http://allafrica.com/stories/200808080580.html

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

8 August 2008
Posted to the web 8 August 2008

Michael Deibert
New York

While conflict diamonds or blood diamonds, as they are known, have gained attention the world over in terms of the role illicit gems play in fuelling warfare, the role that the timber trade has played in abetting conflict has received considerably less consideration. That may be beginning to change
The world over, though particularly in West Africa, both legal and illegal commerce in timber has played a substantial role in the enabling of conflicts in countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The ruin globally wreaked on forests is having wide-ranging consequences

According to the 2007 World Bank report "At Loggerheads: Agricultural Expansion, Poverty Reduction, and Environment in the Tropical Forests", nearly 70 million people-many from an indigenous background -live in remote areas of closed tropical forests, while an additional 735 million live in or near trop¬ical forests and savannas. Both groups rely heavily on forested areas for fuel, food and income.

...

Stepping into this contentious landscape, Helveta, a firm based in the United Kingdom, is marketing software that it says will help regularise the fragmented supply chain for timber. It should also lessen the risk for companies of purchasing wood that has been illegally procured.

"The best way to improve transparency is to make sure that everyone has the same view of the same data at the same time," says Patrick Newton, Helveta's CEO. "Our focus has been very much to engage with nation states on governance issues, but also with local communities to make sure that transparency is embedded in our process."

Helveta works in tandem with such bodies as the Liberian Forestry Development Agency and the International Tropical Timber Organisation in Côte d'Ivoire. Using its control intelligence system (CIS), trees are catalogued and tagged with numbers entered into a computer system hosted in the UK.

"It gives (local residents) a tool to prove their occupation of the forest," says Jerome Lewis, a professor of social anthropology at University College London and a consultant working with Helveta to develop the software. Lewis has worked with Mbendjele Pygmies in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) since 1994.

"They can prove to outsiders that they live and use and depend on the forest," Lewis explains.

...

United Nations Security Council sanctions against the Liberian timber industry were finally lifted in 2006. Under the government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - Africa's first elected female head of state - the nation has begun to emerge from more than a decade of civil war.

"Timber has played an important role in fuelling the conflict here and the government is keen to implement a system where timber can help aid the reconstruction of the country," according to Thomas Pichet, Liberia country manager with SGS, a verification, testing and certification company that is overseeing the implementation of the CIS.

Despite the progress, though, some observers contend that much remains to be done.

 ...

 The potential for these kinds of IT-based timber tracking systems is good, but the humans that push the buttons are the same humans that fill in the paper-based forms or stand at the roadblocks now," says David Young, who oversees the independent forest monitoring project at Global Witness.

"There is a risk that they might be very good on the technical side but don't put the same effort towards political problems, which won't necessarily produce the right results."

Aug 8th 2008
From Economist.com

A war between Russia and Georgia appears to be under way

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11909324&fsrc=RSS 

GEORGIAN soldiers, tanks and fighter-planes struck Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway (Russian-backed) region of South Ossetia, on Friday August 8th. Parts of the city were reported to be burning as Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that his forces had "freed" much of the area from separatist control.

The immediate cause of the fighting is unclear as claim and counterclaim abound. But what is clear is that a conflict which has been simmering for years, has at last erupted. What happens next will depend almost entirely on Russia's response: 150 Russian tanks were reported to be entering South Ossetia on Friday. Georgia's government says that Russian planes have dropped bombs outside of South Ossetia including on the edge of Tblisi, the Georgian capital. Alexander Lomaia, the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, told The Economist on Friday that "this is an open military aggression and we are now at the state of undeclared war with Russia. What else could you call it?". He also said that Georgia had announced a ceasefire in South Ossetia from 3pm on Friday.

... 

Mr Putin may also want to deal with Georgia in good time before Russia hosts 2014 winter Olympic games in Sochi, a Black-sea resort town only few miles from the Abkhaz border. A military conflict in Georgia will also derail for a long time Georgia's aspiration to join NATO---something that Russian finds deeply unpalatable.

Russia's broader aim may be to try to roll back the advance of pro-Western forces in its "near abroad" by highlighting the West's inability to help Georgia. The hotting up of Georgia's conflicts coincided with Kosovo's declaration of independence, recognised by much of the West, and American pressure for the expansion of NATO to Georgia and Ukraine. That move has been stymied, mainly by Germany; Georgia was promised eventual NATO membership but no firm plan. Though Georgia has become a vital corridor for oil and gas exports to Europe, this has not brought the support that its leaders had expected. A lame-duck American administration has been able to do little, though Georgians hope a presidential-election victory by John McCain, an ardent supporter, may change their fortunes. The country's strong-willed and idiosyncratic president, Mr Saakashvili, is not seen by all European leaders as quite the paragon of legality, freedom and reform that he claims to be. Georgia's image was severely dented in November last year by a crackdown against the opposition.