Protestors told “no legal grounds” to halt Bai Shan Lin’s operations

Aug 16, 2014 News

The Environmental Community Health Organisation (ECHO) staged its second protest against Bai Shan Lin, this time taking it outside the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC)’s compound at Kingston yesterday.

This call for an investigation into the logging activities of the Chinese-owned company is grounded in the fact that the company appears to be posing environmental risks to Guyana with its exploitive logging activities.

According to ECHO’s Executive Director, Royston King, Bai Shan Lin’s operations should be put to a “halt”, until proper investigations are carried out by the GFC, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and other relevant bodies.

There are questions over the extent of the logging activities of the company across the country and how it acquired the many concessions.

About one hour into the protest, officials of GFC invited members of ECHO to their conference room, to address the group’s concerns.

GFC’s Corporate Secretary and lawyer, Jaci Archibald; Head of Forest Monitoring Division, Tasreef Khan; Head of Plan and Development, Pradeepa Bholanauth and the Head of the Finance Division, Edward Goberdhan, were present.

One concern raised by ECHO member, Eon Andrews, was the legality and details of GFC’s contract with Bai Shan Lin. Andrews made it clear that the contract should be made public by the Commission, so as to ensure the company is operating in accordance with “good governance of Guyana’s natural resources.”

The details of the contract, he said, would produce enough information on the company’s operations, to clear any fears of illegal logging, exploitation, and unfair practices.

In response to this issue, Archibald made it clear that the public can only have access to the requested information “writing to the Commissioner of Forestry” for its release. He said GFC will not release the agreement until that is done.

“GFC has nothing to hide with regards to Bai Shan Lin’s contract”, the lawyer insisted.

“As a matter of fact, the company’s operations cannot be halted, since no legal grounds were established to do so.” Bai Shan Lin, he claimed, has maintained their “contractual legal limit”, in terms of extracting timber from Guyana.

Another concern raised by ECHO member, Penda Guyan, was the level of local deforestation by Bai Shan Lin. She said the Chinese company is creating “dust bowls” which contribute to global warming.

However, Archibald in his response said that audits by several international agencies found “no form of destruction” to Guyana’s forest. He said that Bai Shan Lin is bound by the system laid out in their contract – to conduct logging operations in a conservative manner.

Commenting on the issue, Bholanauth explained that auditing takes place under Guyana’s Norwegian agreement. She said that annual reports must be submitted to Norwegian authorities concerning national levels of deforestation.

She noted that GFC has invested in services from international satellites, to scan the amount of continuous blocks of one hectare of forest, and also compute the amount of broken hectares of forest present in Guyana.

In the 2012 national report, Guyana recorded a loss of 240 hectares cleared out of the 21 million hectares of local forest.

Bholanauth said that Norway deploys an independent auditor to Guyana to scrutinize GFC’s annual report. She noted that all reports were confirmed to be accurate, and the system purchased to continually monitor deforestation is legitimately correct and internationally credible.

She also mentioned international field-based monitoring and audits from third parties which also take place.

Khan in his address to ECHO said that the company has to act in accordance with GFC’s regulation of “selective logging.”

The GFC officials noted that if any company were violating regulations, it would have been discovered, with the necessary actions taken.GFC said it knows of no recent violations.