For Love and Freedom on Clean Mother-Earth! _______________________________________________________________ !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! ! ! !!!!! !!!!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! !!! ! ! ! ! ! !!! !!! !!! ! ! ! !!!!! !!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! ! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! ! !!!!! ! ! !!!!! !!!!! ! _______________________________________________________________ "ECODEFENSE!inform" environmental inform-bulletin * number 31 * _______________________________________________________________ ...............................................* OCTOBER 1994 * _______________________________________________________________ "ECODEFENSE!" Moskovsky prospekt 120-34 236006 Kaliningrad/Koenigsberg Russia telephone +7 0112 437286 E-mail: ecodefense@glas.apc.org _______________________________________________________________ BALTIC SEA REGION ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS BULLETIN _______________________________________________________________ CONTENT Attention THE REMNANS OF NATURAL FORESTS IN FINLAND ARE IN DANGER! SAVE ALL REMAINING OLD-GROWTH FORESTS Book BIESZCZADY MOUNTAIN GUIDE BOOK Politic POLAND COUNTS ON GERMAN SUPPORT FOR HER ENTRY TO EU AND NATO Agriculture POLAND'S CONSERVATIVE AGRICULTURE _______________________________________________________________ ACTION ALERT! URGENT! URGENT! URGENT! A REQUEST FOR HELP! _______________________________________________________________ THE REMNANTS OF NATURAL FORESTS IN FINLAND ARE IN DANGER! A programme for the conservation of the last old-growth forests is under construction in Finland. This programme needs international support from organizations and activists all over the world. Especially in those countries which import the bulk of our forestry products: Germany, England, France, Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Belgium and United States among others. The following days are critical. Without this programme these forests will vanish totally during the next 5-10 years. National board of forestry tries to minimize all protection zones. Please, send a fax to our Goverment as soon as possible! Now!!! Spread the word to other activists, mailing lists, newsgroups and NGOs! Act in 24 hours from the moment you read this. The fax number for the Finnish Government is +358-0-160 2099. (That is int. code+three-five-eight-zero-one-six-zero-two-zero -nine-nine.) You can use the following text or make your own. Add your personal / national point of view regarding this issue! =============================================================== To the Government of Finland SAVE ALL REMAINING OLD-GROWTH FORESTS! The overall forest protection situation in Finland is far from sufficient. Only 2.1% of forest land is under any kind of legal protection. In the southern part of Finland the percentage is even smaller. The proposed Conservation Programme for Old-Growth Forests on state-owned lands in southern part of Finland will at its best raise this figure from 0.38 to only 0.53% in the Programme area Even this minimal proposal faces a danger of rejection. The Programme must be immediately implemented at least in its proposed coverage Many natural forests were left out purely for political reasons. They have to become included in the Programme.There are also large areas which haven't been sufficiently surveyed. The ecological importance of forests in these areas must be throughoutly examined before any forestry activities are put into practice. The Programme area must be extended much further up north as well. The Government of Finland has to ensure that sufficient finance is allocated to the protection of private-owned old- growth forests. A programme covering these lands must be formulated immediately. Short sighted cuttings in money used for buying nature protection areas can not be explained by depression. Finland has as one of the signatories of the Rio-treaty on biodiversity an obligation to conserve the biodiversity within its borders as well as elsewhere. Signature and organisation --------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. Please, let us know when and how you have done your part for this request, e-mail to us or send a fax. We'll provide further information. Jarmo Pyykko and Matti Ikonen Finnish Forest Action Let the Forests Live! Fax: +358-0-131 14 216 Tel: +358-0-131 14 220 E-mail: Matti.Ikonen@hut.fi _______________________________________________________________ BIESZCZADY MOUNTAIN QUIDE BOOK KROSNO, oct. 17: a guide book to the Bieszczady mountains for americans written by two u.s. citizens, Kirk Henwood and Joe Boglino, will come out still this year. The Bieszczady mountains, the most remote region of this country, are situated in south-eastern poland. The fauna of the region includes bison bonasus (aurochs), brown bear, wildcat, lynx, wild boar and deer. The national park was established there in 1973 to preserve the wildlife of the Bieszczady mountains. Shepherding, forestry and tourism are of importance in the region. Henwood and Boglino, volunteers of the peace corpse, have been staying in poland for a few years. Numerous visits paid to the Bieszczdy mountains made them write the guide book to present the region to foreign tourists. PAP _______________________________________________________________ POLAND COUNTS ON GERMAN SUPPORT FOR HER ENTRY TO EU AND NATO Warsaw, oct. 17: following the victory of the coalition of chancellor Helmut Kohl in the german elections, Poland is eager to continue polish-german cooperation and to receive further german support for membership of the European Union and NATO, reads a communique forwarded by the polish foreign ministry to PAP on monday. The victory of the coalition of Helmut Kohl means that at a moment of great significance for both europe and the world, german will continue to be lead by the same team. "We trust that this team will continue and further develop the partnership and the mutually beneficial cooperation between our countries. We are counting on the further active support of germany for our efforts to enter into the structures of the European Union and NATO," reads the communique. The foreign ministry also expressed the conviction that "in matters so important for both countries and also for european unification there will be a consensus among the ruling coalition and the opposition groupings which have arisen in result of the elections." PAP _______________________________________________________________ POLAND'S CONSERVATIVE AGRICULTURE by Piotr Andrzejewski " Poland must not stand still while the world moves ahead. If it does, it will be pushed to the margin of civilisation. The prosperity of Polish farmers will be determined by their competitions, French, Danish or German, not by bureaucrats. It is the competitors our farmers will have to stand up to", warned president Lech Walesa during the harvest celebration ceremony in Czestochowa. The president's statement cannot be accepted without reservations. The competitors are not missing their chance, no doubt, but whether our agriculture can withstand their onslaught depends largely on "bureaucratic decisions" otherwise known as the agricultural policy. It would be naive to expect that the pace of structural changes in our agriculture will be comparable to the pace at which the EC countries restructured their agricultural sectors. The pattern of the Polish agriculture is fundamentally different from those of highly industrialised West European economies [...]. Farms with less that 10 hectare holdings account for 57% of the farmland held by private owners, against Denmark's 18%, France's 30% and Germany's 47%. Agriculture accounts for more than 25% of the national employment in Poland, several times more than in Denmark (5.3%), France (6.7%) or Germany (3.3%). Our agriculture is overpopulated, with pronounced regional differences in by-farm-size patterns. In 15 western and northern voivodships, over 50% of farmland is held by large farms created from the former PGR state-owned farming enterprises. Overpopulation and hidden unemployment, far from being the disease of peasant farms alone, are also troubling state-owned farms. Now that former PGR enterprises are reducing employment under reform schemes, farming is incapable of absorbing in full the supply of rural labour which is several times higher than in the European Union countries. In fact, over-employment was an important cause of large state-owned farms' dismal profit performance and of their collapse in the wake of the de-regulation of the agricultural sector and the withdrawal of budget subsidies. Poland's grain yield per hectare is between 28 and 30 quintals [100 kg], against France's 60 quintals and Germany's 50 quintals. Low labour productivity on most Polish farms means low incomes. It is estimated that about 1.5 million farms (70% of the entire farm population) generate unemployment-benefit-level incomes. The state-owned and cooperative farms are not better off. In 1992, only 30% of the PGR enterprises could afford to proceed with their usual business without major jolts. Last year, nearly all public-sector farms reported losses. Cooperative farms are also in severely strained circumstances, particularly those which have not branched out into non-farm business. "Report on Agriculture", a document released early this year, estimates than only 30% of the Polish farms have adequate production potentials to adjust to market economy requirements and that simple replacement of assets is the best the majority can attempt to achieve. Only one-third of the farms, the strongest ones, have expanded their production potentials. The overall condition of the national economy doesn't offer farmers opportunities for moving into non-farm jobs, or migrating to towns. The farming sector's 1993 indebtedness stood at Zl 21 trillion, of which private farmers' debts added up to Zl 9.5 trillion. Interests arrears totalled Zl 400 billion. This year agriculture will receive Zl 60 trillion of budget money, nearly 10% of the total budget expenditure. Subsidies to low-interest farming loans and loan-servicing institutions (including the Agricultural Market Agency whose performance has aroused much contro versy and the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture) exceed Zl 5 trillion. (to be concluded in next issue) _______________________________________________________________ *************************************************************** ECODEFENSE!inform bulletins get more than 150 env.NGOs of EARTH *************************************************************** Editorial Board thanks for financial help from "Sowing the Seeds of Democracy: A project for Environmental Grant-Making in tha NIS" program, which realize by ISAR. *************************************************************** The reprint are welcome (with the reference, if possible). *************************************************************** Editorial Board: Alexandra Koroleva, Vladimir Sliviak ***************************************************************