Plans by the Suri­namese gov­ern­ment to al­low Men­non­ites, a closed re­li­gious sect that pro­fess­es the An­abap­tist faith, to set­tle in the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try, to prac­tice large-scale agri­cul­ture are be­ing met with re­sis­tance from var­i­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Many of them fear that the agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties of the Men­non­ites, who are nei­ther Catholic nor Protes­tant, al­though they do share some be­liefs of both, will lead to large-scale de­for­esta­tion and could af­fect the land rights of trib­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in Para­mari­bo, the or­ga­ni­za­tions crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment’s lack of trans­paren­cy on the is­sue, with the com­pa­ny, Ter­ra In­vest Suri­name & Guyana, which is prepar­ing for the ar­rival of the Men­non­ites, in­di­cat­ing the group in­tends to pur­chase land suit­able for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es.

“Peo­ple don’t want any­thing from the Suri­namese gov­ern­ment. No land ei­ther. They want to buy it them­selves. All they want is an in­vi­ta­tion from the gov­ern­ment that they are wel­come in Suri­name,” said Ru­ud Sou­vere­in of Ter­ra In­vest.

Ru­mors have been cir­cu­lat­ing here for some time that the Men­non­ites, a group of An­abap­tist Chris­t­ian church com­mu­ni­ties trac­ing their roots to the 16th cen­tu­ry Rad­i­cal Ref­or­ma­tion, have al­ready pur­chased hun­dreds hectares of land in west­ern Suri­name in an area that is claimed by in­dige­nous peo­ple as their tra­di­tion­al res­i­den­tial area on which they base their land rights.

“Where is the plan? Why can’t there be trans­paren­cy? We ask for a study so that it can be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly de­ter­mined what the ef­fect of large-scale Men­non­ite agri­cul­ture could have on the en­vi­ron­ment,” said Gwen­dolyn Smith of the or­ga­ni­za­tion Green Growth Suri­name dur­ing the press con­fer­ence.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the oth­er green non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions Ama­zon Con­ser­va­tion Team, Con­ser­va­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Suri­name, Green Her­itage Fund, Tropen­bos Suri­name, Wildlife & Peo­ple in Suri­name and the World Wildlife Fund have al­so voiced their ob­jec­tions dur­ing the news con­fer­ence.

Suri­name, one of the three car­bon-neg­a­tive coun­tries in the world, al­ready suf­fers from de­for­esta­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 0.07% per year due to il­le­gal small-scale min­ing and it is feared that the large-scale agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties of the Men­non­ites will add to this.

The en­vi­ron­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions say they do not want to stig­ma­tize Men­non­ites, but on­ly want to know what are their plans.

“We know that the de­for­esta­tion we fear due to the ar­rival of the Men­non­ites is al­ready tak­ing place in the gold sec­tor, we know that. But we want to avoid hav­ing to deal with the ef­fects of de­for­esta­tion due to large-scale agri­cul­ture. Suri­name and Guyana are the on­ly coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca that do not have this”, said Gi­na Grif­fith, di­rec­tor of Con­ser­va­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Suri­name.

The or­ga­ni­za­tions say they are al­so con­cerned about the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact study that is legal­ly re­quired be­fore any such ini­tia­tive.

They crit­i­cize the fact that the red car­pet is ba­si­cal­ly rolled out for the Men­non­ites, while in South Amer­i­ca they are known for their de­struc­tive large-scale agri­cul­ture that is not on­ly ac­com­pa­nied by de­for­esta­tion, but al­so wa­ter pol­lu­tion, use of pes­ti­cides and the in­tro­duc­tion of ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods (GMF) and con­flicts with lo­cal in­dige­nous peo­ples.

“My spe­cial­iza­tion is con­flict res­o­lu­tion and I can tell you that con­flicts sur­round­ing land rights are in­creas­ing in Suri­name. We’re get­ting close to the point of vi­o­lence. We can­not af­ford to give for­eign peo­ple ac­cess to land, while the land rights of in­dige­nous and trib­al peo­ple are not reg­u­lat­ed,” said Smith.

Lloyd Read, an in­dige­nous trib­al leader, shares the same view. “We told them, they can take the land. Let them come, it will hap­pen over our dead bod­ies.

“In Suri­name it is about in­ter­ests, but who stands up for the in­ter­ests of the in­dige­nous peo­ple? The in­sult­ing of us has to stop at some point. We can­not al­ways yield to the in­ter­ests of oth­ers,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the en­vi­ron­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions, there are plen­ty of op­tions for a coun­try to make mon­ey from the for­est in oth­er ways than hav­ing it re­moved for large-scale agri­cul­ture. They said the gov­ern­ment could de­vel­op tourism, med­i­c­i­nal plants and oth­er non-tim­ber for­est prod­ucts.

“If the gov­ern­ment would put a lit­tle more en­er­gy in­to the de­vel­op­ment of these sec­tors, we would have come a long way,” said John Goed­schalk, for­mer di­rec­tor of CI-Suri­name.

Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi and Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion, Al­bert Ramdin, have in­di­cat­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions that per­mis­sion has been grant­ed to 50 Men­non­ite fam­i­lies to set­tle in Suri­name.

They said this will serve as a pi­lot project and will be eval­u­at­ed in three years. Ramdin said that the Men­non­ites will have to meet all the re­quire­ments for for­eign­ers who want to im­mi­grate to Suri­name to set­tle.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence last week, he said that the group will not re­ceive land from the gov­ern­ment.

“We have clear­ly told them that the gov­ern­ment will not be able to ac­com­mo­date them with land, so they will have to rent or lease land to get start­ed. They could al­so buy land, but that al­so needs to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered,” said Ramdin, not­ing that the Suri­namese pop­u­la­tion con­sists pre­dom­i­nant­ly of im­mi­grants.

“We are an im­mi­grant coun­try, why shouldn’t we be open to this group?” he said. The group of Men­non­ites who are in­ter­est­ed in set­tling in Suri­name have Bo­li­vian na­tion­al­i­ty.

The Men­non­ites in Suri­name want to be in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of soy, the cul­ti­va­tion of corn and oth­er grains, chick­en farm­ing as well as live­stock and milk pro­duc­tion.

“We will eval­u­ate af­ter three years. Any­one who wants to do busi­ness is wel­come. The gov­ern­ment has al­so stat­ed that Men­non­ites will have to ad­here to the coun­try’s reg­u­la­tions and na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion.

“They all have to sub­mit doc­u­ments and they have now all pass­ports have been sent. It is a closed com­mu­ni­ty, but they have clear­ly in­di­cat­ed that they al­so want to do some­thing for the Suri­namese com­mu­ni­ty in terms of food sup­ply,” said Ramdin.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Oct 31, CMC