OUR
VIEWPOINT
-
Why an International Day Against Tree Monocultures?
All
“international days” concern problematic issues of global importance
that need to be addressed by society as a whole. The expansion
of tree monocultures has resulted in so many social and environmental
impacts that it gave rise to the idea of establishing an International
Day to raise the issue at the global level. The date of September
21st was chosen following the lead from local networks in Brazil,
who in 2004 decided to establish this date –which is Tree Day
in that country- as a day of struggle against tree monocultures.
The
date coincides with the UN Day of Peace, which is precisely what
local communities affected by plantations wish: peace to live
in harmony with nature and with other human beings. Tree plantations
are destroying such peace and the need for raising this issue
on a specific day at the international level stems from a number
of issues:
The
first and more important is that many people –in South and North-
are totally unaware about the social and environmental impacts
resulting from large-scale tree monocultures and believe that
planting trees is always positive. They are also unaware of the
fact that these plantations are not aimed at improving local peoples’
livelihoods, but at feeding wasteful consumption in the North.
The
above situation results from a combination of factors, among which
the fact that the voices of local peoples’ struggling against
plantations are silenced through fear, repression or by being
made invisible by the media. Both fear/repression and media invisibility
result from the economic and political power of plantation companies,
usually also involved in investments in the pulp, timber, palm
oil or rubber industrial sectors. The companies’ power –expressed
through different mechanisms- result in partial or total control
over government and media, who become “partners” of their investments.
As a result, whenever local people stand up for their rights against
plantation companies they are defined –together with their supporters-
as “troublemakers”.
Plantation
companies are further empowered by international bodies, forestry
departments and mainstream forestry professionals, who –against
all evidence- insist in defining tree monocultures as “planted
forests” and as having similar positive roles as true forests.
As a result, plantation opposers are classified as either ignorant
or having hidden political agendas.
The
above combination of corporate, government, professional and media
influence is what maintains most people ignorant about the negative
impacts of monoculture tree plantations. There are of course government
officials, foresters and journalists who either oppose such plantations
or are at least open to look into the existing evidence, but they
are still a minority suffering the same constraints imposed by
power.
And
if things weren't bad enough, large-scale tree plantations are
currently being promoted as a false solution to climate change
in two manners: On the one hand the European parliament and others
are pushing for so-called "second generation" agrofuels
based on wood, which will lead to the rapid expansion of monoculture
tree plantations, including of genetically modified trees. On
the other hand, several Southern countries have stepped up their
attempts to finance the expansion of large-scale plantations as
carbon offset projects or to use tree plantations to compensate
for the loss of forests when these countries apply for funding
from a potential mechanism under the Climate Convention.
Such
is the context within which this International Day Against Tree
Monocultures is taking place. There now exists abundant documented
evidence about the social and environmental impacts of plantations,
but governments, international bodies and mainstream foresters
choose to ignore it. There are abundant cases to be reported –of
environmental destruction, human rights violations, extreme working
conditions, impacts on women- but the mainstream media chooses
not to report them.
On
this 21 September we therefore aim at providing visibility to
the numerous peoples struggling against plantations, as a means
of breaking the circle of silence and lies surrounding their plight.
At the same time, our aim is to disseminate as widely as possible
the evidence emerging from those struggles regarding the social
and environmental impacts resulting from those plantations. Through
this means, it is our aim to weaken government support to plantations
and to expose those that either provide plantations with credibility
or who misinform the public about the issue.
Finally,
we wish to stress that the struggle against plantations is something
that has been imposed on communities, who are in fact protecting
their livelihoods and local environments against corporate greed.
It is a struggle that needs to be staged in order to protects
forests, grasslands, wetlands, biodiversity, soils, water and
people, all of which are being affected by these vast tree monocultures.
It is, in sum, a struggle for life.
Friends
of the Earth International - Global Forest Coalition - World
Rainforest Movement
index
VOICING OPPOSITION
- A PowerPoint presentation based on local testimonials
Depletion of water sources, changes in flora and fauna, loss of
land, human rights violations, destruction of the social fabric:
these are just some of the problems brought about by tree monocultures.
Those who know more about this than anyone else are the local
communities who have suffered this invasion first hand, but whose
protests and struggles are systematically silenced by powerful
corporations and their allies.
This PowerPoint presentation (available at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/21_set/ingles/monoculture2008.pps)
is aimed at providing a forum for these voices, so that they can
spread, circulate and join with others, culminating a single,
unanimous, forceful call to bring an end to the destructive model
of large-scale monoculture tree plantations. We hope you will
use this tool to spread these voices and their message.
index
-
Statement by forestry professionals and students
For
local communities that live in forested areas, the difference
between a forest and a tree monoculture is very clear. Unfortunately,
this clarity is not shared by many forestry professionals, whose
training has been based on the concept that tree plantations are
forests and carry out similar functions.
This
is no minor matter, because it is forestry professionals who advise
governments, since governments believe that forestry professionals
– and not local communities – are the experts on this subject.
And based on this advice, governments formulate and implement
ambitious forestry plans that often entail the establishment of
vast stretches of monoculture tree plantations, which have nothing
in common with forests.
Within
that context, there are also many forestry students and professionals
who totally disagree with that view, based on concrete experience
of the social and environmental impacts of tree monocultures,
and who join the people to oppose both the planting of these monocultures
and that they continue to be defined as “forests”.
With
the aim of strengthening that opposition, a group of forestry
professionals and students issued a statement in which they very
clearly stress that “plantations are not forests.” They are now
calling on their colleagues from around the world to adhere to
the statement as a means of initiating a profound process of change,
both inside and outside forestry training institutions.
We
consider this 21 September to be an excellent opportunity to disseminate
this statement, and we urge all forestry professionals and students
who identify with this position to sign on.
Monoculture
tree plantations are not forests
Statement
by forestry professionals and students
2008
Throughout the world,
governments are actively promoting the expansion of large-scale
monoculture tree plantations, despite the serious social and environmental
impacts already witnessed on existing plantations. The promoters
of this model claim that plantations are forests, which simply
is not true. Plantations are not forests. Unfortunately, many
of our colleagues in the forestry sector support this model, and
our teaching institutions continue to train new generations of
forestry professionals to perpetuate and expand this type of forestry
model, aimed at seeing forests where they do not exist.
This
is why we feel the need to publicly state not only that monoculture
tree plantations are not forests, but also that these plantations
result or have resulted in the destruction of our native forests
and of other equally valuable ecosystems that they replace.
Those
who know the most about this issue are the local populations who
directly suffer the impacts of plantations, such as:
-
Loss of biodiversity (and the resulting loss of food, medicines,
firewood, and materials for housing construction and crafts, among
others).
- Changes in the
water cycle, resulting both in the decrease and depletion of water
sources and the increase of flooding and landslides.
-
Decreased food production.
-
Soil degradation.
-
Loss of indigenous and traditional cultures that depend on the
original ecosystems.
- Conflicts with forestry companies over the
ownership of land in indigenous territories and those of other
traditional communities.
- Decreased sources of employment in traditionally
agricultural areas.
- Expulsion of rural populations.
-
Destruction of the natural landscape in tourism areas.
For
reasons like these, we forestry professionals who strive for the
conservation of forests and recognise the basic rights of the
peoples who live there must take the side of those who truly defend
the forests – the local communities – and oppose the expansion
of monoculture plantations.
We
want to stress that this process is not beginning today, but in
fact dates back to the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.
At that time, a group of forestry students and professionals agreed
on the need for “another kind of forestry training based on a
different way of seeing the world, in which forests are not seen
simply as wood, but rather as what they really are: diverse ecosystems
made up of forest flora, fauna and peoples.” In line with this
position, we clearly declared ourselves “against the establishment
of large-scale monocultures or homogenous tree plantations.”
Today,
within this framework, we are calling on forestry students and
professionals to adhere to this declaration and to begin a process,
inside and outside educational institutions, that will make it
possible for those of us who enter this profession to actually
do what we thought we would be doing when we entered it: defending
forests and the peoples who depend on them.
Signatures
follow. The declaration with the updated list of signatories is
available at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/foresters.html
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WHEN
TREES BECOME DESERTS
-
Plantations we support and plantations we oppose
Planting trees is generally considered to be a positive action.
The act of planting a tree – either at a school or in a peasant
community – in many societies symbolizes concern for nature and
a contribution by the present generation to future ones.
In addition to this symbolic aspect, many tree plantations are
indeed positive, in particular when they are made by decision
of the communities themselves to cover their needs, for example
in the case of fruit trees or woody species that serve to address
other needs for firewood, fibres, seeds, flowers, medicines, shade,
shelter, etc. Many of these plantations are in fact agro-forestry
systems in themselves, often part of traditional local ecosystem
management systems.
It goes without saying that WRM supports and has always supported
this type of plantation, which has a socially beneficial and environmentally
appropriate nature.
However, under the cover of this positive image of plantations,
other types of plantations have been developed, generating wide
opposition, firstly in the local context and later at international
level. We refer to large-scale monoculture tree plantations, including
those aimed at the production of timber or pulp and those aimed
at the production of palm oil or rubber. More recently, monoculture
tree plantations serving as “carbon sinks” and those aimed at
the production of biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol have come to
join this latter group.
This model is actively promoted by a set of actors including international
organizations such as FAO and the World Bank, state agencies in
industrialized countries (export credit, bilateral cooperation,
technical support), in addition to companies benefitting from
this investment (banks, the pulp and paper industry, manufacturers
of machinery, consulting firms, etc.). The final result is the
production of abundant and cheap raw material –timber, pulp, rubber,
palm oil or others – that serves as an input to the economic growth
of the industrialized countries themselves. At the level of producer
countries, what remains is a degraded environment, an impoverished
population - the “externality costs” – so that raw material is
cheap.
It is this type of plantations that WRM has been opposing for
over 20 years, due to their serious social and environmental impacts.
In spite of the fact that they are defined as “planted forests,”
it is certain that they have nothing in common with a forest.
While forests serve to support local populations – both people
and fauna – these plantations evict them; while the former regulate
the water cycle, the latter deplete it and contaminate water sources;
while forests protect and enrich the soil, plantations deplete
and erode it, while forests contain an enormous diversity of life,
plantations are green deserts.
All these impacts are an inevitable consequence of the model,
based on single-species monocultures – generally alien – covering
vast areas of land previously given over to satisfying the subsistence
needs of local populations and the habitat of numerous species
of plants and animals. To the social and environmental impacts
arising from this land occupation, are added those caused by the
use of large amounts of chemical fertilizers, weed-killers, insecticides
and fungicides used to guarantee the profitability of the investment.
These agrotoxics contaminate water, air and the soil with the
consequent disappearance of species of fauna and flora and serious
impacts on the health of workers and local inhabitants. In turn,
the growth of trees planted as large-scale monocultures depletes
water resources and soil nutrients. The scant jobs the model requires
– temporary ones, with low wages and poor working conditions –
decrease as mechanization of all the operations progresses.
To the above is now added the recent threat of the incorporation
of transgenic trees, genetically modified to increase profitability
of the plantations. Such research is being carried out in at least
19 countries (see details at www.wrm.org.uy).
The use of such trees in commercial plantations not only implies
a very serious threat to the world’s forests but would also worsen
the impacts already observed in existing monoculture plantations.
All this has led to an increasing number of organizations and
people opposing large-scale monoculture plantations, gathered
under the premise that “plantations are not forests.”
As for WRM, our position is very clear: we support certain types
of plantations and oppose others. We have nothing against eucalyptus
or pine trees or oil palms or any particular species of tree.
Our opposition is aimed at a specific model of use – and now genetic
manipulation – of trees, benefitting large corporations and harming
both the local communities and the environment where they are
installed.
index
THE IMPACTS OF TREE
PLANTATIONS ON PEOPLE
In
AFRICA
- Cameroon: Bagyeli severely impacted by the establishment of
industrial plantations
In South-Western Cameroon, near Kribi, two giant industrial plantations
cover a total area of 62,000 hectares. One of them, HEVECAM, is
a rubber tree monoculture belonging to the Singapore-based GMG
group, while the other, SOCAPALM, is an oil palm plantation, property
of the French group Bolloré.
HEVECAM and SOCAPALM adjoin about ten communities of Bagyeli (“Pygmy”)
hunter-gatherers. The latter are traditionally characterized by
a strong dependency on forest resources and by a remarkable adaptation
to forest areas. Bagyeli camps constitute the central socioeconomic
unit from which production/consumption activities are organized,
based on hunting and gathering, but also increasingly on agriculture.
Traditionally however, their economy rests on natural reproduction
cycles (other than agricultural). A few huts (up to a dozen) comprising
a population of 15 to 70 persons form the community, whose functioning
is remarkably egalitarian. Each community presents a set of customary
rules regulating a given forested territory and particularly the
use of its natural resources. Nevertheless, these exclusive rules
are balanced by an “obligation of conviviality” based on friendship
relations with persons from outside the community.
The main problems caused by the establishment of HEVECAM and SOCAPALM
are linked with the vanishing of large areas of forest formerly
inhabited by Bagyeli. Here are two concrete cases:
-- Kilombo I is a Bagyeli village stuck
between SOCAPALM and HEVECAM. The situation of its inhabitants
is particularly difficult, due to their isolated location and
to the destruction of their forest. SOCAPALM forced them to leave
their place of residence in order to allow the establishment of
the plantation and promised them in return modern houses. But
until today, no houses nor any compensation (for example for the
tombs which had been destroyed) have been given. These Bagyeli
are now surrounded by plantations, in which they are not
allowed to enter. As a result, the population of Kilombo
I has drastically decreased since the arrival of the plantation.
-- Nyamabandé is another Bagyeli community
located between HEVECAM and the Campo-Ma’an national park, where
the two entities touch each other. The Bagyeli were little by
little forced to settle next to the Campo-Ma’an protected area
in which they only recently recovered the right to hunt and collect.
On the contrary, within the perimeter of HEVECAM, only adults
are allowed to enter and to collect snails. Additionally, the
“Convention d’Etablissement” (conditions of contract) between
the government and HEVECAM (dated 15th of September 1998) does
not mention a single time the interests of the Bagyeli.
The opportunities to obtain a job in the plantations are very
poor: HEVECAM does not enrol Bagyeli workers in rubber tapping
and neither does SOCAPALM in its oil palm plantations. On the
rare occasions when SOCAPALM provides them a temporary job, the
company pays them less than Bantu workers. In the same way, HEVECAM
periodically appoints a subcontractor for the weeding of the monocultures;
the latter sometimes hires Bagyeli but underpays them in a scandalous
way.
From a health perspective, Bagyeli say illnesses are less frequent
in the forest than close to the plantation. As a matter of fact,
mosquitoes proliferate in the stagnant water puddles between the
tree rows. Consequently, malaria and cholera affect today the
local populations more than before. Our
Bagyeli informants also noted that high blood pressure and depression
rates are more frequent than before. The problems linked with
an unhealthy food and with water pollution (agrochemical products,
erosion) are worsening notably through the lack of access to their
traditional pharmacopeia (frequent cases of abortion, chronic
intestinal problems, etc.). Because they are not part of the wage-earning
workforce, local Bagyeli do not have free access to the hospitals
and schools belonging to the plantation companies.
Formerly, Bagyeli used to find in the forest everything they needed
to live, but today it is only at the edges of the plantation,
and above all much deeper in the forest, that animals can still
be found. On the side of the Campo-Ma’an park, the fauna has become
rare, not only because of the plantation, but also because of
the numerous poachers living in the HEVECAM region. The protein
intake of HEVECAM’s workers still depends 75% on “bush meat”.
Illegal commercial hunting has thus considerably increased during
the last few years while in the past hunting was exclusively dedicated
to local household consumption. It is estimated that there are
more than two thousands irregular firearms in HEVECAM’s concession.
This has become a major problem for Bagyeli and it will go increasing
hand in hand with the intensification of industrial activities.
By Julien-François Gerber, e-mail :
JulienFrancois.Gerber@campus.uab.es
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- Liberia: Painful rubber – the hard day’s life of Firestone tappers
In 1926, Firestone
Tire & Rubber Company signed a 99-year contract with the government
to lease one million acres [approximately 405,000 hecatares] of
land for the establishment of a rubber plantation. The total concession
area of Firestone represents 4% of Liberia’s territory and nearly
10% of its arable land.
Firestone currently
occupies some
240 square miles [approx. 62,000 hs] of the concession with about
7,000 employees, most of whom are rubber tappers. There are also
approximately another 4,000 laborers who work for the company
with no legal status hence with no benefits from the company,
such as health and education for their families. Also, an additional
some 4,000 people work on the plantation for the tappers and therefore
have no legal status with the company.
Tappers work approximately 12 hours a day without
safety equipment (gloves, goggles, rain boots, rain coats and
other safety gears) unless they are bought by the tappers themselves.
They have to carry all the latex they produce on their bare shoulders
on a stick with two buckets weighing 70 lbs [31.7 kg] each.
This primitive means of transporting latex
has not changed since 1926. With 140 lbs [63.4 kgs] yoked across
their shoulders, laborers walk to weigh stations that may be up
to three miles [4.8 kms] away from the grove of rubber trees.
Firestone provides no alternative means of transportation. Rubber
tappers doing this backbreaking work risk injury and the development
of deformities the longer they are employed.
A tapper wakes at 4 o’clock every morning to
get prepared for tapping up to perhaps 750 trees daily on a normal
tapping day. However, only half of the daily rate of $3.38 is
paid if a tapper fails to complete the full daily quota. Faced
with these onerous quotas, tappers have little choice but to allow
family members to assist them in completing their quota or hire
a sub-contractor.
The tappers work every day of the year including
national holidays, with the exception of Christmas day, producing
high volumes of latex. An average tapper’s monthly production
can be valued at US/$2,296.80 on the ground in Liberia and US/$3,915.00
at world market prices while the tapper is paid US/$125. Out of
the monthly wage of US/$125, he may have to pay one or two sub-contractors
who helped him tap.
“These people are treating us like slaves
because we have nobody to talk for
us and we have
nowhere to find a new job. You produce
more than 5 tons of latex for the
company a month
and they don’t even pay you the price of
one ton”,
said bitterly a tapper.
Besides latex production, tappers are required
to apply chemicals (both fungicide and stimulants) on the trees
for protection and to increase production. In addition they are
required to under-brush the trees they tap. This workload means
that many of the tappers have to hire sub-contractors to get all
the work done. In the instance where the tapper’s family is large
and can not afford the deduction of their rice supply or salary
for a sub-contractor, the wife is obliged to abandon her children
to assist her husband in completing his quota.
Huge disparities exist between laborers and
other staff of Firestone. For example, a superintendent who monitors
the tappers makes more than US$700 a month, according to his educational
level, resides in a well-furnished bungalow, and enjoys other
benefits including excess monthly production bonuses.
In contrast, tappers and other laborers live
in dilapidated houses. Most of these houses, that were built in
the 1930s when Firestone started operations, are one room, lack
electricity, pipe-borne water, indoor latrines, indoor kitchens,
living rooms and ceilings. Roofed haphazardly with asbestos, many
of these structures now leak profusely.
“When it is raining we have to put all of
our eating
bowls around in the rooms or else the
whole place will be filled with water”,
denounced a labourer.
Clean water is a luxury on the plantation.
In more than 20 camps visited unofficially by a SAMFU’s investigation
team between November 2006 to date, an average of two hand pumps
were seen in the camps with the average population of approximately
500 persons. These hand pumps sit on wells that are dug by hand
and therefore do not have water during much of the dry season.
This situation leaves tappers and other unskilled employees and
their families with no option but to drink from shallow wells
and creeks. Meanwhile, staff members have access to pipe borne
water and specially treated drinking water located inside the
processing plant.
The company tried to control worker’s organization
through the Firestone Agriculture Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL),
until extensive pressure from plantation workers and Liberia’s
two major labor federations led to FAWUL’s suspension by the government.
Elections were called to usher in an independent and democratic
union.
At the end of April 2007, workers engaged in
a strike to protest Firestone management’s efforts to delay the
elections. During the strike on April 27, 2007, police reportedly
brutalized peaceful striking workers with batons and sticks, chased
harmless workers throughout the city of Harbel – where the Firestone
rubber processing plant is located-, broke into houses and beat
many innocent people which resulted in dozens of injuries. Two
dozen workers were injured so badly that they were forced to miss
work while they underwent treatment. Subsequently, one of the
injured workers died as a result of wounds suffered during the
attack. In addition, tear gas was fired into Harbel’s densely
populated communities without regard for children, women and the
elderly. It appears that many innocent workers were not only unnecessarily
arrested, but unreasonably detained.
“If you have seen the people who produce
the latex for the rubber products you use; the place they live,
the kind of work they do, the food they eat and the amount of
money they take home in salaries … you will be conscious of who
produces the rubber you use on a daily basis”.
Excerpted and adapted from: “The Heavy Load.
A Demand for Fundamental Changes at the Bridgestone/Firestone
Rubber Plantation in Liberia”, published by Save My Future Foundation,
June 2008,
http://www.samfu.org/do%20files/The%20Heavy%20Load_2008.pdf
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- South Africa: Tree plantations ravaged by fire turned a lurking
tragedy into a sad reality
Monoculture is against nature, which is diverse. That is why an
unnatural system like industrial plantations of tree monocultures
triggers off several negative impacts. One of them is fire.
Unlike forests, whose humidity and dense greenery of shrubs act
as a barrier against fires, industrial tree plantations lack the
structural and biological diversity of forests. Tree plantations
have “single-layered” canopies (ie. all the trees are of similar
height), “closed” canopies that block out the sunlight –resulting
in shaded understories with fewer plants-, poorer water conservation
qualities, poorly developed canopy epiphyte layers (ie. mosses,
lichens, and ferns living on tree trunks and branches) and suspended
soil (which form from the decay of these epiphytic plants), less
overall biodiversity, all of which make them highly prone to set
on fire. They represent a tragedy lurking out there.
And the tragedy has just come over South Africa.
According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, “A river of smoke several
hundred kilometers wide flowed off the southeast coast of Africa
in early September 2008. The smoke was coming from hundreds, probably
thousands, of fires burning in Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland.
September is near the end of southern Africa’s dry season, and
intentional agricultural fires as well as accidental forest fires
are common.” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18139)
However, "This particular situation has never been experienced
before. Reports are coming in from all over the country,"
said Percy Morokane from Johannebsurg's Emergency Services in
an interview with the BBC.
On the last weekend of August, fanned by strong winds, more than
100 wildfires across South Africa have left at least 20 people
dead and 26 injured in the blazes. Fires raged across 50,000 hectares
of land, 15,000 of which are industrial stands of trees in Mpumalanga.
Three men were caught in a fire in the Sappi Escarpment tree plantation
owned by the FSC certified pulp conglomerate Sappi.
Several different fires left 14 dead in KwaZulu-Natal province,
three people including two children dead in the Eastern Cape,
three people dead in Mpumalanga province, and dozens homeless
in Cape Town.
Unfortunately, it is often on tragedies that awareness is raised.
Let’s hope mourn gives rise to good sense to stop the expansion
of monoculture tree plantations.
Article based on information from: “South Africa: Three More Injured
in Mpumalanga Fires”, BuaNews (Tshwane), http://allafrica.com/stories/200809030578.html;
“South Africa bush fires 'kill 20'”, BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7591950.stm
index
In
ASIA
- Cambodia: Indigenous women raise their voices to protect their
forest and traditional livelihoods from rubber plantation companies
In
North East Cambodia different indigenous groups have lived for
centuries, preserving an immense and extremely diverse forest
ecosystem, maintained intact until the recent decades, when massive
forest exploitation started. Indigenous agricultural practices,
as in many other forest-covered areas in the world, have contributed
to maintain biodiversity and are among the most sustainable so
far known.
The subversion of
this ecological and social system is full of consequences for
indigenous communities and women, as this Bunong woman from Mondulkiri
explains:
“The
company has cut all the trees to do the plantation. They say that
indigenous people cut the forest too. But indigenous people don’t
do that! We ask the spirits before cutting, we try to understand
from the dreams if the spirits agree, then we cut just small plots
to do our fields, and we never cut the big trees. The company
instead cut all, so now there are no trees, animals and even vegetables.
There were six big forests here around, and lots of wild animals;
we could find vegetables, medicines, resin, roots, fishes, fruits.
Now
the forest has been cut and the spirits were dismissed, so they
don’t help the community anymore. For our elders it is now difficult
to be respected by young people. Before, the spirits were around
the village and young people were more respectful. The spirits
don’t help the community anymore, even if we lack food, or in
case of disease.
We
are afraid of the company workers, afraid of drug addicts, of
rape, and that they will beat our people. Since the last two years
we have these people around; we go everywhere accompanied by men,
because we are scared. They don’t respect women, so we feel afraid,
and we fear that the men of the village may become like the workers,
especially the young.”
Commercial plantations
not only subvert the ecological environment, but have harsh consequences
for the communities. The massive immigration of workers that normally
occurs when plantations are established cause the overexploitation
of resources like wild animals and fishery, which become scarce
and less accessible to indigenous communities. Immigrants will
trigger the migration of other non indigenous people, as service
providers, and this may easily contribute to change the population
balance in the areas. Plantations workers are predominantly males;
as a consequence sex provision services start to mushroom in the
area, which contributes to devalue the status of women in general,
and to introduce a male bias in social life.
In
words of a Tampuan woman from Ratanakiri, “Here
there is no more forest around, we have only rubber plantations.
Now everybody wants to sell land too; they want to plant cashew
nuts, soja beans, or cassava. First they sold land at district
level. People have complained about these land sales, but they
couldn’t get the land back. So now the villagers follow them and
want to sell their land too. They think that if they don’t sell,
companies will take the land anyway. Men want to sell land, they
don’t listen to women anymore, they want money. They answer back
to the elders: ‘if we want to live differently it is up to us,
is not your business...’ They don’t listen to the elders and sell
their land; then they invade other people’s land, disputes erupt,
they say it is a private affair, not a community issue, and lots
of conflicts start between people and between women and men. Men
drink, and when they do not have money, they sell pieces of land
to pay the debts! Those who sell their land become poor, and after
that become drunkards. Families without land often become heavy
drinkers, they are always drunk.”
It
is within the communities that intensive commercial exploitation
of forestland has more dramatic consequences. The values that
this form of development carries are highly destructive for the
social fabric of indigenous communities, and human beings in general.
Money, individualism, competition and consumerism break up the
solidarity pact that animates the communities. Divisions appear
between its members, elders and younger, women and men. Market
oriented economy is male biased, and men appear to be more easily
lured by the appeal of money and cash economy.
Women
pay a great tribute to this subversion of their societies and
values. Their workload increases, as many of the resources that
they use to collect nearby, like firewood, water, vegetables,
materials for crafting, tools, medicines, small animals, resin,
are no more at hand. When the plantations arrive, indigenous people
have to move their fields far away, which forces women to long
walks just to reach the field and working at their family farms.
If men are enrolled as workers, women are left alone to tend the
farms. Women’s work in the family farms assures everyday meals,
but is invisible and unvalued, because not inscribed in the cash
economy frame. But it is this work that keeps plantation labourers’
salaries low and profitable for the companies. In the male context
that this form of neo colonial development is forging, indigenous
women’s work is unrecognized and overwhelming, while their status
as women starts to be seriously weakened.
For
women the forest is much more than mere subsistence: it is also
pleasure, a nice place to stay, it is fun, an open door to imagination.
As Lun, a woman from Ratanakiri says: “We women
like the forest a lot, is it fresh, and it is fun. We like to
go there, we are not scared and we have a nice time. We used to
go there, and sleep in the forest, when I was a child with my
father and my uncle from the village nearby. It was one of the
enjoyable things to do, catching the small fishes and the crabs
in ponds, collect the resin, or find small bamboo. Sometimes we
could find some special leaves and we used to stay overnight to
collect the resin. But now it is difficult, because there is a
company, we don’t know how it happened, if the forest was sold
or if they just took it, they just put the fence, and a panel
to forbid the entry.”
When
the forest is cut, something more than tangible products gets
lost. The forest is the refuge of spirits, the source of stories
and epopees, the place of challenges and adventures, and the shelter
that awaits everybody at the end of the life. And it is also about
stars, as told by a Kreung girl from Ratankiri: “When
there are many stars in the sky, some stars come to sleep with
the girls, others go to sleep with the boys. I learned from the
elders that the stars look after the forest. That’s what I know.”
By
Margherita Maffii, Phnom Penh, September 2008, e-mail:
mafpol@gmail.com
index
- Indonesia: Harsh conditions for women workers in oil palm plantations
Indonesia is the world's second largest palm oil producer; together
with Malaysia they account for about 80 percent of global palm-oil
production. With actually around 6 million hectares of land planted
with oil palm, Indonesia plans a significant expansion which is
set to cover up to 20 million hectares by 2020.
Oil palm expansion has implied and implies the occupation of customary
lands by companies to first “clear the land” (meaning deforestation)
and then develop an oil palm plantation. Land occupation means
in turn the displacement of local communities from their land
thus triggering off several conflicts –about 400 in the whole
of the country according to Indonesian NGO Sawit Watch.
For rural communities, land is the base of their livelihoods.
According to WorldWatch Institute, a “2006 study of the area found
that small farming systems provided livelihoods for 260 times
as many people per hectare of land as oil palm plantations did”
(1).
However, oil palm companies arrive protected by legal concessions
and with false promises of jobs for local communities. Rural people
who have been deprived of their land and livelihood are often
forced to migrate, to end up in urban slums or to hire their labour
force in the very plantations that displaced them. Once there,
they have to face poverty, unsafe working conditions, frequent
violation of their rights, insufficient pay and intimidation by
employers.
Oxfam International has denounced that “In Indonesia, although
the right to form a union is recognised by law, the International
Trade Union Confederation notes that in practice trade-union rights
are seriously weakened by intimidation and lengthy mediation processes
which force unions to resort to wildcat strikes. In this context
Musim Mas, an Indonesian palm-oil company, last year [2006] fired
over 700 union members in retaliation for a strike, forcibly evicting
the workers and 1,000 family members from their homes, and expelling
their children from school.” (2) (and see also WRM Bulletin Nº
109).
Work in oil palm plantations is hard for both men and women, though
different. It is quite frequent that women help their husbands
in the plantations meet demanding production quotas, usually doing
unpaid work. Apart from that, women have to take care of the children,
elaborate the food and collect firewood and water, which now are
rather far due to destruction of the forest by the oil palm plantations.
In case women work on a hired basis, they often receive lower
wages than men. Discrimination is set on the grounds that their
work is easier than that of men.
According to an article by Rainforest Action Network, “Women are
often assigned tasks that seem less onerous, but which are actually
more dangerous and physically demanding than that of their male
counterparts. In Indonesia, women are often designated to spray
pesticides because it is less physically taxing than other plantation
work. Unfortunately, they are rarely given proper protective gear
like gloves and masks. When they return home, they have to prepare
food for their families, often with pesticide residue still on
their skin and clothes.” (3)
Paraquat and Glyphosate (Roundup) are the most common herbicides
used in oil palm plantations. In addition to concerns about the
effects on health from direct exposure to the toxics, the publication
Down To Earth (DTE) revealed that herbicides can be washed by
heavy rainfall “into streams and rivers which provide the only
source of water for all household needs - including drinking -
for villages around the plantations. Furthermore, the herbicides
do not bind to sandy soils” (4)
DTE puts flesh and bones to statistics bringing the case of Mardiana,
better known as Etek, who works for PT Agro Masang Perkasa in
Agam district, West Sumatra. “She has been working there since
1994 and will continue to do so as there are no other jobs she
could do to sustain herself and her family” explains a brief report
based on an interview with Etek on June 2008 in Bogor. (5)
She cannot see out of her right eye since weedkiller accidentally
got into it three years ago. "Before, whenever anything got
in my eye, I rubbed it. This is what it's like now - like the
eye of a salted fish," she says.
Etek works on the plantation, mainly spraying herbicides between
the rows of oil palms. There are only three groups of sprayers.
Each group has one person in charge and consists of nine or ten
people. In one day, each person must cover nine rows or around
two hectares.
For every two litres of Roundup mixed with 16 litres of water,
the workers can cover two hectares of plantation. Usually they
work in pairs and each earn Rp30,000 (US$ 3.25) for the two hectares.
At harvest time, Etek also gets Rp400 (around 4 cents) per bunch
of palm fruits, the same amount whether the bunch is big or small.
As a sprayer, she also gets Rp8,000 (US$ 0.86) to buy milk. Initially
the company provides safety mask and spray equipment, but it does
not provide replacements when these wear out or break. The cost
of a new sprayer, or what the workers call a kep, is Rp200,000
(US$ 22) each, and can be paid for by installments over four months.
Although they don't get enough training about the dangers of toxic
chemicals, Etek and her friends know not to speak while spraying,
until they get to the water tank, where they refill their sprayers.
They know that there's the possibility of toxic chemicals entering
the body through the mouth.
Whether the final product from this –and other- oil palm plantation
is biodiesel, cosmetics or palm oil, its content label should
include the percentage of health lost by Etek and all the other
plantation workers. For social accountability, at least.
Sources:
(1) http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5821
(2)
http://www.oxfam.org.nz/imgs/pdf/biofuels%20briefing%20note.pdf
(3)
http://ran.org/campaigns/rainforest_agribusiness/resources/fact_sheets/h
ostile_harvest_us_agribusinesses_and_labor_rights_abuses/
(4) http://www.downtoearth.org.in/
(5) http://dte.gn.apc.org/78.pdf
index
-
Malaysia: Those who lose in the oil palm business
In Malaysia, palm oil expansion goes hand in hand with deforestation
–despite government officials claiming otherwise.
A press release issued by Sahabat Alam Malaysia [SAM] Friends
of the Earth, Malaysia, on August 6, 2008, reveals that some 2.8
million ha of largely forest land in Sarawak has been handed out
for plantation concessions of mainly oil palm and fast-growing
pulpwood trees.
However, communities who exercise Native Customary Rights (NCR)
in those areas have not been taken into
account in the licensing process. As the statement says, they
typically realize that “their land would be affected only after
work commences on the ground. … After having their land clear
cut, the people may be affected by environmental impacts that
range from disturbances in the water, soil nutrient and ecological
cycles, in addition to erosion, river sedimentation, and threats
of fire and pollution from agrochemicals and processing mills”.
NCR land is quite significant to indigenous people in Sarawak.
As Tuai Rumah Ladon anak Edieh, a farmer aged 70 who lives in
Ulu Bawan, Balingian (District), Mukah (Division) explained in
an interview in 2006: “The land provides us all our needs such
as food from those crops we planted, wild plants we collect for
vegetable and herbs for medicine. We make use of our forest for
timber to construct our longhouse, to build canoe, and coffin
when we die. We could hunt for wild boar and other animals as
well as fishing in the streams of our NCR areas. We are attached
to our NCR land. … If our land is taken away, we would not be
able to survive.”
But that’s the fate they have faced. In 1973 they were misled
by politicians and officials to “develop” their land planting
oil palm. The arrangement with the company began in a kind of
land renting while the community were offered work in the plantation
with a rather low pay that did not compensate for the resources
they got from the forest. And to crown it all, the company continued
planting oil palm despite expiry of rental term.
An article from Rhett A. Butler published
in Mongaby speaks of the significant reduction in biological
diversity following forest conversion to oil palm plantation and
that “many animals will not move through plantations while others,
like orangutans, become crop pests putting them at risk of defensive
poaching by plantation managers. The use of herbicides and pesticides
can also impact species composition and pollute local waterways.
Drainage systems required for plantations (oil palm plantations
in Borneo are often established in swamp forest) may lower water
tables, affecting neighboring forest areas. Further, destruction
of peat lands increases the risk of flooding and fire. Land-clearing
fires set by large oil palm plantation owners were the single
largest cause of the massive 1997-1998 fires in Borneo. … The
existing system appears to sometimes lock small plantation owners
into conditions akin to slavery”.
For indigenous communities, the encroachment of extractive industries
in their territories meant the disruption of their subsistence
economies; after that, they were forced to enter a cash economy,
usually dependent on timber. However, as Butler explains: “Given
the scarcity of timber in parts of Borneo … oil palm seems to
be the best alternative for communities that are just eking a
living off rubber cultivation, subsistence rice farming, and fruit
gardens. When a large agricultural firm enters an area, some community
members are often eager to become part of an oil palm plantation.
Lacking legal title to their land, deals are often structured
so that members of the community acquire 2-3 hectares (508 acres)
of land for oil palm cultivation. They typically borrow some $3,000-6,000
(at 30 percent interest per year) from the parent firm for the
seedlings, fertilizers, and other supplies. Because oil palm takes
roughly 7 years to bear fruit, they work as day laborers at $2.50
per day on mature plantations. In the meantime their plot generates
no income but requires fertilizers and pesticides, which are purchased
from the oil palm company. Once their plantation becomes productive,
the average income for a 2 hectare allotment is $682-900 per month.
In the past, rubber and wood generated $350-1000 month, according
to Curran. The low level of income combined with large start-up
costs and relatively high interest payments virtually ensures
that small holders will be perpetually indebted to the oil palm
company. Oil palm cultivation also makes local people more dependent
on agricultural firms since they no longer grow their own food.”
Meanwhile oil palm firms are making a fortune. “Some firms in
West Kalimantan are seeing a 26 percent annual internal rate of
return over a 25-year period, an astounding number”, reveals Butler.
It seems that the current agrofuel booming demand allows for oil
palm plantations to flourish at the expense of the local communities.
Article
based on: “Plantation development in Sarawak, deforestation and
Native Customary Rights (NCR)”, August 6, 2008, Sahabat Alam Malaysia
[SAM] Friends of the Earth, Malaysia, sent
by SAM, e-mail: sam_inquiry@yahoo.com;
“The Impact of Oil Palm in Borneo”, Rhett A. Butler,
http://www.mongabay.com/borneo/borneo_oil_palm.html
"
Indigenous Community Struggle - Sungai Bawan, Balingian, Mukah
Case", http://www.rengah.c2o.org/assets/pdf/de0122a.pdSarawak
index
- Thailand: Diversity and community forest use versus monocultures
and parks
The road linking Trang and Krabi in southern Thailand is an example
of what economists call development. What used to be lush tropical
forest has been converted into endless rows of either oil palm
or rubber trees. The monotony is only broken here and there by
a few houses and shops surrounded by a sea of tree monocultures.
At the end of the road, shrimp farms occupy the place of mangrove
forests, and only a thin row of mangrove trees bordering the river
have been spared from destruction. The monoculture model appears
to have defeated the rich diversity of the region.
When faced with criticism to such model, government officials
will quickly respond that biodiversity has been taken care of
within a number of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, that
ensure the conservation of native species of flora and fauna.
However, many local people are unhappy, both in relation to monocultures
and to official forest conservation policies and have set up organizations
to make things change. One such organization is the "Network
of People Organisation for Bantad Mountain Range", which
has brought together people facing similar problems.
The problems arose some 30 years ago, when the government began
to establish different types of protected areas in forests where
local communities have lived for centuries, such as in the case
of the Sakai ethnic group. In order to be able to remain in the
area they had to prove that they had lived there before the forest
law was enacted. More importantly, they would be authorized to
carry out their traditional activities in the forest if: 1) the
area is not considered to be “at risk” or to be “sensitive” by
the government 2) the slope is less than 30%. The result of the
application of those two conditions make most activities illegal,
given that any area can be classified as being “at risk” or “sensitive”
and that local communities traditionally use all the different
altitudes for different purposes.
What the above conservation model hides is the historical role
of the government in forest destruction, both by the promotion
of monocultures and through logging concessions.
In the case of monocultures, members of the Bantad Mountain Range
Network explain that “the Rubber Tree Fund is part of government.
Officials from the Fund come to the area to promote rubber plantations.
The local farmers are provided with funds to plant monoculture
as a contract on individual land. People are initially happy,
but problems later arise. Before, they had integrated garden with
rubber, but now it is a monoculture and there are landslides.
People lose their traditional means of livelihoods. Other impacts
include increased government control, whereby local people’s activities
are declared illegal and punished. People are controlled by rangers
and even with helicopters. People are facing many legal procedures
(13 court cases at the moment) and also fines, ranging from 100,000
to 5 million bahts. The community has to pay guarantees to get
people out of jail.”
The government is also responsible for forest destruction resulting
from past logging concessions. Representatives of a member community
of the Bantad Mountain Range Network explain that they came in
with the logging company and later stayed in the area. They have
now established a system of integrated traditional gardens, where
rubber trees are intermixed with fruit trees, bethel, pepper,
beans and a long list of other plants that provide for their needs.
The community is therefore improving an environment previously
degraded by the government-awarded logging concession.
In spite of the positive role they are playing, the communities
are having problems with the government. They explain that they
have little land area for agriculture (1-5 hectares per family)
and that they use the forest as part of their means of livelihoods.
Most people live from the gardens, supplemented with hunting (without
firearms), fishing, collecting snails, mushrooms, bamboo shoots
and other gathering activities. But according to the government,
most of this is illegal. “Everything is in fact illegal”, they
claim. The government tried to relocate them, but they didn’t
accept and resisted in every way possible. Their struggle is for
food security, for the right to choose, for “the right to set
the future for ourselves”.
One aspect that deserves being highlighted is the access road
to the abovementioned community. One of the arguments used by
governments for opening roads into the forest is that they will
enable people to link with the outside world. However, most roads
are truly built to serve the interests of companies wishing to
access natural resources (wood, minerals). They are therefore
sufficiently wide so that big trucks can extract those resources,
but in the case of this community, the road is a peoples’ road,
adapted to the local situation, where most families own a motorbike.
The road is therefore less than 1 metre wide and paved only in
some parts having steep slopes. People have easy access, companies
don’t.
Another interesting process that is developing in the region is
the Alternative Agriculture Network. Given the current high prices
of oil palm and rubber, local farmers are earning high incomes
from these crops. At the same time, high oil prices have resulted
in chemical fertilizers becoming very expensive. Added to the
health and environmental problems linked to the use of agrotoxics,
this has resulted in a situation where more farmers are willing
to embrace a more diversified and organic type of agriculture.
Chemical fertilizers are being replaced with organic inputs to
the soil and many other plants (for food, timber, medicines, fibres)
are being introduced under the monoculture plantations. Although
the output of the main crop is slightly reduced, this is compensated
with the lesser cost and with the large number of other products
for self consumption and marketing. This is also seen as a safeguard
for possible falls in the international price of rubber and palm
oil, as has happened in the past, particularly with rubber.
In sum, local people and communities have organized themselves
to protect their environment, livelihoods and rights. The government-promoted
package of monocultures, agrotoxics and anti-people protected
areas is being changed into a diversified, community based and
ecologically respectful system. As local people say, “we want
to be proud of what we are and what we are doing.” They certainly
can.
Article based on local testimonies from a field trip carried out
by WRM in July 2008
index
In AMERICA
- Argentina: Indigenous and environmental activists sound alarm
over plans to promote tree plantations
The
Patagonia region of Argentina accounts for only 4% of the country’s
tree plantations. This limited development of the sector is viewed
by the Argentine authorities and forestry industry as a source
of vast possibilities: four million hectares of potential plantation
land divided among the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Chubut.
Both
the national and regional authorities are directing their efforts
towards tapping this potential. After gathering in April in Esquel,
Chubut for the First Coordinating Meeting of the Patagonian Regional
Forestry Plan, they are now gearing up for the 2009 World Forestry
Congress to be held in Buenos Aires, envisioned as a showcase
that will draw foreign investors, consultants and business delegations
to the country.
But
the region’s Mapuche indigenous communities view these developments
as a threat, and warn that the government is not measuring the
true costs of such an undertaking. “The goal is to place the region
at the forefront of the rest of the country, no matter how they
have to do it,” say environmentalists and Mapuche community leaders.
According
to the government of Neuquén, around 60% of the province’s 1.5
million hectares of land [of which only 60,000 are now occupied
by tree plantations] is private property – although in many cases,
the legitimacy and legality of this ownership is disputed by the
Mapuche people. The remaining 40% is public land used for transhumant
or migratory cattle-raising, primarily of goats and sheep.
The
question is how to reconcile traditional productive practices
with plantation activities. Traditional herding systems comprise
three subsystems that are indivisible: winter pastures in lowland
areas, summer pastures on mountain slopes, and the migration routes
between the two, which can range from a few kilometres to hundreds
of kilometres, depending on the community. This is precisely where
plantation activity – as it has been designed – is not compatible
with the current use of the land by small producers. The fencing
off of large areas of land for tree plantations [in this case,
pine trees] will cut off the migration routes and diminish the
area of land available for use as pasture.
Deepening conflicts
These
factors have given rise to a series of land conflicts that have
intensified in recent years. In 2003, faced with the decline in
their livestock herds due to the reduction and deterioration of
their summer pastures caused by overgrazing and the drying up
of springs – a consequence of the establishment of pine plantations
– the Wiñoy Folil Mapuche community moved back into the fields
it had used since ancestral times in Pampa de Lonco Luan, in the
department of Aluminé. They had been forced off of this land in
the 1980s by the Corporación Forestal Neuquina (CORFONE).
Last November,
in this same region, the Paineo and Cayupán communities called
on the provincial authorities for the restitution of their summer
pastures, which had also been sold to forestry companies. And
in January of this year, the Central Regional Council (CZC) –
which represents Mapuche communities in the central region of
the province of Neuquén – and the community of Vicente Katrunao
Pincén took back a number of areas of land from
which they had
been forced to leave.
“While they have
been turning over land
to private owners,
we have also begun a process of recovering summer pastures that
have been illegally usurped. This process is growing, because
the more they shut us in, the more they oblige us to hit back
to defend ourselves against this plight and recover our territory,”
said Martín Velázquez Maliqueo, the logko or traditional
leader of the community of Logko Puran, which forms part of the
CZC.
Although the conflict
sparked by the incursion of forestry companies into Mapuche territory
has been most heated in the south-central region of Neuquén –
due to the degree of development of the plantation sector in this
particular province – the tensions extend to the rest of the provinces
of Patagonia.
In August 2004,
the Italian company Ecoxilon signed a letter of intent with the
government of Río Negro to lease a million hectares of public
land for 30 years “for forestation and oxygen production.” While
this initiative was ultimately shelved, at the time the Indigenous
Advisory Council condemned the provincial authorities for agreeing
to hand over this land with no regard for the land rights over
it claimed by the Mapuche people.
Alien
species
In
addition to these land conflicts, the Mapuche people have also
voiced their alarm over the introduction of alien evergreen species
– Pinus ponderosa and Pinus contorta, native to
western United States – which disrupt the delicate balance among
the different elements of the natural ecosystem.
Environmental organizations share in this opposition to plantations
of alien species, stressing that they produce changes in the acidity
of the soil, take over and displace native species due to a lack
of natural enemies, and disrupt hydrological systems by absorbing
large quantities of water, among other factors. They are also
concerned that when these plantations have “matured”, it will
lead to the establishment in the region of highly polluting pulp
mills as the next link in the production cycle.
Tree
plantation activity was given a boost in the early 1990s by a
government policy to promote the sector, crowned in 1999 by Law
25,080, which grants subsidies and tax exemptions among other
incentives for the establishment of tree plantations. The economic
crisis of 2001 put a brake on the sector’s rapid expansion, and
by 2003 raw wood production accounted for only 0.3% of GDP, while
wood processing activities represented 2%. But now the possibility
of establishing tree plantations under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean
Development Mechanism and obtaining credits for carbon capture
presents an extra incentive.
Of
the three Patagonian provinces, Neuquén has most actively promoted
plantation activity, which has also been drawn to the area by
favourable soil conditions. At present, 60% of the region’s tree
plantations are in Neuquén, and the area devoted to this sector
is growing by 3,500 hectares a year. The 2001 Neuquén Forestry
Plan set a goal of reaching a growth rate of 10,000 hectares of
new plantations annually based on a sustained increase over the
next 35 years. The provincial government itself is responsible
for 63% of planting activity, which is carried out through CORFONE,
a mixed public/private company with majority state ownership.
By
Hernán Scandizzo,
e-mail: hernan.gsp.74@gmail.com
This
article was originally published in July 2008 by Noticias Aliadas,
available at:
http://www.noticiasaliadas.org/articles.asp?art=5664
index
-
A Green Desert in the South of Latin America
Imagine
an area the size of 500,000 football fields planted with a single
species of tree. Is it a forest? No, it is a green desert: no
people, no water, no other plants. A few years from now, this
will be the landscape in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost
state, where three companies are concentrating pulp production,
leading to significant social and environmental damages.
