Word: timber
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...reason for the fighting in Chechnya is, pure and simple, control of an oil supply line critical to the economy of Russia. Russia relies heavily on its exports of natural resources such as oil and timber to bring in hard currency from the West. It needs these resources if it is to have any hope of rebuilding its economy and maintaining its fragile democracy. The independence issue is a backdrop to what Yeltsin reckons to be the higher national interest of preserving the oil supply and thus preserving any progress made by the new democratic Russia. Isn't Yeltsin merely...
...Timber...
...officials were receptive in August 1993 when an Indonesian investment group named N.V. MUSA Indo-Suriname asked to buy the rights to Suriname's trees. Cash-starved regimes are fond of selling timber concessions because they can put money in a treasury at little immediate cost to the government, while other industries can take years to produce results. Timber operations often ultimately drain more money than they yield by burdening a nation's infrastructure and degrading precious natural assets, but it is easy for a sitting government to ignore these costs because they become a problem only for subsequent administrations...
...MUSA group boldly asked for timber rights to more than 15 million acres of Suriname, nearly one-third of the country. The Venetiaan administration avoided a messy political debate by instead granting a smaller concession of 375,000 acres near the Guyana border. MUSA then began logging without specifying how it will abide by Suriname's strict forestry code. Experts claim that the only profitable way to harvest MUSA's particular stretch of rain forest would be to clear-cut the region, leaving behind a wasteland. Other Asian interests have also put in timber bids. The Malaysian investment group Berjaya...
...million acres in the country's northwest. When voters elected former Marxist Cheddi Jagan as President in 1992, Guyanese conservationists urged him to revoke that concession; instead Jagan toured Southeast Asia at Barama's expense, and his government is considering bids that would put roughly 75% of Guyana's timber under foreign control...