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Rosewood – The Economic Reality
posted (December 19, 2011)
Rosewood has been in the news for months - and as we close 2011 - it remains at the center of the national discourse, as conservationists in the Toledo district continue to call for a moratorium on logging the precious hardwood, while the Forestry Department continues to ignore them.

Indeed, it is a political quagmire, because, while there are almost certainly, well connected monied interests at the top of the Rosewood pyramid, at the base are villagers from the south who are dirt poor - and - as long as it lasts - rosewood offers them a way up, if not out of poverty.

Here's what some of them had to say last week about Rosewood:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
Here in the village of Sundaywood in the Toledo District, this is ground zero for the rosewood trade. Blocks of the precious, scarce hardwood are loaded into trucks which will take it to PG, and from there it will be bundled up into a container and shipped off - presumably to China. The wood sells for top dollar internationally, but what remains in the community is - by comparison - a pittance, but as the song says, when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

Mateo Tush - First Alcalde, Sundaywood
"We don't use the Rosewood and where will we get the money from to buy stuff for our children in secondary school. The books, bags, uniform, and donation everything is expensive."

Marcus Coy, Village council Member, Crique Sarco
"No other people coming her to us only the non-governmental organizations like Satiim or Tide. Only them are trying to stop the people of doing this work. The people are not happy because it very hard to live in Toledo, there is no job, nothing to do and we have our children to send to high school."

And that's the refrain that can be heard in many villages - where there's no steady employment:

Marcus Coy, Village council Member, Crique Sarco
"Each community help themselves with the Rosewood."

Apart from work with US Capital Energy, it's the only readily accessible form of employment:

Martin Choco, Permitting Agent - US Capital Energy Ltd.
"The way that we recruit workers is we have the Alcalde and Chairman assisting us in who is available to work for us because at the moment there are cutting Rosewood. So we don't know who is available, so what we do is we work along with them to tell us who is available so we recruit them to work."

Village Chairman, Crique Sarco
"The people are benefiting from it that's the main thing. It's not only in my village but all along the other villages; Sunday Wood, Conejo, Corazon, Otoxha and Dolores. So every is benefitting who is willing to work."

Indeed, the Rosewood venture is so rapacious, that it seems every tree is being cut:

Harvey Sandoval, Barranco Resident
"We do have Rosewood in our area but in the night the poachers they come and they just take it away."

And while it seems like unfettered, wholesale plunder, this village councilor says that there is a caveat

Marcus Coy
"As village council members we mentioned to the people who are doing the logging that they should leave the small ones to let it grow. Only the bigger trees they will cut so that they could cut it later on."

Of course, that's just notional, there's no enforcement, and so, likely, there's no compliance - which means cash rules - and when the trees are depleted, is when it's done:

Village Chairman, Crique Sarco
"This will stop when there are no more trees, we can't say that we will cut until because the trees are limited." In a November letter to the Prime Minister, the Ya'axché conservation trust warned that quote, "this continued exploitation of rosewood for the benefit of only a small minority is no longer acceptable. We have evidence that small trees (less than 20cm in diameter) are now being extracted…..This suggests that rosewood stocks on community lands may have already reached a critical level, and if logging continues at the current rate, it is likely that the species will become locally extinct."

Despite these dire warnings, no moratorium has been effected.

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