Rot in the rosewood trade
Illegal traffickers in Madagascar are accused of endangering the island’s rare hardwood species. But they remain beyond the reach of the law, writes
LLEGAL traffickers in Madagascar’s rare rosewood have become a law unto themselves. Rosewood has been protected by law since 2010, so no licences are issued to fell these and other rare indigenous trees of the rainforest. But, as Brice Lejamble from the Madagascar National System of Integrity office said in Antananarivo last month, the law is barely enforced.
The trees are falling at an alarming rate, which has increased since the government led by Andry Rajoelina seized power in a military coup in March 2009, conservationists say.
A group of conservation organisations, the Voahary Gasy Alliance, says between 2009 and 2011 about 13 500 hectares of rosewood trees were cut down in Masoala national park (about 100 000ha) and the Makira national park (about 371 000ha), in north-eastern Madagascar.
But many rosewoods also grow outside the national parks and it has been estimated that Madagascar has less than 9 percent of its original forest.
About 108 399 tons of rosewood was exported from Madagascar between January 2009 and March this year.
But the Malagasy Laundering Investigation Bureau (Samifin) believes the figure is much higher.
The journal Univers Maoré has written that one container of rosewood can generate a profit of $51 500 (R446 500). In July 2010 alone, 176 illegal containers filled with precious woods harvested within the Marojejy and Masoala national parks were confiscated at the Iharana shipping port.
The felling of the rosewoods hurts other dependent species, including Madagascar’s famed lemurs. Of 102 known lemur species, 91 percent are threatened. The report Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, 2012-2014 puts Madagascar at the top of the list with six of the 25 most endangered primates.
Attempts by conservationists to use the law to protect the rosewoods have so far failed.
In September 2009 Alliance Voahary Gasy asked the Supreme Court to order an investigation of illegal logging and the prosecution of the perpetrators. The alliance demanded they should be fined and the money used by the government to help protect the trees and poor communities.
The move prompted the Rajoelina government to issue a decree on March 24, 2010, prohibiting the exploitation, logging, transportation, trade and export of precious woods.
Conservationists say that decree and other government efforts have decreased trafficking. Warrants were issued against suspects and authorities seized some timber stocks. New national parks are being proclaimed.
But the gap between theory and practice is widening.
The Voahary Gasy Alliance believes the government used the 2010 decree to deflect its efforts to stop the traffickers.
In November 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that its application for a full investigation had become redundant because of the decree. But the Voahary Gasy Alliance said that left perpetrators unpunished and the Malagasy people uncompensated for the theft of their natural resources.
And the big fish like billionaire Mamy Ravatomanga are still getting off scot-free.
Several attempts have been made to bring him to justice for allegedly cutting and exporting rosewood. But so far he has eluded the law, while his accusers are harassed and charged by authorities on his behalf.
That’s because he is a close ally of Rajoelina and a sponsor of his government, according to conservationists and journalists, who are circulating an online petition to drum up support for a campaign to stop him destroying Madagascar’s lucrative rosewood.
Traditional leader and agricultural engineer Patrick Zakariasy publicly accused the “untouchable” Ravatomanga twice in recent press conferences in Antananarivo.
He also called for justice and the immediate deportation of foreigners involved in rosewood trafficking. He displayed allegedly falsified documents revealing that the Chineseowned company Mainland Mining had packed 1 252 pieces of rosewood and other rare Malagasy hardwoods, totalling nearly 300 tons, into 20 containers and shipped them to the Chinese port of Xingang in April.
Zakariasy said the company Sodiatrans, part of the Sodiat Group, of
Iwhich Ravatomanga is the chief executive, was the operator of the vessel Mol Symphony which carried the rosewood to China.
A report by the magazine Univers Maoré of June 2009 said more than 90 percent of illicit precious woods exported from Madagascar went to China, the world’s biggest consumer of tropical woods. The rest went mainly to Germany, France, Italy and the US.
Activists formally applied to the anti-corruption bureau to investigate what they called the “Chinese-Malagasy mafia network” revealed by Zakariasy.
So far nothing has happened to Ravatomanga and his cronies, but Zakariasy’s efforts have boomeranged. He is in jail awaiting trial for defaming and “propagating false news” about the businessman.
Former environment and forestry minister Joseph Rand-riamiarisoa suffered a similar fate. After being fired in April, he alleged at a press conference that Ravatomanga was behind the illegal trafficking of precious woods.
Ravatomanga laid charges against the minister and the journalists Rolland Andriam-ahenina, editor of the journal Gazety Tia Tanindrazana, and JE Radavidson, director of the bilingual journal Madagascar Laza, who reported his accusation. This was followed in the capital by street rallies in May that the police repressed.
In July police raided the studios of the privately owned radio station Free FM and closed it. Though the station’s investigative journalists, Lalatiana Rakotondrazafy and Fidèle Razara Pierre, were a thorn in the side of the Rajoelina government – and many others – on various issues, they had also reported on the rosewood-trafficking charges against Ravatomanga. The two journalists and another colleague went into hiding and then to the South African embassy in Antananarivo, where ambassador Gert Grobler gave them refuge in his official residence for two months until the government agreed not to arrest or otherwise harass them.
Since then Rakotondrazafy and Pierre have been charged with defamation and false reporting against Ravatomanga.
South Africa and other governments regard this charge as a breach of the Malagasy government’s agreement not to harass the journalists – as well as a violation of the internationally brokered political deal signed in September last year which respects freedom of the press.
They persuaded UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay to demand that the government probe the alleged violation of the journalists’ rights, but there is no sign she has been taken seriously.
In March former president Albert Zafy, now in opposition, announced he had written to Prime Minister Omer Beriziky, all the country’s public prosecutors, all regional authorities including mayors, as well as the UN, the Southern African Development Community and all the foreign ambassadors in Antananarivo, accusing Rajoelina and his clique of hardwood trafficking.
“I demanded some paid spaces in local journals to publish the letter. But they refused to take the publicity when they saw the names cited,” he said.
The illegal logging also hurts the country economically. The fiscus is deriving nothing from an inherently criminal business.
Conservation International Madagascar estimated the annual cost of running the existing protected areas at $23m, while their potential direct revenues – including donations, tourism concessions, national parks entrance fees and taxes – is nearly $15m a year.
The indirect revenue generated by tourists elsewhere in Madagascar would be much higher. The international community values Madagascar’s unique flora and fauna and is prepared to help pay to save it.
The World Bank alone allocated $150m to fund the implementation of the third phase of the national environmental action plan.
When the country was experiencing instability due to the coup, the bank approved a further $52m in June 2010 for the protection of 30 national parks. But international donations will have no effect if the Malagasy authorities don’t show the will to stop the destruction of natural resources. – Independent Foreign Service