The Swedish pulp and plantation industry’s
plan for moving South
On April 26, the Swedish Royal
Academy of Agriculture and Forestry organized in Stockholm the
seminar “Tilting forest industries from North to South”, aimed
at discussing the growing tendency of the Swedish tree plantations
and pulp industry to invest in Southern Countries such as Brazil,
Uruguay and Indonesia.
Unfortunately, the organizers
declined to open up a space in the panel for representatives of
southern countries present at the time in Sweden. Such representatives
included experts on the social and environmental impacts of plantations
and pulp mills from Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Swaziland
and Uruguay, as well as a number of Swedish students just returned
from a field study on Veracel and Aracruz’s plantations in Brazil.
The panel therefore only included
pro-plantation and pro-pulp industry representatives which provided
a biased view about the possible effects of the Swedish industry’s
move to the South. Several speakers highlighted the ‘fantastic’
performance of the eucalyptus plantations in Brazil, producing
up to 10 times more wood per hectare than Swedish forests, making
one speaker affirm that “if you want to have trees growing fast,
speak Portuguese”. Countries like Angola, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique
and Uruguay were classified as “interesting prospects” for plantations
and pulp mills and as “low cost countries”. Mention was made that
costs in Brazil were half of those in Sweden.
The above, coupled with the
predicted global increase in paper and cardboard consumption and
the availability of “cheap money” for investments in Southern
countries, has resulted in the Swedish industry’s decision to
move its raw material base to the South (plantations) as well
as the production of pulp.
While on the one hand only
one speaker gave a few comments on the negative impacts of tree
plantations in Indonesia, on the other hand the ‘successful’ and
‘responsible’ tree plantation management of Veracel Celulose in
Brazil (50% owned by Stora-Enso and 50% by Aracruz Celulose) was
presented by Otavio Pontes, vice-director of Stora-Enso Latin
America, as the example of sustainable tree plantation management.
Unfortunately, the representative
from the Brazilian Alert Against the Green Desert Movement was
not given the opportunity of challenging from the panel Mr Pontes’
propaganda with some recent examples from Veracel Celulose:
- the company was fined by
IBAMA –the Federal Environmental Agency- on 13 March 2007 in approximately
US$ 200,000 for having applied herbicide in 31.6
hectares of a permanent preservation area in the municipality
of Eunápolis, destroying the local vegetation and contaminating
an even larger area.
- in
Ponto Central, municipality of Santa Cruz de Cabrália, on April
1st 2007 the local population blocked the road to impede buses
with Veracel workers to get to the pulp mill because the company
refused to comply with demands from the local community.
- a recent study carried
out by Cepedes –Centre for Development Studies of the Extreme
South of Bahia- shows that since tree plantations started to be
implemented in the municipality of Eunapolis by Veracel in the
beginning of the 90s, the rural population has decreased in 59.3%
while the national percentage in the same period has shown a decrease
of 28%.
- Mr Pontes’s statement
that Veracel “created 30,000 jobs” is in
contradiction with the company’s own figures, according to which
Veracel created 739 direct jobs and 3,400 indirect jobs.
- The “socially responsible”
Veracel closed in November 2006 in Eunapolis a project that attended
with educational activities some 300 children between 7-15 years
old. It is good to remember that in the same period -election
campaign in Brazil for President, governors and parliamentarians-
Veracel spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in supporting all
candidates, especially those with chances to win, like the two
main candidates for governor of Bahia (one candidate with US$
100,000 and the other with US$ 50,000).
From the public, Southern participants
and Swedish students managed to raise issues and to challenge
the biased views about plantations coming from most panelists.
This was not an easy thing to achieve, given that the seminar’s
chairperson not only tried to avoid those voices to be heard but
even positioned himself clearly in support of tree plantations
and pulp mills in the South. In one of his interventions he challenged
the critical voices in the discussion posing the question: “if
you are against tree plantations, how do you think we can provide
school children with school books?” and adding: “what is your
alternative?”. It was made clear to him that people in countries
like Brazil and Uruguay consume 10 times less paper per capita
than the Swedish population and that the plantations and pulp
mills in those countries will not produce a single sheet of paper
but will export cellulose to mostly northern countries with excessive
paper consumption. For example, in Sweden, 46% of the paper consumption
has to do with wrapping and packaging other products, while 10%
are tissue papers.
Regarding “alternatives”, the
chairperson was told that the first alternative would be to NOT
to plant tree monocultures because they result in net job losses
at the local level and in a number of other impacts that worsen
local peoples’ livelihoods.
In sum, the seminar provided
evidence that for the Swedish pulp industry, the “fantastic” performance
of the eucalyptus tree in countries in the South is above all
related to the huge profits that this industry can make, making
them fantastically blind about any negative impact that might
threaten this enormous gain.
By Winnie Overbeek, FASE/ES,
e-mail: winnie.fase@terra.com.br
and Ricardo Carrere, WRM
