wfn.org | NCC Staff Support Hondurans' Effort Against Illegal Logging

["Carol Fouke" <cfouke@ncccusa.org>]

For Immediate Release

NCC's Edgar, Kireopoulos Travel to Honduras to Support Effort Against Illegal
Logging

July 9, 2004, NEW YORK CITY b Two top staff of the National Council of
Churches USA were part of a delegation of prominent U.S. citizens that
accompanied a recent "March for Life" against illegal logging and related
corruption in Honduras and helped win a meeting between Father AndrC)s
Tamayo, who organized the march, and Honduran President Ricardo Maduro.

The Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, NCC General Secretary, and Dr. Tony Kireopoulos,
Associate General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace, spent June
30-July 2 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as part of the 10-member delegation
organized by the Center for International Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based
advocacy group.  (Web site: www.ciponline.org)

Other delegation members included American University Chaplain Joseph
Eldridge, chair of the Washington Office on Latin America; Allen Andersson,
prominent businessman and former Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras; actor and
human rights activist Mike Farrell; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former
lieutenant governor of Maryland, and Ambassador Robert E. White, President of
the Center for International Policy, who led the delegation.

"It's a good role for the NCC to join with organizations like the Center for
International Policy that are working from a secular point of view on justice
issues," Dr. Edgar said.  "We brought a pastoral word of concern.  We spoke
alongside actors, politicians and ambassadors, raising the moral issues." 

Drs. Edgar and Kireopoulos also met with staff of the ecumenical Christian
Commission on Development and with a larger group of Honduran church leaders
and members to discuss issues related to the U.S. delegation' visit,
including poverty, the environment and civic participation.

The focus of the "March for Life" was Olancho, Honduras' largest department
and home to a unique range of ecoystems.  This area slightly larger than New
Hampshire is one of the most environmentally threatened in the Americas. 
Uncontrolled logging has devastated the department's forests, poisoned
groundwater and caused water table levels to drop.  While an elite few profit
from the illegal logging, communities repeatedly are displaced in search of
arable land, further deepening Honduras' already extensive poverty.

The Center for International Policy is working with the Environmental
Movement of Olancho, which Father Tamayo leads, and the Committee of the
Families of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras to protect Honduran forests
and to take on the systemic corruption allowing the illegal ravaging to
continue.  Between 75 and 85 percent of hardwood (including premium-priced
mahogany) and up to 50 percent of pine is illegally harvested, an estimated
total of between $55 and $70 million a year.  

The 2004 "March for Life" started at four different points around Honduras
and converged in the capital city of Tegucigalpa on June 30.  The thousands
of marchers brought to the government their demands aimed at stopping illegal
logging by involving communities in the management of local timber reserves.

U.S. delegation members met with the marchers and other human rights and
environmental justice leaders, including Father Tamayo.  He "clearly cares
for his people and sees environmental degradation as an attack on the poor
and on creation," commented Dr. Kireopoulos.  "This issue is of pre-eminent
importance to the poor, who depend so much on the land and who are most at
risk and have suffered the most."
 
Addressing the marchers on behalf of the NCC, Dr. Kireopoulos declared that
"the dignity of the human being, the rights of every person, the well-being
of all people, and the environment are integrally linked, in the Christian
faith and in all faiths.  It is an honor to be with you to affirm this truth
and to support you in your search for justice."

In meetings, the U.S. delegation urged the Honduran President and Secretary
of State "to take this situation seriously and to meet with Father Tamayo. 
"We indicated that the future of Honduras from a point of view of justice and
legality and even business interests depends greatly on solving this issue,"
Dr. Kireopoulos said.	The meeting with the President lasted an hour.

Because of the international attention that was given to the delegation, the
President agreed to meet with Father Tamayo.  That meeting took place the
next day b especially significant since, following the first "March for
Life" in June 2003, a delegation led by Father Tamayo was turned away from
the Presidential Palace by a small army of anti-riot police, armed with
rubber truncheons, protective helmets and metal shields.

Honduran conservationists and human rights activists are at grave risk of
intimidation and even murder at the hands of those who sack the forests and
despoil the environment.  In the past few years, three Olancho
environmentalists have met violent deaths and others, including Father
Tamayo, are under constant threat.  

"I think our presence helped secure the life of Father Tamayo," said Joseph
Eldridge of American University/Washington Office on Latin America, "and it
certainly caught the attention of the President of the country and government
elites.  

"The NCC's presence also was a boost to the religious and other
non-governmental organizations who are trying to hold the government
accountable."	Given its dependence on foreign investment, Honduras is very
sensitive about its international reputation, Eldridge said, and thus
responsive to international pressure.

Besides the sort of solidarity action just completed, Eldridge said, "We need
to make the consuming public aware of conditions in which the pine and
hardwood is harvested.	There's a movement to label wood forest products and
raise the level of the consuming public on where these materials come from."

-end-

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