International
Meeting against Monoculture Eucalyptus Plantations
At the end of April this year, the Brazilian
Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST) was host at its Florestan
Fernandes National School (Guararema, Sao Paulo) to almost 80
members of social movements and organizations from South America,
Asia, Africa, and Europe attending the International Meeting on
Monoculture Eucalyptus Plantations. The aim of this meeting was
to define an agenda for joint action against the advance of monoculture
tree plantations and pulp mills at global Southern level.
The meeting was the result of a strategic
decision by the network of Via Campesina International movements
to identify the monoculture model as one of the main threats to
food sovereignty on a local, regional, and world level.
One of the first conclusions arising
from the debates and testimonials presented was the need to understand
this phenomenon as a combination of financial and corporate policies,
policies of United Nations technical bodies such as FAO, and government
policies with the common denominator in their concrete application
of territorial control for business purposes and the destruction
of natural resources.
The enemy is not the eucalyptus tree
per se, but the general model imposed. This is not only a technical
model but also an economic one and one of territorial occupation
having a direct impact on indigenous and peasant communities’
living conditions and production and on family farming.
The allocation of vast stretches of land and amounts of water,
public credit resources and company guarantees mainly results
in the destruction of local food production systems.
According to the Basque peasant leader
Paul Nicholson, member of the Via Campesina International Secretariat,
“When the women of Via Campesina carried out their Aracruz action
(8 March 2006), we did not realize that we were touching the heart
of the model and that this was a very important action, even from
a historical standpoint. The women drew our attention in
a very graphic and clear way on a situation that was there before
our eyes. It was a fact: the women had touched the heart
of the neo-liberal model. We are presently facing an enormous
attack from the neo-liberal model, with its many variations. For
example, the energy model, agro-fuels, monoculture soybean plantations,
the encroachment of the green desert, climate change. The
greatest responsibility for climate and environmental change falls
on the shoulders of industrial agriculture and stockbreeding,
by uncontrolled commercialization of land, natural resources and
food. This is a farming model without farmers to obtain absolute
control over food. We must address this issue of monoculture tree
plantations within the problem’s global scope.”
According to Ricardo Carrere, international
secretary of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), “the struggles
against eucalyptus trees are a symbol, from the first struggles
in India, Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia,
to those today in Chile against pine trees that have also dried
up groundwater and caused major social disasters. In Colombia,
the situation is similar, as the first monoculture plantations
were pine followed by eucalyptus. What I mean is that the
problem is not the species, but the model. We are against this
forestry model characterized by its large-scale plantations occupying
millions of hectares with fast-growing trees.
We are talking about this when we say that the monoculture model
is nefarious.”
The Brazilian peasant movements view
the advance of monoculture eucalyptus plantations as one of the
main obstacles curbing the general process of agrarian reform.
As one of the leaders of the Peasant Women’s Movement said “The
women’s movements comprised in Via Campesina Brazil consider that
there is a before and an after the action that took place on 8
March 2006 when the property of Aracruz Celulose was invaded.”
This action, which was referred to many times during the Meeting,
marked a turning point in the struggle against monoculture tree
plantations in this country. It gave out a message to public opinion
clearly highlighting that the forestation company’s model evicts
and directly affects landless peasants and family farming.
These mass movements are fighting for agrarian reform and have
identified the monoculture tree plantation model as an obstacle.
The strategy against it has mobilization as one of its main components.
Another strategic criterion is action
through networks of movements, organizations and activists in
order to counteract the promotion that the major corporate mass
media is making of the forestry and pulp mill model; these movements
and networks need to disseminate information through the communication
channels they have available. In the words of an indigenous person
in the State of Espirito Santo in Brazil, where the Aracruz company
stole land from the Tupinikim indigenous communities and still
continues to violate their ancestral and cultural rights “landscapes
are changed at such a speed that they cannot be controlled, they
change from one day to the next. The best lands in my state are
occupied by eucalyptus trees, lands with good water. The way in
which the companies control the mass media is directly by means
of advertising. Medias are opened up in cities near places with
many plantations, some advertising is offered to the companies
and thus a new media is established, co-opted by the companies.
This generates great confusion among the grass-roots organizations
that are unable to distinguish who the enemy is, and with whom
this enemy relates.”
A first assessment of this activity
indicates that the meeting of various movements and organizations
to define a regional strategy against the advance of monoculture
tree plantations is a strategy in itself. A regional strategy
needs to be built up from the social movements because the model
is regional, the capital and the companies operate regionally.
It remains with us to make possible this necessary strategy.
By Sebastián Valdomir, REDES – Friends
of the Earth Uruguay, e-mail: svaldomir@gmail.com,
http://www.redes.org.uy/
