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South Africa: Research views FSC certified
tree plantations as a legacy of apartheid
In
South Africa, a thorough research carried out by John Blessing
Karumbidza --“A Study of the Social and Economic Impacts of Industrial
Tree Plantations in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa”,
available at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/SouthAfrica/book.pdf
-- has identified a host of damaging economic, social and environmental
impacts of monoculture tree plantations affecting local communities,
water resources and ecosystems.
The introduction
of industrial tree plantations in the country witnessed in the
1980s a new wave led by timber companies Sappi and Mondi, both
with FSC certified plantations: Mondi Business Paper, with 399,068
ha, and Mondi Millennium Newsprint with 48,530 ha, both through
the FSC-accredited certification company
SGS; and SAPPI Forests Group Scheme with 76,041 ha, and SAPPI
Forests with 383,164 ha, both through the FSC-accredited certification
company Soil
Association Woodmark (SA).
The growing
of large scale monoculture tree plantations was possible thanks
to artificially low input costs, especially wages and land acquisition,
as well as generous subsidisation of and provision by the government
at that time. As a result, two processes were put in motion: the
hastening of rural capitalist relations and the intentional use
of trees as landscape modifiers. This development took place within
the framework of segregation and apartheid policies that have
been instrumental to determine the racial and spatial nature of
South Africa’s agrarian landscape. Since
the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the primary
initiative of the industrial tree-growing sector has entailed
two particular strategies: the establishment of out-grower schemes
promoted as social or corporate responsibility or as employment
creation schemes, and the attempt to bring on board a BEE (Black
economic empowerment) component into the existing asset structure
of the major industrial tree-growing companies. However, it is
becoming increasingly clear that these programmes have failed
to ameliorate the ever-increasing list of negative social, economic
and environmental impacts of the industrial timber plantation
sector’s activities.
Timber industry
plantations have displaced people from their original homes disrupting
traditional livelihood mechanisms and replacing rich and diverse
grasslands with a checkerboard of plantations and fields. Soil
and water are being polluted by insecticides, herbicides and other
chemical contaminants used in timber plantations including fuel
and engine oil spilt from vehicles and chain saws. Plantation
trees also change soil pH and all plantation tree species used
by the industry invade river-courses, forests, grasslands and
wetlands, necessitating the use of more polluting chemicals and
fuels for their eradication. Plantation workers are seldom provided
with adequate safety equipment and are exposed to the fumes from
spraying pesticides and heavy plantation vehicles.
However,
and despite the problems with industrial tree plantations in South
Africa, an area of 1.665.418 Hectares is certified by the Forest
Stewardship Council as being well managed.
The case
of the SiyaQhubeka Consortium, certified by SGS, is mentioned
by the FSC as “changing the paradigm of plantation management”
(FSC no date). However, the referred study reveals that the joint
venture group called SiyaQhubeka is more a Mondi partnership with
government (sharing 90% between them) rather than a genuine empowerment
deal. There is also no definite time frame put in place for the
transfer of Mondi’s shares to the community, and this transfer
will come as Mondi’s initiative rather than of the community or
government.
It was agreed
upon transfer that, wherever possible “local communities and black
South Africans are given opportunities to benefit from the industrial
activities of the company”. Much of the timber grown by the state
South African Forestry Company Limited (SAFCOL) was unsuitable
for Mondi’s pulping needs, as it was largely pine and mostly in
saw-log rotations. Instead of investigating alternative land uses
that could direct SiyaQhubeka towards developing agri-forestry,
the land cleared of pines is being quickly converted to eucalyptus,
a task that will take five years to complete. The unplanted areas
are also being planted to eucalyptus, without the option of any
alternative land use.
SiyaQhubeka
controls three separate land holdings. St. Lucia plantation in
the north has 12,550 ha planted. It runs along the western border
of the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park and is entirely enclosed
within the park game fence. The reasoning behind this was to allow
elephant, buffalo and rhino access to SiyaQhubeka’s plantation
lands, including 2,171 ha of unplanted areas. North of Richards
Bay is the KwaMbonambi plantation which has 6,257 ha of trees
and 1,516 ha of unplanted areas. To the south of Empangeni, is
the Port Durnford plantation (3010 ha) with 947 ha of unplanted
areas. Altogether SiyaQhubeka has 21,817 ha of timber plantations,
and 4,634 ha of land not planted to industrial plantations. The
unplanted areas are mostly roads, servitudes, service areas, firebreaks
and unplantable slopes or wetlands.
In making
the decision to award the deal to SiyaQhubeka, the Department
of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) emphasised that local community
members in the three areas where the plantations are found, namely
Mtubatuba, KwaMbonambi and Port Durnford, would be sub-contracted
to provide services. The key activities around which contracts
are sourced are planting, slashing and clearing bush in the plantations
and, to an extent, clear felling. Felling trees has recently become
increasingly mechanised with the industry acquiring integrated
machines that cut, strip and stack the logs, making them ready
for loading. Felling is one of the most labour intensive and expensive
processes. By mechanising this stage of the timber management
process, this limits the potential for job creation in the sector.
It is not surprising that the only community contractors that
are operational in the former SAFCOL plantations are only involved
in planting and cleaning plantations. These are processes that
do not require heavy capital investment. In many of the contracts,
the workers actually use their own tools. Examples of these include
Umbonambi Forestry Services (UFS), which was awarded the contract
to plant SiyaQhubeka’s eucalyptus trees at KwaMbonambi plantation.
UFS employs only 17 people with one supervisor and expects its
team of workers to plant at the rate of 6 ha per day. In the Mtubatuba
plantation, Thalaku, a joint ownership contractor of three entrepreneurs
from the Khula Village in Dukuduku, is involved in slashing and
clearing undergrowth in the plantations. Thalaku employs in the
range of 40 to 45 people depending on the size of the contract.
It also contracts to undertake pine sapling removal from the St.
Lucia Eastern Shores area that is being
rehabilitated for conservation purposes.
The author
of the study concludes that “in fact FSC is certifying a legacy
of apartheid.”
