares out of a planned total of 25,000 hectares has been planted, according to Denis Slieker, FACE Foundation’s Director.[9]
In the areas planted with trees, forest regeneration has improved especially where the land had been used for agriculture. The project is certified under the Forest Stewardship Council scheme as well managed. Each year, SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company monitors the project to check that it complies with FSC’s standards. Fred Kizza, FACE’s project co-ordinator in Uganda, claims that the project has improved income and standards of living among local communities. He adds that the project has provided jobs, especially in planting and the tending of nurseries. The project gives out seedlings to farmers which they plant on their farms.[10]
Maize is one of villagers’ main crops around Mount Elgon. In the background is part of the national park.
At a first glance then, it seems that the Mount Elgon project ticks all the right boxes. But a closer look at the project reveals serious problems which are invisible to anyone paying to offset their guilt about flying.
For a start, local council officials dispute the employment claims. They point out that most of the jobs are only available during the planting period and employ very few people. They also complain that the project has taken away local communities’ access to forest goods. Collecting firewood has become a serious problem and people have had to abandon the preparation of foods that take a long time to cook, such as beans.[11]
Chapter 2 gives an overview of Mount Elgon and of the communities living around the park and how they use the forest and grasslands inside the park.
In order to keep villagers out of the national park, UWA’s park rangers maintain a brutal regime at Mount Elgon. In 1993 and 2002, villagers were violently evicted from the national park. Since the evictions, according to the villagers we talked to as part of this research, UWA’s rangers have hit them, tortured them, humiliated them, shot at them, threatened them and uprooted their crops.
When I telephoned the FACE Foundation’s office in the Netherlands to ask some questions about the project and the problems for local people, Denis Slieker, FACE’s director, denied that the UWA-FACE project has anything to do with these problems. He referred to an impact assessment carried out in 2001 which concluded that the main negative impacts were increased scarcity of land, reduction of access to park resources and the increase of dangerous animals. “Closer research demonstrated that the negative impacts were caused by the conversion of the area into a National Park rather than reforestation by UWA-FACE”, said Slieker. “In the absence of the project people would have experienced the same impacts.”[12]
Bullet shells. “The bullets were shot by people trying to kill us,” a villager told us. “Some people have died. Others have been injured.”
True, the Ugandan Government declared Mount Elgon a national park in 1993, one year before the UWA-FACE tree planting project started. But the problems associated with this decision were very much still there when the project started. The problems are still there today. The UWA-FACE project is a part of the management of the national park. Rather than helping solve problems relating to the national park, the FACE Foundation’s tree-planting is making them worse.
When the government changed the status of Mount Elgon to a national park, the people living within its boundaries lost their land rights. According to SGS they never had any: “The encroachers have never had legal rights to farm the land.” None of the people evicted from the park have received adequate compensation.
Many of the people who were evicted had nowhere to go, and many continue to farm in and around the national park. The boundary around the national park is not clear, in spite of (or perhaps because of, see Chapter 3) a World Bank-funded project which included re-tracing the boundary of Mount Elgon National Park.
UWA’s park rangers receive paramilitary training. Park rangers actively patrol the boundary region and prevent villagers from grazing their goats and cows. “The wildlife people who operate there are very militarized, and have killed over 50 people. People feel that the Government favours animals more than the people,” David Wakikona, Member of Parliament for Manjiya County told the Ugandan newspaper New Vision in 2004.[13] (See Box: “The Uganda Wildlife Authority [UWA]]“.)
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) was created in 1996, through the merger of Uganda National Parks and the Uganda Game Department and is under the Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry. UWA is responsible for managing Uganda’s 10 national parks, 12 wildlife reserves and 5 community wildlife areas. UWA’s funding comes from government, aid agencies and from revenue from the national parks. The World Bank’s Protected Area Management and Sustainable Use (PAMSU) project is currently a major source of funding, although funding through this project will end in 2007.
In addition to providing UWA with a new head office in Kampala, the World Bank’s PAMSU project also partly financed the re-tracing of boundaries at Mount Elgon. This is one of UWA’s most controversial activities at Mount Elgon and is the source of serious conflicts with people living around the park.
Under the 1996 Uganda Wildlife Act, 20 per cent of all entry fee collections from national parks are to go to communities neighbouring the park. According to the Ministry of Finance, wildlife based tourism in Uganda has an economic value of US$163 million a year, directly employing 70,000 people. However, payments to communities are small because the payments are limited to entrance fees and exclude trekking fees, camping fees, gorilla permit fees and so on. In May 2005, the Ministry of Finance stated that in the last four years a total of just over US$500,000 had been disbursed to communities.
In 2002, more than 3,000 people visited Mount Elgon, and paid UWA a total of US$322,499 during their visits to the park. But of this total, local authorities around the park received only US$3,885 (or 1.2 per cent).
In early 2005, Arthur Mugisha resigned as executive director of UWA over what he called “unacceptable political interference” and “being fed up with corruption”. Mugisha was replaced by Moses Mapesa.
In a recent article in New Vision, Mapesa clearly reveals his bias towards wildlife and against local people:
“To illustrate the importance of wildlife and its contribution to the national economy, I will use the gorilla, buffalo and elephant. Every individual gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park earns Uganda US$100,000 (sh180m) per year and creates employment for 30 people. Which individual Ugandan living near a National Park can raise that amount of money?”
UWA has developed General Management Plans for all the protected areas under its management. The “Mount Elgon General Management Plan” was produced in 2000 and makes several references to the importance of working with the communities surrounding the park. For example,
“Since 1993 [sic] Uganda Wildlife Authority has increased its emphasis on working more closely with communities rather than taking a strictly law enforcement approach to Park management.””Until recently, the major focus of management activities for the lands now within Mt. Elgon National Park has been law enforcement. Mt. Elgon National Park now places more emphasis on working in co-operation with communities adjacent to the park, in order to achieve conservation and development goals.”
Other statements in the Management Plan give the game away, however. UWA is prepared to work with communities as long as they agree to move out of the park:
“The emphasis in community conservation programs will thus be in the following areas: . . . co-operative action to reduce and ultimately eliminate agricultural encroachment.”
“Agricultural land and boundary disputes” is one of the issues that UWA has identified as being of concern to communities living around the park. However, UWA’s Management Plan adds that the demand for more agricultural land in the park is “incompatible with the conservation of Park values as required under the UWA Statute.”
The Management Plan makes clear that community conservation activities are to be carried out “in combination with law enforcement activities”:
“Law enforcement will, however, continue to be an important Park management activity. It is important that the laws governing Park management are be [sic] carried out in an unambiguous and transparent manner, and that they be seen to be an integral part of an overall Park operation that also includes community conservation activities.”
“Law enforcement” involves UWA rangers in military style operations, including patrols, raids, arrests, imprisonments, seizure of cattle, destruction of houses and crops and use of state-sanctioned violence. Rangers have rifles and shoot at poachers. Several people have been killed. If they need military support, UWA staff can call in the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF).
Sources:
Chhetri, Purna, Arthur Mugisha and Sean White (2003) “Community resource use in Kibale and Mt Elgon National Parks, Uganda“, Parks: Conservation Partnerships in Africa, IUCN, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2003.
Mapesa, Moses (2006) “Museveni’s defence of wildlife is good news“, New Vision, 15 August 2006.
Ministry of Finance (2005) “Poverty Eradication Action Plan (2004/5-2007/8)“, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, May 2005.
Migereko, Daudi (2005) “Meeting with Board of Trustees Uganda Wildlife Authority and saying farewell to Dr Arthur Mugisha“, Statement by Hon. Daudi Migereko, Minister of Tourism, Trade and Industry on 16th March 2005 at 6.15 p.m.
Norgrove, Linda and David Hulme (forthcoming) “Confronting conservation at Mount Elgon, Uganda“, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester.
Thome, Wolfgang (2005) “Wolfgang’s report“, eTurboNews Global News for the Travel Trade, Friday, 4 February 2005.
UNESCO (2004) Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage, World Heritage Committee, Twenty-eighth session, Suzhou, China 28 June – 7 July 2004.
UWA (2000) “Mt. Elgon National Park General Management Plan”, Executive Summary, Uganda Wildlife Authority, December 2000.
UWA (2006) “Investment Opportunity Bid Invitation: Operation of launches/boats Murchison Falls National Park“, Uganda Wildlife Authority, February 2006.
Masokoyi Swalikh, Mbale District Vice Chairman, points out that UWA’s approach has resulted in conflicts in which communities have deliberately destroyed the trees planted around the boundary. For people living around the park, the trees are a symbol of their exclusion from land that was once theirs. In 2003, for example, a strip of eucalyptus trees over four kilometres long marking the park boundary was destroyed in one night.[14]
Map of Mount Elgon National Park in UWA’s office, Mbale. The pale green areas inside the park boundary indicate land which is to be planted under the UWA-FACE project.
In March 2002, UWA evicted several hundred more people from Mount Elgon, many of whom had lived on the land for over 40 years. Park rangers destroyed villagers’ houses and cut down their crops. With nowhere to go, the evicted people were forced to move to neighbouring villages where they lived in caves and mosques.[15]
An elder who lived in Mabembe village for over 50 years, was among those evicted in 2002. He has 20 children and now lives on a piece of land covering just one-third of a hectare. “When the UWA people came with their tree-planting activities they stopped us from getting important materials from the forest”, he told Timothy Byakola in 2004. “We were stopped from going up to get malewa (bamboo shoots), which is a very important traditional food in the area and is a source of income. There were certain products that we used to get from the forest for the embalu ceremony (circumcision ritual) to be performed in the proper traditional way.”[16]
The Benet people are indigenous to Mount Elgon. Having been evicted in 1983 and 1993, they decided to take the government to court to claim their land rights. In August 2003, with the help of a Ugandan NGO, the Uganda Land Alliance, they started proceedings against the Attorney General and the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The Benet accused Uganda Wildlife Authority of constantly harassing them. The government meanwhile cut off all education and health service in the area and forbid the people from doing anything with the land.
In October 2005, Justice J. B. Katutsi ruled that the Benet people “are historical and indigenous inhabitants of the said areas which were declared a Wildlife Protected Area or National Park.” He ruled that an area of the national park should be de-gazetted and that the Benet should be allowed to live on their land and continue farming it.[17]
In 2002, SGS stated that rehabilitation in areas where people were farming “requires the eviction of encroachers before the work can begin.” SGS comments that “Mt. Elgon National Park is moving in this direction”, and adds that “more speed may be required to ensure the evictions are carried out successfully.”[18]
I telephoned Niels Korthals Altes of GreenSeat to ask him about the evictions that have taken place at Mount Elgon. Korthals Altes denied at first that any evictions had taken place. “That’s not the case in our projects, for sure,” he said.[19] When I pointed out to him that SGS mentioned the evictions in its Public Summary, Korthals Altes said he couldn’t answer specific questions on this and suggested that I should talk to the FACE Foundation.
A few days later, he acknowledged that evictions had indeed taken place, but he denied that either GreenSeat or the FACE Foundation had any responsibility. “Evicting people is not part of the UWA-FACE project,” he wrote by e-mail. “It is a result of the Government’s decision to enforce the laws regarding farming in the National Park.”[20]
Denis Slieker, FACE’s director, was also in denial mode when I spoke to him. “We carry out a reforestation project in a project area which has been assigned by the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the Ugandan Government as a National Park,” he said. “If for some reason there is uncertainty on that area then that needs to be solved. If the Ugandan Government decides, together with the UWA, that there should be an eviction then it’s their responsibility. That is not our responsibility.”[21]
Slieker explained that the boundary of the tree-planting project includes a 10 metre-wide strip of eucalyptus trees. “This is designed to provide a resource that can be managed by local communities to provide pole and firewood, reducing the pressure on the park’s resources,” he said.[22]
Slieker acknowledged that people had been evicted in 1993, but added, “People aren’t being evicted right now.”[23] He appeared unaware of the evictions that had taken place since the UWA-FACE project started. When we visited Mount Elgon in July 2006, it was obvious that the communities around the park have not seen the last of the evictions. Conflicts between local communities and UWA were ongoing.
The UWA-FACE project is planting trees in precisely the area of land that is disputed by local communities – the boundary of Mount Elgon National Park. The way in which the boundary is determined and by whom is a key factor in the relationship between the park management and the local communities.
David Himmelfarb, an anthropologist at the University of Georgia, carried out field research at Mount Elgon in 2005. “Boundaries, as physical indicators of rights, are . . . often the loci of intense conflict. Their creation and manipulation are intensely political acts which confer and deny rights” he writes in a paper based on his research.[24]
The area of land around the boundary of Mount Elgon is highly contested – largely as a result of the history of the park. It is impossible to understand the conflicts occurring today around Mount Elgon, without at least an overview of the recent history of this land. Chapter 3 provides some of this history and an overview of the conflicts that have taken place between the park management and local people.
In addition to the conflicts with local people around the park, the FACE Foundation (who plant the trees), and GreenSeat (who sell the offsets that pay for them), have a further problem – they cannot guarantee that the trees planted will survive. In February 2004, New Vision reported that the police were holding 45 people “suspected of encroaching on Mount Elgon National Park and destroying 1,700 trees” – trees planted under the UWA-FACE project.[25]
According to Slieker, this is not a problem from a carbon point of view. “Millions of trees have been planted, so a number of 1,700 is to be seen in that perspective,” he said. “Of course some trees die if you plant such a large area, some trees just won’t live, they’ll be overtaken by other trees. That’s normal in an ecosystem. That is already incorporated in the CO2 calculation model. The model calculates the net positive benefit in carbon sequestration. We even take into account the risk of people cutting down trees. If that happens we do not get the carbon credits. It’s as simple as that. We cannot sell something that we do not have.”[26]
But GreenSeat and FACE cannot guarantee the climatic impact of the Mount Elgon project. The only way of knowing the true impact of the project on carbon stored is by following the thousands of people who have been evicted from the National Park and comparing their carbon emissions before and after the evictions. It is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy the actions of people evicted from Mount Elgon National Park. Some of them may clear other areas of forest to continue farming. Others may overgraze the land around the park, causing soil erosion. Others may try to continue farming in the National Park. Others may move to the city and take up a higher carbon emitting lifestyle.
Chapter 4 describes the UWA-FACE project and asks whether the project is really additional or whether as much (or more) carbon might have been absorbed without the project. It also describes the impact of the project and UWA’s management of the national park on local communities.
GreenSeat, the Dutch company selling carbon credits from Mount Elgon, is supported by WWF Netherlands and among GreenSeat’s customers are the Dutch House of Representatives and Senate, the Body Shop and Amnesty International. In response to our questions, Ruud Bosgraaf, press officer for Amnesty International Dutch Section, said, “We are not aware of any involvement by GreenSeat in evictions in Mount Elgon.”[27] Bosgraaf is right – GreenSeat has not evicted anyone. Neither has the FACE Foundation, nor has SGS.
But on its website GreenSeat advertises its tree-planting project in Uganda to sell carbon offsets. The planting is part of the management of the Mount Elgon National Park. The FACE Foundation’s partner at Mount Elgon, the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, has forcibly evicted people with its military-trained rangers. If the tree planting is to continue, more people will be evicted.
Rather than offsetting carbon emissions, GreenSeat, FACE and SGS have been offsetting their own responsibility for evictions. When faced with the fact that conflict and evictions are on-going at Mount Elgon, each of the actors involved points to one of the others, either to legitimise their actions, or to displace responsibility. FACE Foundation doesn’t blame its partner at Mount Elgon, UWA, for the evictions, but asks whether we have been in touch with IUCN which has been working on conservation projects at Mount Elgon since 1998. IUCN in turn gives a corporate shrug of its shoulders and says the evictions are not their responsibility. Chapter 5 looks at the role of IUCN and its funders the Norwegian Government.
The fact that the UWA-FACE project is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as well managed provides a gloss of legitimacy to the tree planting. But a closer look at the project and at the certification indicates that the project does not comply with FSC standards. Chapter 6 looks in detail at the FSC certification of the UWA-FACE project. FSC must withdraw the certificate as a first step towards removing the greenwash from the UWA-FACE tree planting project.
We end the report with a suggestion for a way forward – addressing the land rights of the people living in and around the park. The first step towards achieving this is to acknowledge that the boundary of the national park (as well as much of the park itself) is a highly contested zone. Any top-down solution to the park boundary will result in further conflicts between park management and local people. The FACE Foundation is contributing to the tension because the carbon stored in its trees must be protected from damage from local communities. Through the UWA-FACE project, the boundary of the park is being fixed, not in stone but in carbon. Rather than focussing on UWA’s “rights” to manage the national park and the “rights” of people in the North to continue to pollute, there is an urgent need to start from the perspective of the rights of the people living in and around Mount Elgon National Park.
REFERENCES AND FOOTNOTES
[1] Parts of this introduction were first published in Timothy Byakola and Chris Lang (2006) “Uprooted“, New Internationalist, July 2006, Issue 391.
[2] The title of this report, “A funny place to store carbon”, is borrowed from a recent publication by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. The report, edited by Larry Lohmann at The Corner House provides an excellent critique of the problems of carbon trading. Larry Lohmann (Ed.) (2006) “Carbon Trading. A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power“, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House, October 2006.
[3] George Monbiot (2006) “Heat. How to stop the planet burning”, Penguin Books, London.
[4] Zoe Kenny and Rohan Pearce (2006) “‘Market solutions’ threaten climate catastrophe“, Green Left Weekly, 4 November 2006.
[5] “The GreenSeat Philosophy“, GreenSeat website.
[6] “Compensate now!“, GreenSeat website.
[7] Interview with Alex Muhweezi in Mbale by Timothy Byakola, Jutta Kill and Chris Lang. 19 July 2006.
[8] George Monbiot (2006) “Selling Indulgences. The trade in carbon offsets is an excuse for business as usual“, The Guardian, 18 October 2006.
[9] Denis Slieker (FACE Foundation), comment by e-mail on a draft version of the article “Uprooted” for New Internationalist, 19 May 2006.
[10] Interview with Fred Kizza by Timothy Byakola, December 2004.
[11] Interviews carried out at Mount Elgon by Timothy Byakola, December 2004.
[12] Telephone interview with Denis Slieker, Director FACE Foundation, by Chris Lang, 15 May 2006. Although he did not say so, Slieker is paraphrasing SGS’s Public Summary of its FSC Certification Report of the UWA-FACE project, which states: “A Social Impact Assessment was undertaken and written up in September 2000. It found that local people did not clearly distinguish between the impacts arising from the gazzettement [sic] of the National Park and activities of the project. On further investigation, no significant social impacts were caused by the project.” SGS (2002) “Mount Elgon National Park Forest Certification Public Summary Report“, SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) Forestry Qualifor Programme, Certificate number SGS-FM/COC- 0980, page 25. See Chapter 6 for a critique of the FSC certification.
[13] Cyprian Musoke (2004) “MPs set demands on Elgon Park land“, New Vision, 30 June, 2004.
[14] Interviews carried out at Mount Elgon by Timothy Byakola, December 2004.
[15] Nasur Wambedde (2002) “Evicted Wanale residents now live in caves, mosques“, New Vision, 15 April 2002.
[16] Interview by Timothy Byakola, December 2004.
[17] Action Aid (no date) “Benet community in Kapchorwa win landmark case against land rights abuse” and Action Aid (no date) “Benet win land rights battle“.
[18] SGS (2002) “Mount Elgon National Park Forest Certification Public Summary Report“, SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) Forestry Qualifor Programme, Certificate number SGS-FM/COC- 0980, page 9.
[19] Telephone interview with Niels Korthals Altes by Chris Lang, 12 May 2006.
[20] Niels Korthals Altes (GreenSeat) and Denis Slieker (FACE Foundation), “Comments on a draft version of the article ‘Uprooted’ for New Internationalist“, 17 May 2006.
[21] Niels Korthals Altes (GreenSeat) and Denis Slieker (FACE Foundation), “Comments on a draft version of the article ‘Uprooted’ for New Internationalist“, 17 May 2006.
[22] Niels Korthals Altes (GreenSeat) and Denis Slieker (FACE Foundation), “Comments on a draft version of the article ‘Uprooted’ for New Internationalist“, 17 May 2006.
[23] Telephone interview with Denis Slieker by Chris Lang, 15 May 2006.
[24] David Himmelfarb (2006) “Moving People, Moving Boundaries: The Socio-Economic Effects of Protectionist Conservation, Involuntary Resettlement and Tenure Insecurity on the Edge of Mt. Elgon National Park, Uganda“, Agroforestry in Landscape Mosaics Working Paper Series. World Agroforestry Centre, Tropical Resources Institute of Yale University, and The University of Georgia, page 16.
[25] Arthur Wamanga (2004) “45 Mbale park ‘encroachers’ detained“, New Vision, 4 February, 2004.
[26] Telephone interview with Denis Slieker by Chris Lang, 15 May 2006.
[27] E-mail from Ruud Bosgraaf (Press Officer Amnesty International Dutch Section) to Chris Lang, 16 May 2006.
chrislang.org 