Bitam, Gabon---When one of the world's biggest traders of agricultural commodities went to Gabon's government with a multi-million-dollar plan to produce rubber, the authorities jumped at the chance to diversify an oil-dependent economy.
The Batouri rubber plantation and processing plant taking shape in the north not only will bring $400 million (357 million euros) in investments but also up to 5,000 new jobs to a nation with an unemployment rate topping 20 percent.
Crucially, it was also viewed as the first step for the equatorial African country to diversify its economy, which draws about 70 percent of its revenues from energy exports.
But critics are alarmed at the environmental and social costs of the project by the Singapore-based company Olam, warning that it could wipe out biodiversity in the tropical forest and threaten farming livelihoods.
"This project will enable Gabon to develop," said Gagan Gupta, the chief executive of Olam Gabon, which has also started palm oil plantations in the former French colony of some 1.7 million people.
"Our plans will bring development in rural circles. We have given work to 3,000 people (...) 5,000 counting the related jobs that have arisen. And they don't just work for four or five years, but for at least 45 to 50 years. This is a sustainable development project," he said.
But critics like Franck Ndjimbi, an activist with environmental group Brainforest, said "the social and economic benefits have been overestimated".
"People run the risk of being turned into agricultural labourers," he said, adding that the rubber and palm oil trees are grown on land that is home to thousands of small farmers.
"There's bound to be a spread of manure, the use of fertiliser, pesticides (...) That leads us to wonder about the environmental impacts, especially as studies were carried out hastily."
In the forest around the plantation, villagers grow cassava, root plants, cocoa and bananas. They also "bleed" the scarred bark of wild hevea trees to produce the flow of white latex sap needed for rubber.
The first local plantation dates from World War I, when French bosses wanted rubber to support the war effort, said Dieudonne Minlama, who heads an umbrella organisation grouping some 50 NGOs, unions and other groups that fight poverty.
"The plantations were abandoned and the hevea spread in the forest," he said.
Minlama favours Olam's arrival, saying it is not only creating jobs but, as the plantation develops in time, it will generate other economic activity and revenue.
Ndjimbi, however, said the new plantation has just 5,000 rubber trees that will only mature in eight years, and that "Olam has had to deforest to revive the industry".
AFP
