In November 2008 the previous government of this country signed a deal with South Korean firm Daewoo for the lease of half (!) of its total arable land for 99 (!) years to grow food crops (ex., palm oil which is already a curse in South East Asia) for South Korea.

But that’s not all. Daewoo were not even planning to pay rent for it, they were planning to build $2 bln worth of infrastructure investment as a compensation. I don’t even want to go into detail re  this compensation arrangement.

No surprise this deal has been called neo-colonialism by many commentators.

No surprise people rebeled against this state of affairs, staged a coupl d’etat and canceled this deal.

And no surprise, rainforests and animals have now become victims of this chaotic situation in the country.

Lemurs, these rare unique primates, are now at the mercy of illegal loggers who are taking advantage of this situation and looting Madagascar’s rainforests.

National Geographic is reporting on this in more detail in their blog.

Come visit it here for updates and please please help spread the word as much as you can:

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2009/03/lemurs-threatened-by-madagascar-strife.html

I am following rainforest conservation campaigns led by Rainforest Portal, and they have just sent us details of how the government of Finland is allowing the logging of old-growth forests.

I always had high respect for Nordic countries (and still do!) but this really gets on my nerves.

Not that Finland is so poor that it HAS to do it to keep their people fed! It’s a complete hypocrisy.

I really have no words for this situation.

Please go to Rainforest Portal and sign up for their campaigns as well.

Thanks in advance!