OUR
VIEWPOINT
-
Invisible women are becoming increasingly visible
In
his novel “The Invisible Man”, H.G. Wells tells the story of a
scientist who succeeds in making himself invisible, and the problems
that unfold as a result.
In
real life, women have been struggling for many years against the
problems caused by the social invisibility to which they are subjected,
in which most of the work they do is equally invisible and greatly
undervalued.
And
although women wage this battle on a daily basis, the 8th
of March – International Women’s Day – is a good opportunity to
give greater visibility to their struggle.
The
Friends of the Earth International’s Forests and Biodiversity
Programme and the World Rainforest Movement wish to contribute
to this goal by sharing information about what is perhaps one
of the least visible issues: the differentiated impacts of monoculture
tree plantations on women.
This
bulletin presents the findings of three studies jointly carried
out by the two organizations in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and
Brazil. While the realities in these three countries may differ
widely, they all share the common denominator of the impacts caused
by these plantations on communities in general and on women in
particular.
The
testimonials gathered not only provide detailed information on
the impacts of monoculture eucalyptus, oil palm and rubber tree
plantations, but also highlight some of the worst aspects of “development”
policies promoted by governments for the sole benefit of big corporations.
The
starting point for these policies is to convince communities that
they are “poor”. It does not matter if the food they eat is abundant,
healthy and nutritious, if the water they drink is pure, if the
forests provide them with a wide range of goods and services.
They are poor because they do not have money, and they will only
be able to overcome their poverty – and be happy – once they manage
to have money.
This
is when the corporations come in, operating with the protection
of governments and the support of legal frameworks, promising
the people what they supposedly need to stop being poor: jobs,
money and development. It does not matter if very few of these
promises come true. The only thing that matters is that the people
believe them – and especially the men, who usually have more power
and will be among the very few who “benefit” from the promised
jobs. Poorly paid, dangerous, seasonal employment, but at least
it gives them access to the money that will supposedly lift them
out of poverty.
Thus,
communities that were self-sufficient up until this point become
incorporated into a monetary economy and come to depend almost
entirely on money to satisfy their basic needs. This means depending
on a corporation and becoming “slaves on their own land,” as a
woman from Papua New Guinea described it. And it is when this
happens that they effectively do become genuinely poor.
For
women, the establishment of monoculture tree plantations does
not only signify greater impacts on them than on men. In addition,
the resulting social changes serve to disempower women even more
in relation to men when it comes to decision-making at the community
level and even within the home.
In
the face of this reality, we are beginning to see a growing number
of women starting to organize as women and undertaking different
kinds of action to change the situation in which they and their
communities now find themselves. Their efforts include demands
for the return of their land, compensation for the damages caused,
restoration of the forests that have been destroyed, the suspension
of further plantation activity, and the elimination of existing
plantations. The specific actions they undertake are conditioned
by their own particular social and political realities, but they
all involve a degree of risk, since the corporations have the
backing of the state, including the state’s repressive apparatus.
Ironically,
the disempowerment brought about by the corporations’ activities
is becoming a catalyst for a new empowerment of women. Once invisible
members of the community, they are now finding their own voice,
and making it heard increasingly louder.
Unlike
the title character in Wells’ novel, the invisible women of the
plantations, like many other woman, are becoming increasingly
visible. And this is not a work of fiction: it is real life.
Forests
and Biodiversity Programme, Friends of the Earth International
- World
Rainforest Movement
index
THE EUROPEAN UNION
DISEMPOWERING WOMEN
- Women
raise their voices in three continents
Vast
areas of land where diverse and rich ecosystems predominate are
being replaced with large scale tree plantations in the South.
These plantations –whether eucalyptus, pines, rubber, oil palm
or other- are resulting in serious impacts on local communities,
who see their ecosystems and livelihoods destroyed to make way
to industrial tree plantations. Apart from affecting communities
as a whole, they result in specific and differentiated impacts
on women which translate in their disempowerment.
What
most people in Europe are unaware of is that the European Union
is a major actor in the promotion of such plantations in the South,
and is therefore playing a role in disempowering women in the
South. While the EU has signed
a number of treaties and conventions and developed a major body
of legislation aimed at achieving gender equality in the European
Union, the issue of gender justice seems to lose its importance
for the EU outside its borders.
The
articles below are the result of three workshops conducted in
late 2008 in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria and Brazil within the framework
of a joint project between Friends of the Earth International
and the World Rainforest Movement.
In
the case of Papua New Guinea the workshop was carried out in collaboration
with the local organization CELCOR/Friends of the Earth-PNG. It
refers to oil palm plantations that are being mainly promoted
to feed the European market with palm oil (used in products such
as cosmetics, soap, vegetable oil and foodstuffs) as well as for
the production of agrofuels.
The
second case is that of Nigeria –organized in collaboration with
Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria- which
is about rubber plantations established on the lands of a local
community by the France-based Michelin company for producing rubber
used in the manufacture of tyres.
And
finally the Brazilian case –in collaboration with NAT/Friends
of the Earth Brazil- is about eucalyptus plantations set up by
three companies -the Swedish-Finnish Stora Enso, Aracruz Celulose
and Votorantim- for producing pulp for export to Europe for converting
it there into paper.
The
main aim of this collaborative effort is to support the struggle
of these and many other women facing similar situations throughout
the countries of the South. At the same, we aim at raising awareness
among EU citizens –women and men- about how their governments
are promoting policies that favour corporate investments in the
South and on how those investments impact on communities in general
and on women in particular. As a result of increased awareness,
we hope that EU citizens and their organizations will join in
the effort to create a socially equitable and environmentally
sustainable world –North and South- where gender justice can become
a reality for all. The voices of Southern women are becoming louder.
The
full report is available at;
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/fullreport.pdf
and the summarized version at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/summaryreport.pdf
index
- Papua New Guinea: Women against further expansion of oil palm
Oil palm production
is increasing in Papua New Guinea, a country where 97% of the
land is communally owned and most of its 5 million population
still lives in the rural area and rely on subsistence farming
for their livelihoods. The palm oil produced is mostly exported
to the EU with the UK, Italy and the Netherlands being the main
markets.
A hidden large-scale
scheme
“The
more smallholders, the more profits the companies get. It's cheap
labour for the companies”. (Woman from Kokoda village)
Almost all oil
palm in PNG is grown under the so-called Nucleus Estate Smallholder
Scheme, whereby a central company –holding a large plantation-
contracts small farmers to supply it with additional oil palm
fruit. Promoted by International Financial Institutions as a way
for “alleviating” poverty in the country and allowing farmers
to gain access to the cash economy, this scheme is allowing the
agribusiness sector to increase corporate business while reducing
investments and costs for the companies. Corporations don’t need
to buy more land to make way for plantations, they have cheap
labor from the small landowners, no workers unions, and their
responsibility over the ecological impacts of plantations is faded
away.
Communities have
been encouraged to plant oil palm “blocks” on their lands with
loan facilities to buy seedlings, fertilizers and agrotoxics offered
by the government. While the average land tenure is around 4 to
6 hectares of land, the blocks occupy two hectares in size. The
smallholder-schemes promoted in PNG are part of a large scale
plantation where their blocks are part of a complex formed of
many thousands of hectares. Today it is estimated that the country
has more than 100,000 hectares of oil palm plantations.
Loss of food sovereignty
Not only forest
and agricultural land must be cleared to make space for oil palm
but also the land allocated to the oil palm blocks can no longer
be used for food production, for making their “gardens” -as local
people call them in Papua New Guinea.
“Therefore,
we have limited land for gardening and no more forest for hunting
wild animals. The land we have is being used over and over again
and its ability to support food production is decreasing. In ten
years time, we will face food shortage. Actually we are experiencing
it right [now] but it will be worse in ten years. Because the
forests are gone we lack protein in our diets”.
(Woman from Kokoda Village)
Dependence
on one crop may end up creating economic problems. For example,
the recent sharp fall in commodity prices (including palm oil)
has put at stake future incomes from the oil palm fruit.
Land disputes
Women from different
provinces have expressed concern about increasing population and
future land shortages due to oil palm expansion. Land which has
never been a problem before -as the population density was quite
low- is now becoming a very scarce resource. This is clearly reflected
in increasing intra and inter-clan land disputes. According to
the President of the Women’s Council at Kokoda, land disputes
are a major issue now, and more than 50% of court cases are related
to land.
“Much
of land has been stolen by the State and we are almost landless
in own land that is rightfully ours by history, culture and tradition.
The land which the company has taken is our birthright inheritance
reaped from us.”
(Woman from Kokoda Village)
Health
The use of agrotoxics
in the plantations is contaminating rivers, streams, as well as
soils and the air, affecting people’s health.
“Health
is a very big concern in our place right now. When sun heats the
chemicals sprayed in the company estates and even VOPs,[Village
Oil Palm] we breathe in the chemical. I’m pretty sure we are inhaling
dangerous substances and definitely are dying every minute. Some
pregnant mothers have babies who develop asthma within first one
or two months after birth. During my time there was never such
a thing. The chemicals are killing us; we will all die sooner.”
(Woman from Saga Village)
Hard work needed
during the harvest and transport of the fruit is also affecting
women:
“I
am not harvesting my oil palm now because of the hardship that
I have faced as my estate is about 12 kilometers from the loading
area. It is very hard work transporting bunches to the river bank,
then ferrying them to the other side of the river on rubber tubes.
After about 6 years now I am giving up. Most of the time we get
sick, sustain big cuts and bruises and generally we are losing
our health status because of all the hard work we do even in bad
weather.” (Woman
from Botue Village)
How oil palm
plantations affect women
Women explain
how oil palm reinforces male control over women:
•
Men usually have more control over the income from oil palm production
than women. This is mainly because oil palm companies usually
talk to men instead of women. It is also because the highest paying
jobs on an oil palm plantation go to men (i.e. chopping the large
bunches of fruits from the trees).
•
Conversion of traditional farmlands to oil palm plantations restricts
women’s access to garden land making it harder for them to provide
food for their families. Gardens are important both for feeding
the family, and selling garden food at local markets. Women usually
have control of income earned from the markets, unlike oil palm
income which men often control. They also lose an important moment
for socializing.
•
Often, women only get a tiny amount of the money their husbands
earn from oil palm, even though they have contributed to the production
of palm fruits. Many say that the money they get from their husbands
is only enough to buy store food for the family for a couple of
days after pay day.
•
Families now have to rely on store food since there is less land
for gardens and subsistence farming.
•
Domestic violence has become common around payday- men often spend
the money carelessly on gambling and beer while women struggle
for cash to buy essential household items.
Unfulfilled promises
Promoted as the
new panacea for Papua New Guineans, that would bring about many
improvements, oil palm plantations have not lived up to expectations.
At the workshop,
women complained that:
“The
only sign of spin offs in the village are trade stores that were
built from our own money earned from oil palm. But the trade stores
are operating on ad hoc basis (seasonal), the stores are fully
stocked during bigger harvests (and high prices) and at times
(during low prices) there will be no stock.
That
is as far as spin off services go. Other spin off services like
schools, health and transport in our village is virtually nil.
Many times our children stay back at home and do miss out on school
because the village is flooding and they cannot cross it. Because
of that we built our own elementary school using corrugated iron
and timber so that our children will easily receive education
but the school inspector said that we do not have enough children.
Currently we have less than 30 children and we need more than
that to qualify for elementary school status. So now our children
have to attend Mamba Estate elementary and go to Kokoda for their
primary schooling which is quite a distance for a 5-7 year old
child.”
Among the resolutions
of the workshop conducted in PNG, the women “united in one voice”
and called for the recognition of their rights in all decision
making processes and demanded a stop to any further oil palm development.
index
- Nigeria: Michelin’s rubber plantations destroyed women’s livelihoods
“I
don’t want money. I want my land back…if they give me one million
Naira [the local currency] today, I will still go broke, but if
I have my land I can always farm to take care of my family and
possibly pass the land on to my children.”
(Woman from Iguoriakhi)
The France-based
transnational company Michelin, one of the major players in world
tyre production, has quite recently established rubber plantations
in Nigeria.
It all started
on May 29, 2007, when over 3,500 hectares of Iguobazuwa Forest
Reserve -including individual and communal farmlands- were allotted
to Michelin to be converted into rubber plantations in an illegal
deal without the consent of community people or proper Environmental
Impact Assessment.
Iguobazuwa is
home to a population of more than 20,000
agrarian people, 85% of whom depend on the
dense forest for their daily livelihoods. The forest
is rich in biodiversity, including animals such as monkeys, antelope,
grasscutter, tortoise, snails and birds. Iguobazuwa was also a
place where food crops were produced like cassava, yam, plantain,
pineapple, melon, corn and vegetables, whether edible or medicinal.
Communities surrounding
the Iguobazuwa forest include Aifesoba, Iguoriakhi, Igueihase,
Ora, Amienghomwan, Ugbokun, Obaretin, Obosogbe, Okoro and Iguobazuwa.
Although the forest land legally belongs to the Government,
in 1972 communities were granted rights over it, with some parts
of those forests allocated rotationally to members of the community
for use as farmlands.
In December 2007,
Michelin bulldozed the 3,500 hectares of forests as well as the
people’s farmlands, leaving the affected community people uncompensated.
Local people found themselves from one day to another with both
sources of livelihood –their forest and farmlands- completely
destroyed. Iguobazuwa communities lost everything.
In May 2008, the
company started planting the rubber trees. Although the trees
are still at an early stage, as the experience in many other countries
shows, communities will have to also face the additional impacts
resulting from the plantations themselves.
“Two
years after my husband’s death, I started farming… Michelin came
with his evil bulldozer and destroyed everything I had planted.
I was crying…I was trying to stop them; they threatened to bulldoze
me with their caterpillar if I don’t allow them.”
Farmer women now
jobless…
The unholy arrival
of Michelin to Iguobazuwa forest after over 300 years of peaceful
co-existence among communities has brought nothing but hunger,
malnutrition, diseases, poverty, air and water pollution, soil
erosion, social dislocation, increase in social vices, alteration
of age-old traditional practices, lack of fuel wood and bush meat.
Their destroyed
farms had produced a number of diverse food crops:
I
had two acres of farmland in which I planted cassava, plantains,
pineapples, cocoyam, pepper, and pineapples. Now, the farm
is gone and I couldn’t have any source of food or livelihood anymore’.
(Woman from Aifesoba village)
The majority of
the women who shared their experiences said that usually the man
prepares the farmland for planting and the woman takes care of
all the other activities from cultivation to harvesting. So it
is women who use the land for cultivation of crops. Now that they
find their farmlands destroyed women have become farm labourers
in other farms in nearby forests or villages yet to be affected
by the rampaging Michelin; while others have been rendered jobless,
and hungry.
Michelin
has destroyed our farmlands. I feel pained by their actions. The
farms used to provide food for our families. I used to assist
in paying my children’s school fees. We want them to pay for our
crops and farmlands. They should leave our lands for us. We want
our land back. Our lives depend on it. Now we are jobless. No
more bitter leaves, water leaves and pumpkin leaves. My husband
has been jobless for years; we can’t afford to depend on our husbands
for everything. We want Michelin to compensate us…the value is
too much to ignore. (Woman
from Aifesoba community)
… and pennyless
Usually women
got the money from what they sell from the farm produce at the
local market. Hence, the robbery of their farms have greatly affected
the women folk as a lot of the responsibilities for family upkeep
rest on the women, so they have no other choice than to resort
to menial jobs in order to survive.
Aren’t
these people sending us to go and steal?’ They took away my four
acre land and the source of livelihood for my family. They drove
me away from the farm while I was still working, without any explanation
or compensation. My husband lost his job as a driver in the city
and I have four children, all of whom are now out of school for
lack of school fees. (Woman
from Aifesoba community)
The majority of
the women now engage in small scale subsistence farming within
their compounds. Some buy cassava crops from those who have, and
process them for sale when they mature.
Caretaker women
in trouble
Apart from being
in charge of water uses for domestic activities, clothing provision
and collection of seeds and fruits, women are responsible of collecting
medicinal plants that are vital in local communities’ traditional
practices linked to health. The disappearance of the forests has
caused that now women must go far away -with the shortest distance
of about 15km apart- to get herbs to treat some ailments.
I
am pregnant and ill, and the herbs are nowhere to be found. Before
now, we used to go to the bush to get herbs to cure all sorts
of ailments. You know there are some ailments that orthodox medicines
cannot cure; but now we cannot access them because Michelin has
bulldozed our forests. You can see that my legs and limbs are
swollen; unlike before when I get pregnant, I cannot get those
very effective herbs for my condition anymore.
(Heavily pregnant
woman from Aifesoba)
As a woman from
Iguoriakhi says:
We
just know that Michelin is doing the damage. They are the people
we are seeing. In the past we fed from the forest; our life depended
on the forest. There are a lot of people in my community that
do not know where hospitals are, because the forest provides their
medicinal needs..
An 83 year old
woman from Iguobazuwa community explains the situation
as follows:
I
have lived in Iguobazuwa for 65 years. I used to go to the forest
to pluck some medicinal herbs to treat my children whenever they
fall ill. It was from the forest I got medicinal leaves to treat
myself all through the years of my several times of pregnancy.
Women standing
up for their rights
Women know that
nothing good for them has or will result from the activities of
Michelin in their area. They are starting to organize themselves
and are looking for support. They want their lands back, their
trees planted again and also to be fully compensated for the destroyed
crops.
They are decided
to carry out actions, protest marches, and demonstrations
to Michelin Nigeria to enforce their demands in resisting all
forms of large scale tree plantations in their territories.
“If
I have my way, I would stop them from buying our lands for rubber
plantation…If I have my way, I would uproot the whole rubber plantation
with my hands… They should leave our land for us.”
For
that, they need to overcome some problems. As a
woman from Iguobazuwa community says:
In the past, we
used to have a women group, but now, it no longer exist. That
is one of the reasons why we have not been able to confront them
as a group. No unity, no resistance!
Traditionally,
Iguobazuwa women have not participated in any form of resistance,
until recently when some community women and some men from Aifesoba
and Obosogbe communities engaged in a protest march in Benin city
to denounce the activities of Michelin in their locality.
More recently,
women have become more assertive to know and exercise their rights,
the value of their forest and how to become more active in the
decision making process as it relates to good forest management
practices in their localities.
In Aifesoba community,
the women -in the company of men- engaged in a protest march to
the forest area where Michelin’s trucks and bulldozers were busy
felling trees. They stopped them from working on two occasions;
on the third time Michelin got mobile police men to guard them
and to intimidate and scare the community people away. As a result,
some women from other communities are now scared of taking any
move to confront Michelin as they are afraid of being maltreated,
intimidated or harassed the way Aifesoba community people were
treated.
As
a fallout from the 2-day workshop held on the 4th -5th
November 2008, Michelin called some members of two communities
(Aifesoba, and Iguobazuwa) out of the nine communities directly
impacted, and payed them compensation. One group from Iguobazuwa
was paid fully while the other community from Aifesoba was payed
what the community people described as peanuts, as according to
them, it was a far cry from the extent of destruction and was
not commensurate with the amount valued for the crops destroyed.
At
the end of the workshop the women released a communiqué in which
they demanded a series of urgent actions. Among them, they demanded
that the current Edo State Government should review the sale of
Iguobazuwa forest reserve, that Michelin Nigeria should return
their lands to them and replant every tree fell, with full compensation
for crops destroyed, and that the invasion of their forests by
Michelin Nigeria should not be seen as a sign of development,
but of impoverishment, as their lives and livelihoods have been
jeopardized and that further expansion into their lands at Iguobazuwa
MUST STOP.
But
the most important thing is their determination to get their lands
back.
index
- Brazil: Women impacted by eucalyptus plantations speak out
World
consumption of paper has exploded over the past 50 years. Only
about 1/3 of paper production is used for writing and printing
paper, most of it is used for advertising. And almost half of
all paper produced is used for packaging.
For
ensuring increasing paper consumption levels, huge areas of large
scale tree plantations are being established in Southern countries
by the pulp and paper industry. This industry is among the world's
largest generators of air and water pollutants, waste products,
and the gases that cause climate change. It is also one of the
largest users of raw materials ranking first in industrial consumption
of freshwater and fifth in industrial energy use globally.
Country
after country land is appropriated by large, often foreign, corporate
landowners, local communities are displaced by the fast-wood monoculture
tree plantations that feed the pulp and paper industry. Serious
social, environmental and economic impacts for local populations
and ecosystems derive from them. Water resources are depleted
and polluted by the plantations while soils become degraded.
European
companies, aid agencies and institutions play a significant role
in promoting the expansion of the pulp and paper industry in the
South. Furthermore, paper consumption rates in Europe -together
with the United States- are among the highest.
Feeding
European markets
While
most of pulp for export production is based along the Atlantic
coast, in recent times the pulp industry is expanding more intensively
to the most Southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, called the “sul-rio-grandense
Pampa” (grassland area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul). The
Pampa landscape, characterized by grassland vegetation, with prevailing
plain relief, and by denser, shrublike and tree vegetation in
slopes and along streams, apart from the existence of swamps,
is experimenting an extensive transformation where the native
ecosystem is replaced with "green deserts": the eucalyptus
monocultures.
Since 2003, environmental
licenses for eucalyptus plantations are being released on a precarious
basis, breaching rules and without having completed an Environmental
Zoning for Forestry activities in the State of Rio Grande do Sul.
Three
main actors moving to that region are: Aracruz Celulose, Votorantim
Celulose Papel and the Swedish-Finnish Stora Enso. While Aracruz
and Votorantim are Brazilian companies, the markets for
their products are mainly European countries.
Daily subsistence
at stake
The
expansion of forestry activities have led to loss of productivity
of land in different regions and put at stake the livelihoods
of families who opt for staying in the rural areas. It has been
necessary to use fertilizers more intensively in family farming.
(In
the past)It wasn’t so necessary to plough so much the land,
use fertilizers, and today you have to or you won’t get anything.
We planted rice because there were small ponds, where dairy cows
were left to drink water. (...) It is difficult even to plant
sweet potato and manioc; formerly we got them from one year to
the other, now there are no more. (Woman worker of Herval).
The family dairy
production is becoming each and every time more unfeasible; given
that production is not being collected close to the farm, it is
necessary to transport milk to a more distant place. The awful
condition of the roads, caused by the plantation company’ trucks,
makes it difficult and many times it even impedes the circulation
of the truck that gathers the dairy production:
Water shortage is
another outcome of monoculture eucalyptus plantations. In São
José do Norte water does not have the same quality as in past
times and there is water only in few places.
In other places,
eucalyptus planted near farms have caused a barrier against the
wind that prevents the circulation of air and enables flies to
propagate thus contributing to infections and diseases.
Monk parakeets(Myiopsitta monachus) generally live in forests.
Upon their disappearance they found in eucalyptus a perfect place
to build their nests in the highest branches where they are protected
from the attack of their natural enemies and can easily find food
in nearby corn crops. The few rural producers who still plant
corn suffer the attack of parakeets causing many of them to desist
from planting corn.
Predatory wild boars(Sus scrofa) have reproduced in an uncontrolled
manner in RS and use the monocultures of eucalyptus as hideout
and shelter.
Life
has become harder for rural communities. But not only for them:
many families who have been forced to sell their lands for pulp
companies went to live in the cities. There, they face difficult
conditions of daily subsistence, because many of them have low
degrees of schooling and this makes it difficult to obtain a good
job. Besides, there they are not able to have gardens for family
subsistence. Women who go to the city generally end up obtaining
jobs as maids in urban family houses:
Poverty increases
in cities because these people who sell their lands go to the
outskirts. And they go to the city to do what?
(Rural woman worker of Encruzilhada do
Sul)
What jobs?
Plantations mostly
offer jobs to men while the few opportunities open to women reinforce
their role in services considered as inferior and less visible.
Tasks developed by women for the pulp companies are almost insignificant
and they may only work as cooks for the labourers who plant the
eucalyptus. In Barra do Ribeiro the only source of employment
that plantations provide for women are at the eucalyptus tree
nursery.
Most women who work
in the tree nurseries have tendonitis problems, causing injuries
due to repetitive efforts. There have been also cases of serious
skin allergies –presumably due to chemical products used at work.
When men leave to
work in the eucalyptus plantations women usually become overburdened
as they have to take care of the family and deal with traditional
household chores without help. The women and the family
are alone for a longer time and women need also to assume the
tasks in the farm.
Violence due to
plantations
The expansion of
eucalyptus monocultures with the arrival of foreign and unknown
workers has promoted forms of sexual harassment as well as male
chauvinist and sexist attitudes that have created situations of
fear and insecurity for women and their families. This has obviously
meant a setback in the independence and autonomy of rural women,
thus contributing to a greater female disempowerment.
Loss of cultural
identity and traditions
During
the workshop, one of the first impacts of eucalyptus industrial
plantations narrated by women related to the loss of cultural
identity because of the fact that they cannot live as a family
of farmers. Difficulties are immense; public policies are
not addressed to small farmers, to family farming, to agroecology.
These difficulties contribute to the displacement of the rural
population to the cities. This displacement, although not only
due to forestry activities, causes the slow loss of local identity.
With the exodus of families, many years of local knowledge related
to the rural production where women have a significant role, disappear.
After the irruption
of large-scale eucalyptus plantations the most visible change
commented by all women at the workshop was the loss of medicinal
plants of the Pampa, whose gathering is carried out by women.
The tradition of gathering of the medicinal herb Macela (Achyrocline
satureioides) --a plant used for digestive purposes-- in Rio
Grande do Sul is being damaged with the expansion of the eucalyptus
plantations in the field. Other medicinal plants will also
be affected by the expansion of the eucalyptus, such as Espinheira-santa
(Maytenus ilicifolia) --used in the treatment of gastritis
and ulcer.
Resisting eucalyptus
plantations
In 2006, on International
Women’s Day, two thousand women of Via Campesina occupied before
dawn the tree nursery of Aracruz Celulose in Rio Grande do Sul.
In a sudden action, with lilac bandages on their faces, they destroyed
thousands of seedlings of eucalyptus. The movement aimed at calling
the attention of Brazilian public opinion to the impacts produced
by monocultures of eucalyptus and pines on the people and local
ecosystems. This demonstration had a very strong impact in Brazil
and in the rest of the world.
In São José do Norte
many rural families are “isolated” due to the plantations of pines
and eucalyptus. However, they are resisting the sale of their
lands.
In Encruzilhada do
Sul, the Movimento de Mulheres Camponesas (MMC) (Peasant Women
Movement) is developing projects of strategies and resistance
aiming at food sovereignty, as well as community gardens.
They have also promoted debates in the community so as to clarify
the problem of eucalyptus monocultures.
The participation
of women in resistance movements targeted on land reform, food
sovereignty, maintenance of families in rural areas, has altered
their position or duties in the community. Women have transformed
from invisible to visible, mainly by the direct action taken in
Aracruz’s tree nursery in the municipality of Barra do Ribeiro
in 2006. In March 8 2007, 1,300 women from Via Campesina, occupied
four land holdings belonging to forestry corporations, to denounce
that the green desert is stopping the agrarian reform and making
peasant agriculture unfeasible. In the year 2008,
again within the framework of International Women’s Day, 900 women,
members of Via Campesina in Rio Grande do Sul occupied 21,00 hectares
of monoculture eucalyptus plantations belonging to the Swedish-Finnish
transnational company, Stora Enso, in the frontier zone with Uruguay.
Women cut the eucalyptus and replaced them with native trees.
The police then violently attacked the demonstration.
In every place plantation
companies try to hinder the struggle against eucalyptus monocultures
by interfering in local activities and life to create a good image
of institutional social responsibility:
These companies
seem a large octopus with tentacles in all fields of society.
(Fisherwoman of São José do Norte)
Women are playing
a leading role in the struggle against the expansion of tree monocultures.
They have the potential to make “the new to happen”. Unification
of the action of urban women with the action of rural women will
strengthen the struggle against the expansion of mega projects
of pulp companies in the sul-rio-grandense Pampa.
index
TOOLS FOR ACTION
- Video: Women raise their voices against tree plantations
If
after reading the above articles you (as a woman within an organization,
as a member of a women’s movement, as an activist on human rights
issues, as an environmentalist, as a journalist, as a member of
a consumer’s association, as a campaigner on climate issues, trade
issues, health issues, etc) are wondering what you can do to start
making changes to the current situation, we have some ideas that
we hope may be of use.
For
that purpose we have developed an audiovisual tool that show
the findings of the case studies summarized
in this bulletin and explains the reasons of how and why this
is happening. The video, titled “Women raise their voices against
tree plantations. Testimonies
from Brazil, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea"
can be watched at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Women_Voices.html
The
information presented in the video is complemented with
a summary of the full report containing the findings of
the workshops. This summary can be accessed
at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/summaryreport.pdf
There
are many things that you can do with these tools. Some suggestions
for action are:
-
If
you are active in an organization you can invite its members
to watch and discuss the video
-
If
your organization have a web site or blog, you can post the
video and report
-
You
can send the materials to your government representatives
-
You
can organize video sessions with your friends and discuss
the findings
-
You
can simply send it to your friends by email
-
You
can send it to local, national and international women’s organizations
-
You
can disseminate it through email lists
-
You
can show it at your education centers
-
You
can send it to the local media
-
You
can translate it into your own language
index
- More
information on women in WRM’s web site
WRM
has a special section on Women, Forests and Plantations in its
web site, which can be accessed at
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women.html
The
section includes a report on “The
role of the European Union in disempowering women in the South
through the conversion of local ecosystems to tree plantations”.
The report, released on March 2009,
summarizes the results of three workshops on the impacts of plantations
on women held in Nigeria (rubber), Papua New Guinea (oil palm)
and Brazil (eucalyptus).
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/fullreport.pdf
The
section also contains two publications focused on the impacts
of different types of plantations on women:
-
“Women,
Communities and Plantations in Ecuador.
Testimonials on a socially and environmentally destructive forestry
model”. Ivonne Ramos and Nathalia Bonilla, October 2008.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Ecuador/Women_Ecuador.pdf
- Women and Eucalyptus.
Stories of Life and Resistance. Impacts of eucalyptus monocultures
on indigenous and quilombola women in the state of Espírito Santo,
Brazil. Gilsa Helena Barcellos and Simone Batista Ferreira,
November 2007
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Brazil/Book_Women.pdf
Additionally,
it includes all the articles published over the years on this
issue in the WRM bulletin as well as the book “Women,
forests and plantations: The gender Dimension”, published in 2005
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/text.pdf
index
