Brazil: Peasant women’s action against monoculture eucalyptus plantations on International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day had an unusual celebration in Brazil. At dawn on 8 March, close on 2 thousand women farmers linked to the Via Campesina organization took lightening action at the facilities of the Aracruz Celulose pulp mill company in the Municipality of Barra do Ribeiro near Porto Alegre. The Barba Negra establishment is the main production unit for eucalyptus and pine seedlings to supply their Guaiba factory. It even has a laboratory for cloning seedlings.

The expansion of monoculture eucalyptus plantations in the State of Rio Grande do Sul has been transforming the region into an unproductive “green desert” from the standpoint of food sovereignty. According to Cristiane Gomes, the MST national coordinator, criticism of the “green deserts” covering vast stretches of land that could be used for the production of food for families awaiting the agrarian reform, is getting stronger among social movements. Furthermore, industrial plantations of eucalyptus deteriorate the soil and consume great amounts of water: each eucalyptus tree can consume 30 litres of water per day.

The Aracruz Celulose Company owns the greatest expanse of industrial eucalyptus monoculture plantations: over 250 thousand hectares planted on its own lands; in Rio Grande do Sul alone it has 50 thousand hectares. With two other companies –Votorantim and Stora Enso- the area covered by eucalyptus in the State is close on 250,000 hectares. The factories of Aracruz Celulose produce 2.4 million tons per year of bleached pulp, contaminating the air and the water and damaging human health.

According to Vía Campesina, eucalyptus plantations generate one job per 185 hectares, while small properties generate one job per hectare. However, Aracruz Celulose is the agro-industrial company receiving the greatest amount of public funds - close on 1,000 million dollars over the past three years.

“If the green desert continues to grow, shortly we will be lacking drinking water and land to produce food. We cannot understand how a government that wants to end hunger is sponsoring the green desert instead of investing in the Agrarian Reform and Peasant Agriculture,” states the Via Campesina declaration, specially prepared to be given to the participants at FAO’s Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development.

As a reaction to this process, 37 coach loads of women arrived at the nurseries where the company prepares eucalyptus seedlings for the gigantic industrial plantations that supply their pulp production. At dawn and during 20 minutes, the group destroyed various greenhouses and approximately 8 million eucalyptus seedlings. They then returned to Porto Alegre to take part in the march organized by Vía Campesina to commemorate International Women’s Day.

Together with close on 1,500 members of the Via Campesina Brasil camp set up that week in conjunction with the above mentioned Conference, they marched some 5 kilometres to the place where the FAO event was taking place to submit their declaration on agrarian reform and rural development to the representatives of 81 countries present there. When they arrived, the Military Police tried to prevent the women from approaching the entry. Finally, the representatives of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and FAO obtained permission for 50 representatives to enter the meeting. The Minister of Zimbabwe, who was chairing the plenary, interrupted the session to give the floor to two Via Campesina militants, who read out the movement’s declaration.

“We are against green deserts, the enormous plantations of eucalyptus, acacia and pine trees for pulp covering thousands of hectares in Brazil and in Latin America. In the State of Rio Grande do Sul alone there are already 200 thousand hectares of eucalyptus plantations. Where the green desert advances, biodiversity is destroyed, soil is eroded, rivers dry up, in addition to the enormous contamination generated by the pulp mills affecting the atmosphere and the water and threatening human health,” affirmed the women in the Via Campesina declaration. They also expressed their solidarity with the indigenous peoples whose lands were invaded by Aracruz Celulose in the State of Espirito Santo (see WRM Bulletin No. 102).

The women’s action resulted in angry protests from different government officials and in similar reactions from the main media and even from some non governmental organizations. However, when Aracruz robs their lands and forcibly evicts the Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous peoples, when the company occupies thousands of hectares or productive land and plants them with eucalyptus, when those plantations deplete the local water resources, when its pulp mills pollute water, it does it with the government’s blessing and without opposition from that media or from those organizations that today are attacking the Via Campesina women’s action. The real question should then be: who attacked first?

Article based on information from: “[8 DE MARÇO] Mulheres da Via Campesina ocupam fazenda da Aracruz no RS”, Vía Campesina, 08/03/2006, http://viacampesina.org/main_sp/index.php; “As lágrimas da Aracruz e a coragem das mulheres camponesas”, Cristiano Navarro, Conselho Indigenista Missionário, http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&action=read&id=1800&eid=259

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New WRM report on industrial tree plantations in Cambodia

This month, WRM publishes a new report titled "The death of the forest: A report on Wuzhishan's and Green Rich's tree plantation activities in Cambodia". The report records the impact of two companies' tree plantations on local communities and their livelihoods. For security reasons, the researchers of the report wish to remain anonymous.

2005 was another bad year for democracy in Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen used defamation law suits to arrest or intimidate members of the political opposition, media, trade unions and NGOs.

Then, in January 2006, Hun Sen released four human rights activists on bail. He announced plans to change the law on defamation. In February, opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned to Cambodia, after a year of exile in France. And, in March, Hun Sen promised to crack down on corruption and speed up changes in the judicial system.

This is, sadly, a familiar ritual. About half of Cambodia's annual budget comes in the form of foreign aid. Just before the Consultative Group Meeting, where aid agencies decide how much money to give to Cambodia, Hun Sen promises to ease off on repression, corruption, forest destruction and evil deeds in general. The aid agencies play their role in the ritual and pretend to have forgotten that Hun Sen made precisely the same promises just before the previous Consultative Group Meeting.

In December 2004, at the last Consultative Group Meeting, Hun Sen's government committed to meet a series of targets (or Joint Monitoring Indicators, in Consultative Group jargon). The World Bank's Country Director, Ian Porter, says that the Joint Monitoring Indicators "are a step in the right direction towards strengthening partnerships for reform and working toward common goals of strengthened systems of accountability in Cambodia."

Let's look at an example of what accountability looks like in Cambodia. In December 2004, the government promised to "Increase transparency of state management of natural resources through immediate public disclosure of existing contracts and compliance status (royalties and other key provisions) of contracts governing economic land concessions, mining concessions, fishing lots and continued disclosure of status of review of forest concessions."

The government failed to release the contracts. Instead, the Ministry of Agriculture released incomplete records of just some of the land concessions.

Yet in the 2006 Joint Monitoring Indicators, the target is weakened. No mention is made of releasing contracts. The government is asked to "disseminate all relevant sector information on the activities of government agencies". Who decides what is "relevant" is left unexplained. The information is to be posted "periodically" on the Technical Working Group on Forestry and Environment website. The word "periodically" is left undefined.

At the 2006 Consultative Group Meeting, the aid agencies promised to cough up US$601 million, even more than the US$504 million they agreed to give in 2004.

Hun Sen has held on to power in Cambodia for more than 20 years. Even after losing the UN sponsored elections in 1993, he clung onto power through a coalition with his political opponent Norodom Ranariddh. In 1997, he ousted Ranariddh in a bloody coup d'état. Between the coup and elections the following year, Hun Sen handed over more than one million hectares in logging concessions and land concessions. Between July 2003 and July 2004, during another political deadlock which prevented the formation of a government, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party handed out yet more land. Several of these concessions are for large scale industrial tree plantations.

Pheapimex, a notorious Cambodian logging company, has benefited from many of Hun Sen's handouts. Pheapimex controls a total of seven per cent of the land area of Cambodia. The company is owned by Chheung Sopheap, a close friend of Hun Sen. Her husband, Lau Meng Khin is a director of Wuzhishan, which in 2004 started clearing forests in a 315,000 hectare plantation concession, originally awarded to Pheapimex.

Writing in Mother Jones magazine this month, Scott Carrier describes the political system in Cambodia as "shaped like a pyramid, where the people on the top can commit unspeakable crimes and the people on the bottom have no rights at all. Money, in the form of bribes and extortions, flows upward through the pyramid, and violence comes back down. This is the cultural mechanism of impunity."

Carrier is writing about slavery, but his description of political corruption in Cambodia explains how prime minister Hun Sen has got away with handing over vast areas of Cambodia's land to his business associates and friends. What it doesn't explain is why year after year, the aid agencies agree to throw money at one of the most corrupt governments on the planet.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: http://chrislang.org, www.chrislang.blogspot.com.
The report "The death of the forest: A report on Wuzhishan's and Green Rich's tree plantation activities in Cambodia" is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Cambodia/BookCambodia.html

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Nicaragua: The Indio Maiz Biological Reserve threatened by gmelina plantations

The Indio Maiz Biological Reserve is located in the southeast region of Nicaragua, covering an area of 3,180 km². It is called after two rivers, the Indio and the Maiz. It is one of the most important biosphere reserves in the country and contains a tropical rainforest, wetlands and lagoons hosting diverse fauna: jaguars, harpy eagles, green macaws, manatees, sawfish and crocodiles. In the forest you will find cedar, mahogany, almond, medlar, manu and maria trees, among others.

However the forest and the rich biodiversity that inhabits it are threatened by an activity that appears to be quite contradictory to the concept of “reserve.” According to complaints by Nicaraguan young peoples’ organizations (Jovenes en Acción and Comunidad Ambientalista), in the secondary forest (over 20 years old) of the reserve’s buffer zone, the Costa Rican company Maderas Cultivadas de Costa Rica S.A., has established monoculture teak and gmelina plantations. So far they have installed 3 thousand hectares of gmelina but the company has purchased 5 thousand hectares and the project considers extending it to 8 thousand hectares.

This activity in turn leads to logging, generally of valuable woods, while the area is cleared for plantation. According to the complaints filed with the Environmental Procurator’s Office in Managua, the company – as part of forest management – illegally set fire to stubble and non-valuable woods that had been left on the ground. The fire advanced dangerously towards nearby houses. This was detected by a field visit carried out by members of Comunidad Ambientalista in November 2005.

The following month the young people followed up on the case in Managua, but found the unpleasant surprise that it had been filed and no one had any knowledge of it. Again, with the effort of the young people, they raised funds by holding concerts and selling T-shirts to enable the Commission to visit the location, document the damage and take photographs. There they observed that 5,000 hectares have been purchased, a numeric tagging has been made of the trees and the plantation is progressing. Apparently the company wants to extend the plantations to 8,000 hectares.

During the three days the young people spent in the area, supported by the community that gave them shelter and food, they observed that many springs and small streams have dried up and that the water comes out with a whitish colouring. Furthermore, they verified irregularities in the company’s actions. According to their complaint, the company bypassed municipal law and presented itself directly to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAG-FOR), which has granted them permits to log (both for secondary forest and for the primary forest where they operate) when in fact it should have been the INAFOR (National Forestry Institute) municipal authority that granted them.

The young people reported that the company tried to meet with them, but they did not accept as they had been informed that the company had attempted to buy some of the leaders of the local voluntary juvenile group with five thousand dollars.

The position of the young people’s organizations is: We Do Not Want Gmelina Companies in the Municipality!

Article based on personal information sent by Engels Obregón, Comunidad Ambientalista, e-mail: eobregongautama@yahoo.com

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Papua New Guinea: Local NGOs challenge World Bank loan for oil palm scheme

Papua New Guinea has a communal land system that has allowed most rural communities to make a decent living from the free and easy access to land, clean water and the abundance of natural resources. However, the introduction of cash crop plantations undermines their customary systems and structures bringing up negative environmental and social impacts.

Oil palm is a case in point. Typically pushed from outside and export-oriented, it counts on funding by the World Bank. However, the project has encountered local opposition. Small landowners have warned oil palm interests to stay out of their land (see WRM Bulletin Nº 74). Now, facing the forthcoming World Bank Board meeting that will deal with approval for disbursement of Papua New Guinea Smallholder Agriculture Development P079140 loan, several Papua New Guinean NGOs are strongly opposing it and have circulated a letter for endorsement, addressed to the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank Group asking them not to approve any more loans for oil palm plantations and processing.

This kind of scheme will not render any good for the people. Their demand is well grounded, as the letter exposes: “Oil palm is risky: We are opposed to having more oil palm projects in Papua New Guinea because of the adverse social and environmental problems found in existing oil palm areas. Oil palm price is highly dependent on the world commodity price which can be volatile. Given the massive oil palm expansion program in other countries especially Indonesia, the risk of a slump in price is very high.”

“Oil palm is environmentally destructive: The World Bank project document downplays the environmental impact of oil palm. Our country has already suffered the adverse impacts from oil palm in those provinces where it is grown. PNG’s track record in ensuring environmental sustainability is abysmal. The Department of Environment and Conservation’s monitoring capacity is limited by a chronic lack of resources. It has neither the capacity nor the required expertise to monitor the wide ranging and relatively complex environmental issues related to oil palm.”

“Oil palm is bad development: Over two decades of oil palm growing in Papua New Guinea has resulted in little if any real development outcomes for our country. In fact we see a regression of living conditions and standards in places where oil palm is grown. Our Government offers tax breaks and tax credits for the oil palm industry operators but this considerably limits the economic benefits to PNG. Growers who toil and sweat in the hope of better living standards -as promised by those who got them into oil palm growing- are disappointed and angry that they have been given mere empty promises whilst the resources on which they are dependent for survival are now degraded and polluted. Much of their oil palm income goes back to paying for costs incurred in the establishment of their oil palm plots.”

“Oil palm is forced upon our people: Oil palm growers inform us that they only grow oil palm because they need money to pay for the ever increasing school fees so that their children can be educated. Ironically, school fees have been imposed on us precisely because our Government heeds advice from a foreign power such as the World Bank to adopt the user-pay system so that revenue is directed to repay debt. For a developing nation like PNG, education and basic health care are essential services which should be priority areas for revenue PNG gets from other sectors. The World Bank should exert pressure on our leaders to fulfil these fundamental needs and responsibilities, and not on ordinary PNGeans to sacrifice fertile land, pristine forests and healthy waterways for a cash crop which no rich industrialised nation in the world wants to have in its own backyard. It is obvious that rich nations are merely pushing oil palm growing in countries like PNG because it is a labour intensive, nutrient hungry and polluting crop, so that their industry can have access to cheap oil.”

The project is also bad for the country: “Oil palm increases balance of payments problem for PNG: Growers become too reliant upon a monocultural cash crop. What is left of their hard earned cash income from oil palm merely ends up enriching foreign corporations, owing to the widespread consumption of imported rice from Australia, tinned fish, tinned meat and a range of other poor quality consumer products from Indonesia and China. This increases our balance of payments. PNG should be assisted and supported to produce food and other sought-after domestic necessities internally, so that cash is circulated within the country for the benefits of our communities and to reduce our country’s precarious balance of payments.”

“Increase national indebtedness: This loan, if approved, will increase the debt burden of Papua New Guinea with no real development gain. We fear that increasing debt level in the face of governance failure will lead to the further devaluation of the Kina [local currency], adding greater burden to our people and our precious environment. This will inevitably lead to more hardships for our people and further pressure to exploit the relatively healthy environment, which over 80% of our people depend on for their survival. This is essentially poverty creation, not reduction!”

Furthermore, the funding comes to a country where governance is under challenge: “The Government of Papua New Guinea is unaccountable. Papua New Guinea has a long track record of governance failures, mismanagement and misuse of public funds by those in power. This has rendered most development assistance useless and ineffective.”

“Imprudent banking. It is irresponsible for the World Bank to disburse a loan for this project given the failure of the Forest and Conservation Project (FCP). Last year the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had to cancel its loan for a similar project entitled the Nucleus Agro-Enterprises project on ground of financial mis-management. Given that the risk involved is high and the World Bank has little leverage to influence outcome as a lender, it is a bad banking practice to embark on yet another project for oil palm expansion, and to provide another loan to PNG.”

Too many risks for the sake of oil palm industry: “PNG becomes indebted to subsidise the palm oil industry: Although the project document claims that this is a scheme that would increase income for PNG, it is in reality a subsidy provided to the industry. Our people, especially the growers whom the World Bank has identified as needing assistance to get out of poverty, have ended up shouldering the bulk of the debt burden. It is on this basis that communities have begun to reject oil palm projects, as evidenced by the statements of protest attached for your reference.”

The NGOs conclude denouncing that the loan contradicts the National Goals and Directive Principles: “Our national constitution emphasises small-scale enterprises and respect for the PNG way, integral human development for our people, wise use and management of our natural resources for now and for the future. If the World Bank is genuinely interested in development in PNG, the five directive principles of the constitution provides a sound framework for a unique development approach we believe will be more beneficial for our country.”

The full letter is available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/PapuaNG/WBLetter.htm

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Laos: Indian and Japanese pulp giants move in

For over a decade a network of interests has been pushing industrial tree plantations in Laos. The key organisation is the Asian Development Bank. In 1993, the Lao government approved a Tropical Forest Action Plan (TFAP), carried out with funding from the ADB and the World Bank, among others. The TFAP recommended logging the forests and establishing industrial tree plantations on degraded forest land.

Shortly afterwards, the ADB started its Industrial Tree Plantation Project which ran until 2003. The ADB rated this project as "unsuccessful". A Bank evaluation of the project stated that "people were driven further into poverty" as a result of the project (see WRM Bulletin 103). Unperturbed, the ADB started a new Forest Plantations Development project in January 2006. With this new project, the process of replacing villagers' commons, fields and forest land with monocultures is accelerating. The ADB's six-year project aims "to promote a sufficiently large area of industrial plantations to attract a pulpmill and/or one or more MDF [medium density fibreboard] plants to Lao PDR in the not too distant future."

In February 2005, a couple of months after an ADB-supported Private Sector Consultation Workshop in Vientiane, Oji Paper bought up BGA Lao Plantation Forestry's 154,000 hectare concession in Laos, one-third of which it plans to plant with industrial tree plantations. Oji Paper is one of Japan's largest pulp and paper companies and is the sixth largest paper and board producer in the world by volume. The company has a total of 140,000 hectares of overseas plantations operations in China, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.

In March 2006, the Indian Aditya Birla Group announced that it will invest US$350 million in industrial tree plantations and a 200,000 tons-a-year dissolving pulp mill in Laos. The Lao government has leased 50,000 hectares to the Group for 75 years. Three companies, all owned by the Aditya Birla Group, will invest in the project: Grasim Industries (India) which will own 51 per cent; Thai Rayon (Thailand); and PT Indo Bharat Rayon (Indonesia).

The pulp mill is planned to be built seven years after the first eucalyptus trees are planted. The pulp will be exported to Aditya Birla's rayon fibre manufacturing operations in Thailand, India, and Indonesia.

The Aditya Birla Group has annual sales of US$7.6 billion. The Group describes itself as "India's first truly multinational corporation". The Group has seven pulp and fibre plants, in India, Thailand, Indonesia and Canada, with a total capacity of 775,000 tons a year. It is the world's largest producer of viscose stable fibre. The Group's chairman, Kumar Birla, is one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth of US$4.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

In recent months I have received several eyewitness reports about the impacts of industrial tree plantations in Laos. The following are edited extracts from these reports which, I'm afraid, will have to remain anonymous.

"It is now patently obvious driving along Route 13", writes one observer, "that what was healthy lowland forest just five to ten years ago is now being converted into eucalyptus plantations, including former flooded forest in the Nam Hinboun and Nam Pakan floodplains."

Oji Paper is clearing large areas of forest in areas close to the ADB-funded Theun Hinboun dam, between Route 13 and the Hinboun River. "It is a real disaster there," an anonymous critic tells me. "Many people, who have already suffered from catching less fish in the Hinboun River from the dam problem, are now getting the double problem with plantations. The company is getting all kind of forest now. The [Lao government's] Land and Forest Allocation process has completely failed in this aspect, because the process cannot keep or give forest to people, but is helping companies to clear forest and help them to grab all the land from the people. People simply have no space to breathe right now. ADB is really shameless to claim that they are helping the poor and the forest."

The ADB and the Lao government claim that the plantations are only being planted on degraded forest. But, "degraded forest is often another word for healthy, recovering forest with wide utility value to villagers and biodiverse in flora and fauna," as another writer points out.

The problem that the ADB seems unable or unwilling to grasp is that villagers are dependent for their livelihoods on their forest and common land. One observer describes how villagers collect "resin, firewood, mushrooms, insects and frogs in the wet season and grasses for roofs," from "fairly heavily disturbed dry dipterocarp forests". Villagers also use the land to graze cattle.

"People conclude that the plantations are not for their benefit, but are for the benefit of business," writes another critic. "Villagers have lost their land. Eucalyptus plantations are supposed to be reforestation and are supposed to be planted in degraded forests. But villagers say that eucalyptus plantations are very different to forest."

By Chris Lang, e-mail: http://chrislang.org, www.chrislang.blogspot.com

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Uruguay: FSC certification greenwashes monoculture tree plantations

Two large national plantation companies (FYMNSA and COFUSA), a Finnish company (Botnia-UPM/Kymmene) and a Spanish company (Ence-Eufores), have received the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate. This certificate enables the companies to assure that their “forests” (of pine and eucalyptus!) are managed in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable manner. At least this is what the FSC mandate affirms. However, a recent study carried out in Uruguay shows the exact opposite.

With regard to biodiversity it is astonishing that none of the certification companies make any reference to the country’s main ecosystem (grasslands) where the greatest number of plant species develop and on which a major part of the native fauna depend. The explanation is simple: these plantations are established precisely in grassland areas. The options were only two: either ignore the problem or refuse certification. SGS and SmartWood (the two certification companies involved) obviously chose the former.

To make matters worse, these large certified monoculture tree plantations are having impacts on water, implying a chain effect on the numerous plant and animal species linked to wetlands, ponds and streams, that either disappear or have less flow. At the same time they are impacting on the scantly studied soil flora and fauna. For many of these soil-dependent species, plantations result in either a food desert or a toxic environment.

The changes in biodiversity generated by these certified monoculture tree plantations have also had impacts on the local population. In effect these food deserts for the local fauna are empty of people. This turns them into excellent places of refuge for wild boar and foxes, which feed on the agricultural production of the zone, killing sheep and poultry and eating the farmers’ crops, making it almost impossible for these people to survive.

At the same time, the destruction of the ecological balance resulting from these vast monoculture tree plantations has given way to a big increase in the population of poisonous snakes, which attack plantation workers and neighbouring inhabitants (and their animals). They now even find these dangerous snakes inside their houses.

For these and other reasons that have been verified in the above-mentioned study, it is clear that this is not “environmentally responsible” natural resource management.

Regarding social impacts, it has been confirmed that these plantations cause negative changes in the rural environment (much larger land holdings in corporate and foreign hands, depopulation of rural areas, disappearance of other productive activities, impacts on other agricultural outputs), scant employment under precarious conditions (outsourcing systems, temporary employment, low income, piece-work, scant compliance with labour legislation) and very little is contributed as benefits to the local communities. Therefore it cannot be affirmed that they are managed in a “socially beneficial” manner.

As to economic aspects, the study shows that the plantation companies have received all kinds of direct and indirect State support (subsidies, tax breaks, soft loans, the building of highways, maintenance of rural roads affected by the heavy lorries involved in the activities of these companies). This direct economic support, linked to the externalization of environmental impacts (on water, flora and fauna) and social impacts (cheap labour, poor working conditions, damage to other rural activities) have been essential for making viable an activity that without them would have been unviable. That is to say, this is in no way an “economically viable” activity.

The conclusion is clear: large scale monoculture tree plantations installed in Uruguay should have never been certified by FSC, precisely because they are “environmentally inappropriate, socially damaging and economically unviable.” This certification grants a green label to an activity that is increasingly being questioned in Uruguay and that weakens those who seek an environmentally sound and socially beneficial development model… which is precisely what the majority of FSC members want certification to support.

* The study: “Greenwashing industrial tree plantations in Uruguay: a critical assessment of FSC-certified plantations”, by Ricardo Carrere, will be published shortly in both Spanish and English.

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GE trees: Countries Call for Global Moratorium at the COP8 of the CBD

The increasing use of biotechnology in the forestry sector has led to the spread of genetically engineered tree planting in at least thirty-five countries. Though --according to FAO-- most research is confined to the laboratories, many millions of GE trees have already been released in open field trials in China, North America, Australia, Europe, and India, and to a lesser extent, South America and Africa.

In the case of China, the State Forestry Bureau is unable to trace the 1.4 million GE poplars (Populus nigra) planted so far, engineered to be infertile and pest resistant. Plans to increase GE tree plantations in China are being considered. Applications to field test GE trees in the US have risen by over 70 percent in fifteen years. A Brazilian government project to sequence the entire genome of the eucalyptus tree is financed by companies that topped a poll representing the worst carbon sink project at the COP9 conference in Milan in 2003. The FAO however, misguidedly describes the "Genolyptus" project in Brazil as "cutting edge biotechnological research."

Amid the expanding risk of GE trees, alarm bells have been sounding about their impacts. Now it seems that some countries have paid attention to them. On 22 March, at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Eighth Conference of the Parties held this month in Curitiba, Brazil, delegates from countries around the world raised the call for a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment.

Iran was the first country to bring up the issue of the moratorium acknowledging that GE trees will worsen existing problems with monoculture tree plantations. As long as the CBD is the party that is responsible for this issue, Iran stressed the need that this body should put on a moratorium and launch a global risk assessment regarding GE trees.

The moratorium proposal was supported by nine countries - Ghana, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Madagascar, Malawi, Philippines, Rwanda and Senegal. Ghana said that little attention has been paid to the issue of GE trees but concerns are emerging with regard to the impacts of GE trees on forests and human health. “Paragraph 9 from the SBSSTA recommendation [‘new era concerning access to genetic resources’] is very weak. What will the COP do? A stronger message must be made. We are happy with Iran's suggestion for a moratorium”, stressed a Ghanaian delegate.

The grounds for the ban on the commercial release of transgenic trees into the environment have been also laid down in the “Briefing Paper on Transgenic Trees” issued at CBD COP-8 by Global Justice Ecology Project, EcoNexus, Friends of the Earth International, Global Forest Coalition and World Rainforest Movement: “The pursuit of genetic engineering in forest research is principally corporate, shaped by the imperatives of private investment, market forces and government regulatory institutions. Novel forest tree phenotypes are created as a means to increase shareholder value of investor companies. And although potential benefits will accrue to shareholders, it is clear that ecological risks of certain transgenic traits engineered into trees are likely to be shared by all. Private investment in forest biotechnology is … fueling the creation of novel transgenic phenotypes in trees at a rate that is outstripping public policy deliberation and scientific assessment of environmental concerns specific to trees”, states the document.

“[The GE trees commercial release] will inevitably and irreversibly contaminate native forest ecosystems, which will themselves become contaminants in an endless cycle. The potential effects of commercial release of transgenic trees include destruction of biodiversity and wildlife, loss of fresh water, desertification of soils, collapse of native forest ecosystems, major changes to ecosystem patterns and severe human health impacts. Despite all of these predictably disastrous consequences, thorough risk assessments of transgenic tree release have not been done. Rural and indigenous communities in and around countries advancing commercial transgenic tree plantations will bear the greatest burden of the negative impacts of transgenic trees”.

“Potential human health impacts are only beginning to be known. Health risks include increased exposure to hazardous chemicals applied to plantations of transgenic trees and harmful effects of inhaling pollen from trees that produce the bacterial toxin Bt. Engineering trees to produce Bt toxin could be far more dangerous. Pines are known for heavy pollination, spreading pollen for hundreds of kilometers. Establishment of plantations of pines that produce Bt pollen could potentially lead to widespread outbreaks of sickness”.

“Given that genetic modification in trees is already entering the commercial phase with GM populus in China, it is very important that environmental risk assessment studies are conducted with protocols and methodologies agreed upon at a national level and an international level. It is also important that the results of such studies are made widely available.”

The report concludes: “The damaging effects of conventional industrial monoculture tree plantations is already well-documented and is being resisted around the world. The addition of transgenic tree plantations can only worsen existing problems. Add to this the utter lack of credible risk assessment of transgenic tree release, especially on a global scale, and it becomes a matter of common sense that there must not be any further forward motion in the commercial development of transgenic tree plantations. The UN CBD must impose a moratorium on the technology and launch a thorough and global examination of the risks of transgenic tree release.”

Article based on information from: “Briefing Paper on Transgenic Trees - Agenda Pt. 26.1 – CBD COP-8, Curitiba, Brazil”, http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/BDC/COP8.pdf; personal communication from Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project and STOP GE Trees Campaign, and members of the Global Forest Coalition; “UN Cautions Over GM trees”, Sam Burcher, ISIS Press Release 12/10/05, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/UNCaution.php

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Chile: Pulp mill destroy biodiversity and people’s livelihoods

Black-necked swans used to have their habitat in the Carlos Andwandter Nature Sanctuary on the Cruces River, a Ramsar site located in the northern zone of the city of Valdivia in the Tenth Region. The black-necked swan (Cygnus melancoryphus) is a migratory bird native of South America. Its landscapes are the wetlands of the south of Brazil, Uruguay, nearly all Argentina and Chile from the Fourth to the Tenth Region. It feeds on plants and in the Cruces River on a waterweed, the luchecillo (Egeria densa). In addition to the fact that the black-necked swan became part of the local identity, the Rio Cruces Sanctuary led to the development of a considerable inflow of tourists, resulting in an important source of income and labour for the local people.

The Arauco and Constitución (CELCO) pulp mill started operating at the beginning of 2004, located at 32 kilometres to the southeast of the wetland. The mill operates with the ECF bleaching system (using chorine dioxide) and is fed by pine trees from vast monoculture plantations. It discharges its effluents into the Cruces River.

The mill had been operating less than a month when the communes of San José de la Mariquina in the west (close on 6 Km from the mill), Lanco and Loncoche in the north (some 30 Km away) and Valdivia in the south (some 60 Km away), protested because of the insupportable smell coming from the mill (see WRM Bulletin No. 83). In October of that same year there was an alert because of an anomaly in the wetland, corroborated by the presence of dead and dying swans, attributed to the lack of food as it was found that the luchecillo and other waterweeds had dried up. The Austral University of Valdivia presented a report showing that the heavy metals (including aluminium) that the mill was releasing into the water had destroyed the luchecillo, causing the death of 500 birds out of a total of 5,000 that rapidly migrated.

Furthermore, the diagnostic set out in a report by the World Wildlife Foundation made public on 22 November 2005 confirmed the reiterated complaints that the citizen movement of Valdivia had been making for over a year and that had remained unanswered by the authorities. In turn the Chilean Agriculture and Livestock Service made an analysis of the concentration of polychlorinated dioxins and furans in black swan tissues (“Study on the origin of the death rate and drop in the population of water fowl in the Carlos Anwandter Nature Sanctury in the province of Valdivia”) carried out by a laboratory in the United States. The results reveal the presence of polychlorinated dioxins and furans, showing that pulp mills bleaching with chorine dioxide release dioxins and furans, extremely toxic substances that bio-accumulate in the environment.

To face the Rio Cruces catastrophe, the 320 thousand strong population of Valdivia, responded immediately by setting up an association, Action Group for the Swans (Acción por los Cisnes). Multitudinous and unceasing participation and complaints provided a political status to the environmental problem, bringing it to international spheres. Some Euro-deputies became interested in the catastrophe and promoted a revision of the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Chile. However, it is ironical that it is the countries of the North that are promoting the unsustainable consumption of paper and it is their demand for raw material that encourages the export of pulp from the South, with the social and environmental disasters this gives rise to. The production of pulp for export has become installed in many countries of the South, prodigious in productive land, benign climates, cheap labour and indebted governments. The good business for some is carried out at the expense of the environment and local populations, which suffer doubly, due to the destructive effects of the monoculture tree plantations and due to contamination by the pulp industry.

Although the CELCO mill was subject to fines and temporary closures during 2005, imposed by the National Environmental Commission (Comisión Nacional de Medio Ambiente - CONAMA), the mill still has the support of the Chilean government. Many ecologists believe that pressure had been put on CONAMA under the presidency of Eduardo Ruiz-Tagle to obtain approval for the project of the mill.

In the meanwhile, the swans have died or migrated, the mill continues to contaminate, the neighbours continue to get poorer with the disappearance of tourist activities and the contamination of their crops and their health is affected by the emissions and effluents from the mill. However, the mobilization of the people of Valdivia in defence of their biodiversity also continues without reprieve. The Citizen Movement Action Group for the Swans, the Lonko Council of Pikunwijimapu, the Tralco Indigenous Community and the Steel Workers Trade Union Association of Valdivia have filed lawsuits: one is a criminal investigation at the Prosecutor’s Office in Valdivia and the other a legal petition to the Council of State Defence. Furthermore, since the CELCO mill in Valdivia started operations, two actions for the enforcement of rights have been lodged, although both have been reversed. Mobilizations have not ceased. In January this year, over 2 thousand people marched against the pollution of the rivers of Valdivia and demanded that CELCO be closed down.

The slogan is: “for a new river region without pollution!” “We do not want to be told in a year’s time that the Sanctuary is contaminated because we all know it. We ask for CELCO to be closed as it is an open secret that the company is responsible for the ecological disaster,” pointed out Jose Araya, from the Action Group for the Swans.

Article based on information from the Acción por los Cisnes site: http://www.accionporloscisnes.org/ ; “Las papeleras de Michelle”, by Eduardo Basz, http://www.rionegro.com.ar/arch200602/01/o01j01.php; “Plantas de celulosa que utilizan dióxido de cloro emiten dioxinas y furanos: la evidencia chilena”, press release by RAPAL-Uruguay, 8 November 2005, http://www.guayubira.org.uy/celulosa/evidencia.html

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