cost
of the
The business
of carbon
neutrality
is booming.
But how
fair is the
trade?
by anna sussman
Early one morning in 1993,
Wilson Turinawe woke up to the crack of gunfire in Uganda’s Kibale National
Park. Paramilitary park rangers were attacking his village. His thatched hut
was set on fire. His wife grabbed their infant child and ran. Turinawe was
slashed with a machete. He still has the scars. “They came with guns,” he
recalls, with a disbelief in his voice that suggests the episode might have
taken place just yesterday instead of fifteen years ago. “Everything of my
household was burned. A radio cassette, a bicycle, and even food that I had
just got from my gardens was all burned down.”
Turinawe is one of 30,000 villagers who have been kicked out of their homes
in Uganda’s Kibale National Park to make way for a massive, 86,000-acre treeplanting project. The trouble, Turinawe says, actually started 4,000 miles away in
Europe, where businesses have been giving money to the Forest Absorbing >>>
Reforestation initiatives around Kibale National Park extend beyond that
of the FACE Foundation and include youth education projects.
84 | february-march 2008