Brazil:
Response to Veracel’s attempt to obtain the FSC label for
its plantations
The certifying firm SGS has launched
a consultation process for the FSC certification of Veracel Celulose’s
eucalyptus plantations. This company is owned by the Swedish-Finnish
company Stora Enso and the Norwegian-Brazilian company Aracruz
Celulose and its plantations are established on 78,000 hectares
of land in the extreme south of the State of Bahia. The negative
impacts of those plantations are resulting in considerable local
resistance (see Bulletin No. 109).
The main assessment will be made between 23 and 27 July 2007.
Here below is an Open Letter aimed at
preventing Veracel from obtaining FSC certification, which reflects
indignation over the attempt at certifying a company that has
caused, and continues to cause, so much pain and suffering.
Open Letter to women and men of
goodwill
I am going to talk about things that
I consider to be very contradictory. How does one understand certification
of TREE PLANTATIONS? Well, it is not as simple as it would
seem. This does not involve native trees from the ATLANTIC RAINFOREST
biome where I was born and raised. Where I lived through various
cycles of destruction, but nothing compares with this: monoculture
eucalyptus plantations! I saw the forest felled to give way to
eucalyptus plantations! I SAW IT. I saw rivers, streams and springs
dry up! I saw a rural worker, a country man who did not know how
to read or write and who had only learnt how to work the land,
with his ten or eleven children coming to the city in tears, fearing
an uncertain fate. Presently, the older children are selling drugs
on street corners, some of them have even been to prison, and
the eldest was killed by a police officer. A very dangerous
bandit! Just imagine. And the father in tears, repeating as if
to convince himself that he was not to blame – I didn’t teach
my son to steal or to kill. I taught him how to plant and to harvest,
I taught him the crop cycle, what to plant in each season. And
he learnt, he was very good at it, but the land was missing.
The younger ones and the grandchildren,
the children of the dead son, have gone to the Recovery House
SOS Life, to recover from serious under-nutrition caused by the
lack of food.
And now I receive a text from the newspaper
“Valor Econômico” under the heading “Veracel is taking up arms
against the factory’s opponents,” that states: “The pulp mill
industry is gathering statistical information commissioned to
independent institutions to show the economic and social effects
of their investments and to refute criticism against their factories.”
Veracel, a company with a pulp mill
located at the extreme south of Bahia, today disseminated a study
indicating that it is already responsible for 15 % of the agricultural
GDP in the region. The mill, which started operating in May 2005,
answered for 60% of the total economic growth of the region for
the period 2003-2006.
"We know that Veracel has a positive
effect on Bahia and on the region, but we do not know precisely
how much,” stated the president of the company, Renato Gueron.
He explained that one of the reasons
for preparing the study undertaken by the Project Division of
the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) was to obtain concrete data
to counteract the opinion of people contrary to the pulp mills.
“There are ideologically-motivated non-governmental organizations
and other groups lacking technical arguments who are opposed to
our type of activity,” alleged Gueron.
I am part of the group that, according
to the director of the company, is ideologically-motivated and
does not have any technical arguments. So I suppose that what
I see is not reality, it has not been scientifically proven. In
order to scientifically prove something I need a technician, an
academic to follow pre-established and manipulated standards and
rules, a person who has read hundreds and hundreds of books and
who states in a lengthy and incomprehensible report that what
I have seen and experienced is true!
But this situation has been seen and
experienced by men, women, teen-agers and children in the worst
way possible. Every day we feel in our skin the noxious consequences
of regional economic growth corresponding to 60% between 2003
and 2006. What growth are they talking about, and for whom? Probably
they are talking about the profits distributed between Aracruz
and Stora Enso, Veracel’s partners. This is the only truth: profits
are technically verifiable. And what if later on no-one is willing
to prove that the people in this region are living in poverty?
How can it be proved? Poor people going hungry, poor people assaulting
and robbing, what is wrong with this? What we have to do is to
build prisons! Eunapolis should already have its own prison!
Justice, politicians, scientists, shareholders,
they do not live here and the few ones who do have private security
and build high walls to protect their houses and their families.
They are honest men, who hold the truth. And the truth is
that the region has grown economically and is responsible for
15% of the GDP. Considering this, we will forget that to obtain
this result, the company cut down the Atlantic rainforest; that
the company was fined by IBAMA in 2005 for having prevented regeneration
of 1200 hectares of forest in process of regeneration; that it
was again fined by IBAMA in 2007 for having dumped poison in springs;
that justice determined that the law should be enforced and the
eucalyptus plantations should be removed from the surroundings
of National Parks (Pau Brasil, Descobrimento and Monte Pascoal);
that it is being obliged by federal justice to pay labour rights
that had not been paid to the workers of the Veracel Institute.
We will also forget that this institute is a façade where children
are given new clothes and shoes to receive illustrious visitors
from Sweden and Finland and when the visitors depart, the officials
are obliged to remove the clothes and shoes, leaving the children
crying with no shoes and torn clothing. We will forget that the
company does not comply with the conditions set out in the environmental
permit granted by the Environmental Council of the State of Bahia,
for example providing timber for other purposes to avoid pressure
on what is left of the Atlantic rainforest, or not acquiring smallholding
areas without the endorsement of the Rural Workers Trade Union.
We will forget that in one single municipality, Eunapolis, between
1996 and 2000 almost 7000 families left rural areas because the
lands were sold to Veracel, that they destroyed a community (Maurília)
to build the mill and that the people of this community are now
living in the outskirts of cities, without jobs and in poverty.
That in the community neighbouring the Mill (Barrolândia) there
are people who are dying of starvation because they can no longer
obtain their livelihood from rural activities as they are surrounded
by eucalyptus trees; that in addition to hunger, people in this
community are dying of leprosy and tuberculosis. We will forget
the company’s lack of respect for the Brazilian legislation and
go ahead and CERTIFY IT.
The objective of Veracel is to achieve
FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification. FSC is a non-governmental
organization that was established in 1993 in Canada. This certification
verifies that the entire productive process of a factory, from
the production of eucalyptus seeds to the manufacturing of paper,
is carried out in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial
and economically viable way. However, the only thing we can verify
is that it is economically viable for foreign shareholders. Only
poverty, hunger and unemployment is left for the BRAZILIAN PEOPLE!
Uncontrolled plantation of eucalyptus
in the extreme South of Bahia has already taken over almost all
the productive land, traditional farms, rural reference communities,
farming towns, highways, streams, hundred year-old settlements,
in fact all the components of a peoples’ culture.
All this was conquered by the company
through false promises and deceit. The regional population was
deceived by the economic power and intellectual capacity of the
company’s experts. Today the peoples of the region are aware
of the curse caused by Veracel and periodically we find in the
press statements made by grassroots organizations, accusing the
company of lack of respect and irresponsible behaviour.
Granting certification to a company
such as Veracel is the same as saying that the BRAZILIAN PEOPLE
should not exist, that the BRAZILIAN PEOPLE are condemned to die
of hunger!
Eunapolis, 20 June 2007
By Ivonete Gonçalves, Educational Teacher
and Executive Coordinator of CEPEDES - Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas
para o Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul – Bahia.
She was born and bred in Eunapolis, a municipality impacted
by monoculture eucalyptus plantations and the Veracel Pulp mill.
