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Suriname Crisis Illustrates Global Threat to Biodiversity
by Russell A. Mittermeier, President, and Ian Bowles, Vice President for Policy, Conservation International, 1015 18th Street, NW, Suite 1000, Washington DC 20036.
As some 1,000 government officials met in Jakarta, Indonesia last month for the second Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, they could have pointed to the small South American country of Suriname to illustrate a trend that is a very real threat to global biological resources. Suriname is facing a critical decision that will determine the fate of one of the largest unbroken stretches of tropical rain forests on earth. The choice it faces is whether to pursue long-term economic development that uses its natural resources in an environmentally sound manner, or sell off its assets to foreign loggers for a small amount of short-term cash. What is taking place in Suriname is indicative of a disturbing predatory pattern emerging from certain wealthy or rapidly developing nations that have cut down much of their own forests or never had much to begin with. They are moving in on economically vulnerable but biologically very rich tropical countries. As Indonesian and Malaysian logging companies seek major logging concessions in Suriname, another Indonesian timber company just landed a 3.7 million acre concession in Cambodia. A Malaysian company is after a large concession in Belize. A Korean company has a 9.9 million acre concession in Guyana. And a Taiwanese firm unsuccessfully sought a major concession in Nicaragua not long ago. The crisis in Suriname reveals what is at stake, and also offers hope for turning the tide of rainforest destruction.
Since gaining independence from the Dutch, Suriname has been in virtual political isolation, and today it is economically poor. Yet this country's natural riches can be the basis of a wealthy and sustainable economy. About the size of New England, Suriname claims the highest remaining percentage of tropical rain forest of any country on earth, at 90 percent. Most of the country's 400,000 people live in the capital Paramaribo and coastal towns, with small populations of native Amerindians and unique cultures of African origin maintaining traditional, ecologically sustainable lifestyles in the forest of the interior. This leaves the vast expanse of forest largely undisturbed and a clean slate for real sustainable development.
Suriname may never get the chance to pursue this course, however, if logging companies tear down huge tracts of forest. The concessions currently sought could wipe out a quarter of the country's forest in 25 years, and probably much sooner. Suriname's government reduced the original request from covering almost half the country, and may reject one proposal outright. The two remaining concessions are sought by Malaysian and Indonesian companies with track records that don't inspire much confidence for environmental protection or tribal people's human rights. This reputation led to one of the companies being expelled recently from Makira in the Solomon Islands. The bulldozers were subsequently shipped to Suriname.
Suriname is a microcosm of the wealth of resources throughout the New World tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean. Combined, the Neotropical region occupies only 16 % of the earth's land surface, and is home to only 8 percent of the world population. Yet it claims an extremely high percentage of the world totals for nearly all groups of living things: 37% of the reptiles, 47% of the amphibians; 27% of the mammals; 43% of the birds; and 34% of percent of the flowering plants (CI data). Forest resources in the Neotropics total 426 tons per capita, compared to 36 tons per capita for Asia, 145 tons per capita for Africa, and 121 tons per capita worldwide. Suriname tops out at an astonishing 9196 tons per capita (CI data).
In terms of lands and development, these biological riches offer an enormous global competitive advantage, particularly in tourism, non-timber forest products, and bioprospecting. Nature tourism is a booming worldwide industry, generating up to billion annually. According to the Minister-Counselor for Trade and Tourism, tourism brings in $600 million a year for Costa Rica, and is expected to bring in $1 billion within three years. Suriname, richer in forests and one of the first to offer rain forest tourism in the 1970's, makes at most $2 million a year from tourism today (CI data).
Bioprospecting, the search for medicines and other natural ingredients from the forest, is emerging as an important international industry. In Suriname, a significant bioprospecting venture is already underway. In an agreement arranged by Conservation International, with support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Suriname's government, local people and a Suriname pharmaceutical company are working with the U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers-Squibb. The agreement provides local people with royalties and patent rights, as well as employment and a small grants fund for immediate benefits. In turn, local people's knowledge of the rain forest helps in the search for medicinal plants. Royalties from one new plant-derived drug would dwarf revenues of all the foreign concessions combined, without taking down a single tree.
Carbon offset agreements offer another alternative to logging, with northern utilities paying tropical countries for reforestation or to maintain forests to offset carbon emissions. In Costa Rica these are taking place through Joint Implementation, a concept stemming from the Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in RÃo de Janeiro. Under the convention, more than 100 countries committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Compare this to the proceeds from a 370,500 acre concession held by one of Indonesia's companies requesting a new 2.47 million acre concession. Since the latter part of 1993, the net proceeds to Suriname from this concession has been an absurd total of $700.
Several of Suriname's Parliamentarians met recently with Costa Rican President Jose Figueres Olsen to learn about Costa Rica's success with tourism, bioprospecting, and joint implementation of carbon offset agreements. Figueres urged the Surinamers not to undervalue themselves and their nation's resources.
For sustainable development to truly take hold worldwide, especially in economically poor countries like Suriname, leading industrialized nations must assume more responsibility. In Suriname, the InterAmerican Development Bank reportedly is offering up to $30 million in funds to promote sustainable development projects as alternatives to the logging concessions-and other offers are on the table. Suriname's government, however, has been slow to respond.
Suriname is fortunate to have no population pressures, vast natural resources, and a great variety of sustainable economic alternatives. Will it choose to sell itself short, like so many other tropical countries, or instead become a model for a new kind of sustainable development? For years, Suriname was barely known to most of the world. Now it has been thrust into an international spotlight, and the global community anxiously awaits its decision.
