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World Wildlife Fund
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 8, 2003
12:40 PM
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CONTACT:
World
Wildlife Fund
Jan Vertefeuille, 202-861-8362
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International Banks Contributing to Destruction of Key
Rainforest, WWF Report Shows
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| WASHINGTON
- April 8 - Private banks and taxpayer-supported government agencies
in Europe and the United States are financing the destruction
of one of the most biodiverse forests known to science, jeopardizing
endangered Sumatran elephants and wiping out one of Indonesia's
last significant rainforests, a study by World Wildlife Fund finds.
According to
the WWF report, "Elephant Forests On Sale," financial institutions
such as the UK's Barclays Bank and the German Deutsche Bank, as
well as export credit agencies from around the world, share responsibility
for the destruction, having issued loans and guarantees to help
finance two giant pulp mills on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
The Sumatran
forest of Tesso Nilo, which is being consumed by the pulp mills,
contains more plant species per area tested than any forest ever
studied, including the Amazon, a WWF study discovered last year.
Tesso Nilo is the focus of an effort by WWF and local groups to
preserve it as a refuge for Sumatran elephants, which are forced
to wander continously in search of food and shelter as their forest
home disappears. Increasingly, the elephants are being captured
or killed as they raid crops in search of food and create significant
economic loss for farmers.
Export credit
agencies in Europe, Asia and the United States - government agencies
charged with encouraging overseas investment by domestic companies
- have made loans to help underwrite massive pulp mills near Tesso
Nilo and to fund the replacement of natural forest with plantations,
both to feed the mills and to produce palm oil. The new WWF study
shows that since the mid-1980s, 64 percent, or 778,000 acres,
of the Tesso Nilo forest has been converted into vast industrial
plantations. The raw materials produced on these plantations end
up as photocopying paper, cartons, margarine and sweets in offices
and households worldwide.
"To meet the
enormous demand for wood, paper pulp and palm oil, Tesso Nilo
and its surrounding rainforests are being shredded to bits," said
Dr. Mubariq Ahmad, CEO of WWF-Indonesia. "We urge businesses in
consumer countries to sell only those products for which elephants
do not need to die and help Indonesian industries to adopt sustainable
practices."
WWF is negotiating
with international paper and pulp businesses - both the producers
and buyers of Tesso Nilo products - to stop the ongoing destruction
of an additional 988,000 acres of neighboring rainforests. However,
many financial institutions were not able to come up with satisfactory
decisions on the debt restructuring for Asia Pulp and Paper, owner
of one of the two giant mills in the region now in bankruptcy.
As a result, WWF has called on all negotiating parties to tie
any debt repayment agreement to environmental conditions that
will not allow anymore of Sumatra's high conservation value forests
to be destroyed.
WWF is also
working with Indonesian authorities to ensure the designation
of Tesso Nilo as a national park. Tesso Nilo is located between
three areas that already have protected status. WWF is proposing
that these be linked to the planned Tesso Nilo National Park and
to each other by wildlife corridors. In this way, a protected
area of 1.5 million acres could evolve in which the resident animals,
such as elephants, could move freely again without creating conflicts
with people. The World Bank estimates that if current rates of
clearcutting continue, all of Sumatra's lowland rainforests will
be gone by 2005.
"WWF is calling
on banks and export credit agencies involved in Tesso Nilo to
use their leverage as creditors and investors to halt the destruction
of the rainforest and to develop strict investment screens to
avoid destructive investments in the future," said Tom Dillon,
director of WWF's U.S. program to protect the endangered Sumatran
elephant.
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