Comm: "In the legends of the Guarani Indians of South America, many trees in the rainforest were once human beings. Beautiful young girls, brave hunters and wise old men who used to talk to the ordinary mortals, sometimes giving them good advice. This is a story about trees: trees that protect sources of fresh water, trees that provide food, nuts and fruits and remedies to cure sicknesses. Trees that shelter and protect that are part of peoples' lives to be honoured and revered.

"Many of our forests have been cut down, and this process has speeded up over the past two or three decades. In developing countries the forests that remain are under threat on all sides. Although forests play a crucial role on our planet they have no price tag and so they continue to be felled, despite the warnings, destroying man and other animals, and diminishing the planet's biodiversity before we have even had time to study it.

"Many forests are being replaced by these trees, the pulp trees. Mainly pine and eucalyptus, and they will end up as paper. Boosted by agro-chemicals and harvested every few years, they have been bred to grow as fast and straight as possible. Very little grows round them or under them.

"We need wood for many things, not just for paper, but these tree plantations are no replacement for forests and should not be confused with them. The Amazon Rainforest is well-known for its biodiversity, for the fires that rage in it and for the rate at which it's being felled.

"But there's another kind of rainforest in central South America which is nearly as important in terms of its biodiversity. Its name is Inner Atlantic Rainforest, and though most of it has already been destroyed, a new project involving three countries is making a serious attempt to protect and expand what is left.

"This subtropical forest until 4 or 5 decades ago covered a vast area the size of Egypt, more than a million square kilometres. It stretched across half of Paraguay, through the Argentinian province of Misiones, and a large part of southern Brazil. Today only 6 percent of it is left. The Atlantic Rainforest has been suffering from degradation ever since colonial times, since the 16th Century. The first exploitation of the rainforest in Brazil was of the Atlantic Rainforest and the forests began to be felled in those times to send timber to Europe.

"Brazil's largest cities are all on the Atlantic coast where the rainforest was. The Atlantic Rainforest is extremely important for its effects on the Brazilian climate and for the rare species which live only in this type of rainforest Where the River Iguaz enters the River Paran, we are at the heart of the remaining protected Atlantic Rainforest. Here, facing each other over the river, lie three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Following the Iguaz upriver, we reach the great falls: Iguaz is a Guarani word meaning 'great waters'. The falls are the centrepiece of two national parks. The voices of a new breed of committed national park managers can now be increasingly heard in the conservation debate."

Apolonio de Sousa, Brazilian Environmental Institute IBAMA: "We are in the Brazilian National Park which has an area of 185.262 hectares. It borders on the Argentinian National Park. When you add both together, we've got almost 250,000 hectares."

Comm: "The Inner Atlantic Rainforest has been declared one of the world's twenty five most endangered eco-systems, a 'hot spot' that requires a major global effort to save what remains of it. In Paraguay, if the destruction continues at today's rate, the last native tree will fall in 23 years time. On the Paraguayan side of the Atlantic Rainforest triangle, the local mayor is backing conservation."

Gregorio Areco, Mayor of Presidente Franco, Paraguay: "We are now at the spot which we intend to re-convert into a national park, into a native forest with our re-forestation plan. It's an area of 4,000 hectares in the zone of national parks which surround the Iguaz Falls. We also want to make our own contribution to that. Why? Because we still have 150 indigenous families living here and they need this forest back. We need it for these people.

"Our exact plan is that this shall be declared a 'protected area', that the Paraguayan government, there is a project in parliament at the moment which would declare all this a 'protected area' and these soya fields would disappear. Sure, they are productive, but you can't ignore the ecological aspect."

Comm: "When forests are cut down, the indigenous peoples lose everything: their source of food, their culture and their way of life.

"These peoples have always cultivated their jungle vegetable plots 'organically', without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Their understanding of 'ecology' is part of their spiritual vision of the cosmos.

"Guarani children are beginning to learn the White Man's culture at the brand new school. Can't we learn from the indigenous people how to preserve what's left of the forests, using the forests' resources without destroying them?"

Edgar Duarte, of Paraguayan NGO Alter Vida: "We are looking at a typical riverine forest which, in the case of the River Paran and its tributaries, is fundamental for the preservation of the rivers. These rivers are characteristically short, turbulent and very deep. So the survival of these rivers is closely linked to the forests. When these are cut down, when they are felled, then the rivers become silted up.

"The eroded soil falls into them, the river bed rises and, eventually, the rivers disappear, something which has already happened to a lot of the rivers here in the eastern half of the country.

"The purity of the water depends a great deal on tree cover. It's the forest which protects the rivers from pollution by toxic agents which affect them. Large-scale agricultural exploitation in Brazil has a very damaging effect on rivers. Adequate soil conservation techniques are hardly ever used in agricultural areas so the agro-chemicals run off into rivers, together with eroded soil. This causes rivers to silt up and is also causing a lot of the flooding we are getting these days."

PART TWO

Comm: "There are many causes of deforestation and logging is mostly to blame. A combination of human greed, poor controls and non-existent law enforcement makes matters worse. Forests are also felled to make way for villages, roads and agriculture."

Edgar Duarte: "Then there's the deforestation carried out by the large cattle-ranchers - a very wasteful use of land. In one place in Paraguay, 2 and a half hectares of forest are felled to provide grazing for a single cow. That's an appallingly wasteful use of our soil, of our territory, and the end result is the loss of our native forests.

"Today in eastern Paraguay, we have less than 10 per cent left of our native forest cover and this is creating a great ecological imbalance which is being felt more and more in changes in climate, in rainfall patterns, which in turn influence our agriculture and cattle-raising which are the two main economic activities.

"Before, in our culture, especially when the eastern part of Paraguay, where we are now, was being opened up to settlers, the forest was considered 'a green 'hell' and the message which was given out to settlers was that they must 'fight to vanquish the green hell and conquer the untamed wilderness'. And this was the example that was put about during the 60s and 70s and that's what's caused this whole disaster which we are seeing now in eastern Paraguay."

Comm: "This 'conquer the forces of nature' mentality explains, in part, the building of the Latin American mega-dams. The largest of them all is Itaip, on the River Paran. The artificial lake it created covers 1,500 square kilometres, most of which was once Atlantic forest. Itaip was the most expensive of the mega-dams and the source of the greatest corruption scandals but it was not the last. These mega-dams have played havoc with forests and forest-dwelling peoples.

"When Itaip was opened in 1982, sample species of fauna were rescued and 5 biological reserves were created to give them refuge. These represent about one third of the flooded area.

"The final threat to forests are industrial-scale mono-cultures. Forests are felled to plant soya beans. Forests are felled to plant pines and eucalyptus, the 'pulp trees' .... Here in Misiones, plantations have replaced forests on all sides. Generous government subsidies make planting pulp trees commercially attractive. And it makes good business sense for paper manufacturers who can profit from the increasing world-wide demand for paper and packaging. Paper consumption has increased six fold since the 1950s. Forty per cent of it goes for wrapping and packaging. The other big paper guzzlers are computers and the advertising industry.

"The trouble is that cutting down rainforests is especially good for business: first the noble hardwood trees fetch huge prices, then you replace them with pulp tree plantations. But none of this is good business for planet earth.

"Not only have the hardwoods disappeared to be replaced by plantations and pulp trees, but factories are needed to process the plantation wood into pulp and paper. These factories are highly polluting.

Edgar Duarte: "At least the message has changed: nobody today sees the forests as a 'green hell'. But we are still a long way from a change in attitutude, a change in our relationship with the forest. What's more, in today's world, humanity seems bent on more and more fast profits and this means that our forests are the first to suffer'.

"We have a law which prohibits plantations or cattle-raising within 10 kms. of any protected area in Brazil. All economic activities within this 10 kms limit have to have the approval of the Environmental Agency, IBAMA. Any project for planting crops, raising animals, creating plantations of non-native trees has to be vetted by IBAMA and the National Parks and we, for example, are not allowing any plantations here. This is something new: a new law which is being put into effect in the region. There were already some development projects in the pipeline which will have to be eliminated or moved further away from the Park's protected area."

Comm: "And now the alarm bells have sounded at last regarding the Inner Atlantic Rainforest and the need to save what's left of it. A major new project - the 'Trinational Green Corridor' - has been launched as a result of work by WWF associates in Argentina, Fundacion Vida Silvestre. Together with a range of environmental agencies and local bodies in the 3 countries concerned, they plan to link existing protected areas and create some new ones. The experts from NGOs are on the conservation front-line these days, working with peasant farmers and lobbying governments.

Edgar Duarte: "The Green Corridor Project is an attempt to articulate efforts between the State and the private sector to try and make sure that the remaining areas of Inner Atlantic Rainforest don't end up like isolated islands, but are connected and linked in some way so that wild life populations can move about freely between them.

"This is an effort which has already been launched between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - Paraguay has a grave responsibility here since the main area of the Inner Atlantic Rainforest existed in the eastern half of the country. So the effort here has to be even greater to link them to the protected areas in Brazil and Argentina."

Apolonio de Sousa: "Here in the State of Paran, this National Park plays a very important role since it contains the last great area of Atlantic Forest left in Brazil. It's a particularly important ecosystem for large mammals such as the black leopard and the jaguar. Each country has a small area of Atlantic Rainforest left and these areas would form a very important corridor for wild life. It would allow species from the northern part to exchange genetic material with species in the southern part, and viceversa."

Comm:"If trees could talk, as they used to in the Guarani, wouldn't they be begging us to do everything we can to make the Green Corridor Project a reality?"