The India-based Coffee Day Group has moved one step closer to obtaining a Timber Sales Agreement (TSA) for its concession in Region Nine, after completing the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA).
A TSA would allow the company to harvest logs. The company, through its subsidiary, Vaitarna Holdings Private Inc (VHPI), already holds a TSA for another concession and has been under the spotlight recently for its log exports and its failure to set up the processing facility to which it had committed.
V G Siddhartha, owner of the Coffee Day group which controls the two concessions amounting to 1.82 million acres of forest in Guyana, recently said that a processing centre for logs will be set up here, but the main facility will be in India. He said the company has exported logs from Guyana to India and China.
The company has been working to fulfil the requirements for environmental authorisation to begin operations at the Region Nine concession and the draft ESIA has been submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency is now inviting the public to comment on it before a decision is made on whether to grant or deny the environmental permit. In an advertisement in the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, the EPA said the public has 60 days from the time of publication of the notice to make written submissions on the project to the agency. Coffee Day’s subsidiary for this concession is Simon and Shock International Logging Inc (SSILI).
Coffee Day, through its Dark Forest subsidiary, in 2010 acquired the State Forest Exploratory Permit (SFEP) for 391,853 hectares of forest originally awarded in 2007 to US-based SSILI, after buying out SSILI.
After the acquisition, the company registered in Guyana as SSILI. Subsequently, Dark Forest acquired the 345,961 hectares concession which was originally awarded to Caribbean Resources Limited (CRL).
The government accepted an offer of $600 million for the Timber Sales Agreement (TSA). The company was registered as VHPI. The total area now held by Coffee Day is 737,814 hectares of forest, around 1.822 million acres.
The company has conducted its management level forest inventory and prepared its Forest Management Plan, which is being reviewed by the Guyana Forestry Commission, for the Region Nine concession. It is also currently evaluating the various options to determine the best alignment for the access road to the concession and location of the processing facility. Operations are planned to commence once the ESIA process is completed and the TSA awarded.
‘No significant
impact’
According to the ESIA, which was done by Environmental Management Consultants, SSI’s management has more than a decade of experience in both forest operations and wood products marketing of tropical timber in India and other Asian countries. The company’s experience in both areas has established and expanded a huge market of wood products for export, it said.
The ESIA said no significant negative impact is expected on the communities closest to the logging concession. The communities are in excess of 20km from the project site and residents do not use the concession area. However, it said, there are opportunities for the communities to benefit in a meaningful way from the project, especially in the form of employment and capacity building. “Once the logging activities are conducted in a manner which is consistent with the Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting and best practices such as Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) and Sustainable Forest Management, impacts to biodiversity will not be significant and will be temporary and reversible. A significant portion of the concession will also be spared from logging, consisting of biodiversity reserves, buffers, steep slopes, etc. It is expected that close to 25% of the concession will not be logged with about 20% being classified as unusable forest while the company is expected to identify biodiversity reserves which would consist of 4.5% of the concession in representative habitat types that should provide a refuge for wildlife with reserve size taking into account large range species,” the report said.
It stated that the activities proposed by SSILI will also not affect the current efforts of Conservation International in maintaining the portion of state forest under its control as a conservation concession. “In fact, collaboration between SSILI and CI can lead to better resource management and monitoring within the area.
The company would not be allowed to conduct its activities in a manner that is detrimental to the environment given Guyana’s efforts to pursue a low carbon development path. As such, the project should not affect the country’s commitment to REDD+ and the implementation of EU FLEGT. The implementation of the project is also within the framework of the LCDS and Guyana’s agreement with the Norwegian Government,” the report said.
The ESIA pointed out that this ESIA only covers the activities to be conducted within the forest concession since the alignment of the access road and the location of the main processing facilities have not yet been determined. Once the location and alignment of these aspects of the project are determined, an Addendum to the ESIA will be prepared to cover these activities.
SSILI plans to establish a composite logging and sawmilling operation with associated downstream processing plants and kiln drying facility. Logging will occur within the 391,853 hectares (968,289 acres) concession and all activities will be done in accordance with the requirements of the GFC, including the Code of Practice for Forest Operations. For the first five years, logging will be conducted in the North Rewa and Middle Rewa Compartments of Part A of the concession and all commercially viable blocks will be determined, demarcated and inventoried.
Investment
The ESIA says that some primary processing will be done within the concession, utilising chain saws and a portable mill while a permanent facility will be established outside the concession to assist with further processing but the location of this facility is not yet determined. The materials will then be transported to Georgetown for shipping to overseas markets.
The project will see a total investment of approximately US$18.7 million during the first five years (2012 – 2017). This investment will be done in phases.
During the pre-harvest phase of the operation, employment by the company is expected to be in the vicinity of 45 persons. However, this figure will be increased to 320 persons once harvesting and processing activities commence. The majority of these personnel will be Guyanese and, as much as possible, from the communities in proximity to the concession, the ESIA says.
It said that the construction phase of the project will entail road location survey, block demarcation and the conduct of timber inventory, road, bridges, culverts and drainage construction, building of skid trails and log markets, construction of forest camp and construction of processing facility. The operations phase of the project will involve the felling of logs, extraction and transport of logs to the log yard, transporting of logs by logging trucks to the base camp, processing of logs into squares, transporting of logs by logging trucks to the processing facility and downstream processing.
Given that no part of the concession was previously logged, a cutting cycle of 60 years is being considered as the preferred option. If this cutting cycle is used, the annual allowable cut is calculated to be 99,792 m3 with a monthly allowable cut of 8,316 m3. This would enable an annual harvesting area of 4,990 hectares in 50 Blocks, the ESIA says.
In terms of the environment, the report said that there is a very low level of contamination of water while a biodiversity assessment confirms that the area contains diverse, pristine forests and other terrestrial habitats. It said that the rivers and aquatic habitats are relatively undisturbed with very low levels of contamination, and they harbour an abundant and diverse fish fauna, forests and plant communities are essentially pristine, there is a high vertebrate diversity, particularly of mammals and birds and there are healthy populations of many globally threatened species including giant otter, brown-bearded saki monkey, arapaima, black caiman, giant armadillo, giant anteater, and giant river turtle.
According to the ESIA, SSILI plans to utilise the resources of the concession in a manner which will deliver financial rewards in the most effective and efficient manner without degrading the bio-physical and socio-economic environment, thus ensuring benefits to future generations.
