While
for the majority of humanity climate change spells disaster, a few
corporate-minded people perceive it as a good business opportunity.
The way they see it, climate change is about carbon emissions and
carbon can be traded as a commodity in the global market. This market
– so they say – can be worth billions or even trillions
of dollars and they expect it to bring them huge profits. Never
mind if this market has any value at all in terms of halting climate
change; the only thing that counts is its value as a profit making
investment.
The
problem is that these people have power and are very influential
at both the national and international level, where laws and agreements
are tailored to suit their wishes. Such has been the case in the
Convention on Climate Change and its related Kyoto Protocol, which
caved in to their pressure by accepting the carbon market as one
of the “solutions” to climate change. Thus the so-called
“Clean Development Mechanism” was approved as a means
of “offsetting” CO2 emissions.
Additionally,
governmental support to “free market” approaches have
allowed those same actors to set up a voluntary carbon market where
people are duped into believing that by paying some money they can
be free from the guilt of their CO2 emissions –for instance,
in air traveling. The “carbon neutral” market was thus
born.
Both
the “official” and “unofficial” carbon markets
have included tree plantations as one of the possible mechanisms
for “offsetting” emissions.
WRM
has produced abundant information on the impacts of tree plantations
in general, has produced analyses on why plantations should not
be considered as carbon sinks, has detailed the reasons for opposing
the carbon market and has explained why “carbon neutrality”
is a fraud. All that information is easily available in our web
site.
We
would now like to focus on only one issue, which is in itself sufficient
for the exclusion of tree plantations as carbon sinks: the risk
of fire.
Imagine the following situation.
A polluting company in the North pays a “carbon neutral” seller
that promises to “offset” its emissions by planting trees. Let's
assume that the trees are in fact planted and that they do absorb
the entire amount of carbon emitted by the polluting company. Six
years later, the plantation goes up on fire. The result will be
that the burnt plantation will have released the entire amount of
carbon that it was supposed to “offset”. Which means that the plantation’s
only use was to allow the polluting company to avoid investing in
what is most necessary from a climate perspective: cutting emissions.
The
above is a real situation scenario, because the most common types
of plantations –eucalyptus and pines – are naturally
prone to fire. Both types of trees are highly flammable in natural
stands – fires in fact help them to out-compete other species
– and are even more flammable in large-scale fast growth plantations
because they create a very dry environment under their canopy, ideal
for the spread of fire.
Additionally,
the social conditions they create also make them arson targets in
many places where local people have been affected by them. Although
not a proven fact, some fires in places as distant as Chile and
Swaziland, are said to have been initiated by local people displaced
or impacted by plantations. Some 10 years ago, in Venezuela, plantation
and pulp company Smurfit employees had orders to search local people
near its plantations and to confiscate matches and lighters for
fear of arson. And the possibility was very real, because most of
the locals did in fact wish to set the plantations on fire and expressed
it openly.
For
both social and environmental reasons, plantations are constantly
going up in flames all over the world. Some of the cases that have
received more news coverage include plantations – and forests
– in Australia, Spain, Portugal, Chile, South Africa, Swaziland.
But it is sufficient to do a simple internet search to find many
more plantation-related fires in countries with large areas of tree
monocultures.
The
obvious conclusion in relation to plantations as carbon sinks is
that it is very unwise – not to say plain stupid – to
use them for storing carbon. Plantations as sinks have only one
positive aspect: they portray the carbon market fraud at its worse.
index
MARKETING
THE CLIMATE
-
Brazil: Plantar’s ‘new’ eucalyptus projects advance
towards CDM validation
In
mid-July the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board accepted
a new methodology proposed as part of the controversial Plantar
project in Minas Gerais, Brazil (see background on Plantar on WRM
bulletins 84, http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/84/Plantar.html,
70 and 72).
Plantar
SA is a pig-iron and plantation company whose CDM project in the
state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, was one of the first to be supported
by the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), which anticipated
the purchase of over 1.5 million CERs (around $25 million, assuming
credits are sold at $15) in “emissions reductions” by
2012.
Plantar
and the World Bank promoted the project as a model operation. However,
the company’s activities in the area of the project have illegally
dispossessed many people of their land, destroyed jobs and livelihoods,
dried up and polluted local water supplies, depleted soils and the
biodiversity of the native cerrado biome, threatened the health
of local people, and exploited labour under appalling conditions.
The
company plants one species of non-native tree in an industrial plantation
model for the sole purpose of burning them, thus releasing CO2 and
other pollutants. The trees are burned in small ovens to make charcoal
that is then used for the company’s pig iron operations, yet
a considerable amount of destruction was required to clear a path
for this industry.
The
original proposal for the project, submitted as a forestry offset,
was rejected by the CDM Executive Board. At first, Plantar claimed
that there would be an “accelerated reduction in the plantation
forestry base in the state of Minas Gerais.” It presented
its plantations as forests and claimed that, once it had cut down
the trees and burnt them to make pig iron, it would not replant
them unless carbon finance was forthcoming. When reminded that CDM
rules do not allow credit to be provided for “avoided deforestation”,
the company rewrote its design documents to emphasise other justifications.
The second attempt claimed that Plantar was preventing an otherwise
necessary switch in the fuels for its pig iron operations from eucalyptus
charcoal to more carbon-intensive coal or coke.
In
other words, the company claimed that carbon credits for its 23,100
hectare project were the only thing that could ensure charcoal supplies,
even though Minas Gerais alone boasts 2 million hectares of eucalyptus
plantations. Plantar itself owns rural properties covering more
than 180,000 hectares, mainly devoted to eucalyptus for charcoal
and almost all located in Minas Gerais, and provides management
services for more than 590,000 hectares of plantations for itself
and other companies in Brazil.
The
repeated rejection of this project should have led to it being scrapped,
as some 143 local groups and individuals argued in a letter to the
CDM Executive Board of June 2004: “[T]he claim that without
carbon credits Plantar . . . would have switched to coal as an energy
source is absurd.” The project was instead repackaged and
resubmitted to the CDM in its component parts, which included a
project to reduce methane in the tree-burning process, a revised
reforestation project and a further project linked to the reforestation
project, which claims to introduce a new iron ore reduction system
in pig-iron processing.
In
2007, Plantar first managed to gain access to the CDM for its methane
reduction project, which it expects to generate 112,689 CERs over
a seven-year time span from 2004 to 2011.
The
methodology of the second project, “Use of Charcoal from Planted
Renewable Biomass in the Iron Ore Reduction Process through the
Establishment of a New Iron Ore Reduction System,” was accepted
by the UN Methodology Panel in mid-July 2009. Plantar argues that
a new CDM methodology should be created relating to what it describes
as an innovative method for reducing CO2 emissions from blast furnaces.
In fact, the project is wracked with discrepancies. For example,
the Project Design Document admits that multiple sources will be
used for the supposedly “sustainable” charcoal, but
no environmental assessment has been made of the plantations that
would be used in addition to those of Plantar itself.
The
resubmitted reforestation project, linked to the iron ore methodology,
promises “dedicated plantations” grown for the production
of charcoal that is referred to, euphemistically, as “renewable
biomass.” The company claims that the original rejection
was not due to flaws in the project, but was rejected because CDM
regulations on land-use, land-use change and forestry were not finalised
when originally submitted. It attempts to backdate the claim for
carbon credits to 2000 – although the fact that the activities
described in the project have already been underway for nine years
is prima facie evidence that there is nothing “additional”
about it.
Plantar
anticipates that the reforestation project would reduce over 3 million
tonnes of CO2 over its 30 year time span, which could fetch the
company around $45 million from its buyer, the Netherlands CDM Facility,
a Dutch government scheme managed by the World Bank. The iron ore
reduction project aims to generate 2,133,551 CERs (around $30 million)
over a seven year time frame.
Plantar’s
projects, like all CDM projects, do not result in emissions reductions.
Each project that is developed in the South allows more pollution
to issue from fossil-fuelled power stations or heavy industry in
the global North. The attempt by carbon offset promoters to distinguish
between “good” and “bad” projects misses
the point and seriously undermines constructive struggles on the
ground. Not designed to deal with the real complexities and intricacies
of communities and livelihoods, they require –particularly
in the case of tree plantations- enormous quantities of land, water,
machinery and are not set up to benefit the local communities or
ecology. They generally take place in regions where people have
little power, deepening the North-South gap while continuing to
reinforce an unsustainable development paradigm.
By
Tamra Gilbertson, Carbon Trade Watch, email: tamra@tni.org
index
- Ecuador:
Statement by the indigenous peoples against forest/REDD CO2lonialism
The
inclusion of forests on the carbon market in its REDD (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing
Countries) format was adopted by the United Nations System through
the UN-REDD Programme. In 2008, the UN Secretary General presented
the UN-REDD Programme, implemented by three UN agencies: FAO, UNEP
and UNDP, in close collaboration with the World Bank.
This
is a programme involving plans and credits to compensate for carbon
emissions, which has been rejected by many social, environmental
and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, that denounced the
REDD initiative as a false solution to climate change.
The
International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change has
declared that: "REDD will not benefit Indigenous Peoples,
but in fact, it will result in more violations of Indigenous Peoples'
Rights. It will increase the violation of our Human Rights …
steal our land, cause forced evictions, prevent access and threaten
indigenous agriculture practices, destroy biodiversity and culture
diversity and cause social conflicts. Under REDD, States and Carbon
Traders will take more control over our forests.”(1)
The
UN-REDD Framework Document itself warns that the Programme may erode
non-profit making conservation practices based on cultural values,
and exclude the landless and those having communal usage rights.
Still,
carbon traders are moving fast. Australia and Indonesia have announced
that they are working on two REDD carbon trade projects worth 200
million dollars that will use the forests of Asia and the Pacific
to compensate for local industries’ carbon emissions. They
are planning to submit these projects at the negotiations on Climate
Change to take place in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
However,
organizations are working just as fast to unmask the REDD initiative,
qualified as Forest CO2lonialism, and the organized peoples are
expressing themselves on this issue.
In
a recent communiqué, issued from Puyo, Ecuador, on 3 August
(2), the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian
Amazon (CONFENIAE) pronounced itself against any type of environmental
negotiations on forests, warning that “Any negotiation or
extractive policy or activity involving forests and biodiversity
on our Ancestral Territories will cause unimaginable implications,
among them the extinction of the identity of the Ancestral Nations,
the loss of control and management of our territories, passing them
into administration by the State, foreign countries, transnational
corporations, REDD negotiators or carbon traders. This will end
in misery, hunger and extreme poverty as never seen before, as is
the case with our indigenous brothers and sisters in the Amazon
to the north of Ecuador, because of geopolitical, economic and commercial
interests.”
Based
on this, the Confederation resolves that “it will not negotiate
or dialogue without the consent of its grassroots on negotiations
involving Oil, Mining, and Hydroelectric Extractive Activities,
the Forest Partner Plan, REDD deals, or Environmental Services,
etc, because certain organizations such as the Environmental Energy
and Population Institution, the World Bank and Carbon Traders, together
and in partnership with Latin American governments, intend to negotiate
on the life of Indigenous Nationalities and Peoples, affecting our
Territorial Rights.”
Their
rejection of REDD projects is because “they aim at taking
away our free management of our resources and also because they
are not a real solution to the problem of climate change, on the
contrary, they just make it worse.”
In
exchange, they have made a genuine proposal, set out in a “Guide
for the Indigenous Peoples. False solutions to climate change”
(3) which would imply:
- Drastically
Cut Emissions at Source
-
Transition to sustainable models of production, consumption &
development
- Promote
sustainable family farming, organic faming, perennial pastures
- Promote
a paradigm shift
- Leave
fossil fuels in the ground
- Promote
renewable energy
- Scale
down: Promote local sustainable energy solutions
- Reduce,
reuse, recycle
- Phase
out extractive industries
- Redirect
military budgets; Stop war; Promote peace
- Pay
ecological debt and cancel foreign debt to address climate crisis
- Promote
peoples' sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water
- Ensure
rights-based resource conservation
- Implement
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Demarcate
and protect Indigenous Peoples’ territories
- Promote
food sovereignty and food security
- End
deforestation and its underlying causes
- Promote
energy-efficient modes of transportation and specifically public
transportation
(1) Quoted
in FPP’s briefing: “Some views of indigenous peoples
and forest-related organisations on the World Bank’s ‘Forest
Carbon Partnership Facility’ and proposals for a ‘Global
Forest Partnership’”, http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/forest_issues/fcpf_ip_survey_feb08_eng.pdf
(2) “Ecuador: CONFENIAE rejects environmental negotiations
and extractive policies” (in Spanish), Servindi, http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/14994
(3) “A Guide for Indigenous Peoples. False solutions and climate
change”, http://www.earthpeoples.org/CLIMATE_CHANGE/Indigenous_Peoples_Guide-E.pdf
index
-
Uganda: Carbon sink plantation - where trees are more important
than people
The
UK-based New Forests Company is establishing tree plantations in
Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania. The company states that “Whilst
based on commercial forestry economics, our projects are underwritten
by carbon credits … in compliance with the Clean Development
Mechanism. This means that its profits from the sale of wood will
be increased by selling “carbon credits” to polluting
industries in the North. It also means that companies buying these
carbon credits should be also held responsible for the impacts of
these plantations on local peoples and the environment.
Given
that New Forests “has already established itself as the biggest
tree planter and the dominant player in Uganda” and “is
set to begin operations in other countries”, it is important
to let people know about what is actually happening in its 54,000
acres of land in this country.
The
company defines its activities as “Sustainable and socially
responsible forestry”. The meaning of this is shown clearly
in the pictures and short text in its own web site at
http://www.newforestscompany.com/project_area/uganda.
The “responsible” process begins with the destruction
of local biodiversity in two steps: 1) manual “bush clearing”
2) “chemical spraying”. Once the local vegetation has
been totally eliminated -and the environment polluted with chemical
herbicides- it is substituted by two fast-growing alien tree species
(Eucalyptus and Pine) planted as monocultures over large areas of
land. These green deserts are the “New Forests” from
where this company takes its name.
Evidence
about how “socially responsible” the company can be
is also provided in the above mentioned pictures. Two of them show
a few women working in very uncomfortable conditions in a makeshift
tree nursery. Another photo shows a 16-strong “clearing team”
without appropriate clothing for the task. Finally, the 12 workers
of the “chemical spraying” team are shown from too far
away to assess if they have been provided with the necessary protective
gear and clothing. Given that the company does not provide any information
on the figure of 1800 workers that are “expected” to
work in the plantation, one can only guess that most of them will
be employed in tree planting and dismissed once that activity is
completed.
But
even in the impossible case that all the 1800 workers were to be
employed on a permanent basis, the company fails to mention that
over 10,000 residents of Kitumbi sub-county in Mubende district
are facing eviction to make way to its plantations. Which means
that –on balance- 8,200 people will be in a far worse condition
than before the company’s arrival. And “far worse”
is in fact an understatement of what they are being subjected to.
The
following quotes from an article published on 20 July in the Ugandan
web site New Vision, provides more than ample evidence about the
“significant social benefits” that the company has been
providing local people with.
According
to the article, residents in the villages of Kyamukasa, Kyato, Kicucula,
Kisiita, Mpologoma, and Kanaamire denounced that armed groups were
beating people, abducting them and destroying their crops and houses.
Such actions were meant “to subdue them to leave their land,
which they have occupied for decades”, so that the New Forests
Company could plant its trees.
“My
banana plantation on three acres has been destroyed by the people
who are trying to evict us. They even took 10 bags of maize from
me,” Jessica Nyinamatama, a 56-year-old widow, who is taking
care of nine orphans, said.
The
local land committee chairman, William Mpamira stated that “Two
of our neighbours were abducted by armed people who are trying to
evict us.”, adding that “Richard Twahirwa was arrested
on June 26 and Cyprian Munyagaju was arrested on July 13. Up to
now, we don’t know their whereabouts.”
According
to Mpamira, the population is suffering night attacks and as a result
most residents have resorted to sleeping in the bushes. He also
added that “we doubt whether the intention of the company
is to plant trees and protect the environment,” because “since
2005, they have been cutting down trees which we had preserved for
commercial timber.”
As
a result of the situation they were suffering, the villagers decided
to go to Kampala, where they petitioned the lands minister, Omara
Atubo, to stop the evictions. In response, the minister vowed to
stop the investor from evicting the residents and said:
“As
a ministry in charge of land, we are saddened by what has happened
to you. It is important to respect your rights irrespective of whether
you occupy the land legally or not. There is no need for your colleagues
to disappear, your property to be stolen or crops to be destroyed,”
Atubo said as the villagers applauded.
The
minister said he would summon the resident district commissioner
and the company officials to respond to the reports. Atubo
also promised to lead a team of investigators to Kitumbi on
a fact-finding mission.
“This
is an urgent case because it is about life and death. These acts
against our citizens should stop immediately. Investment is
only good if the residents benefit from it. Human beings are more
important than trees,” he stated.
New
Forests Company officials should repeat after him: Human beings
are more important than trees!
Based
on article sent by Timothy Byakola (acs@starcom.co.ug),
“Uganda: Mubende Residents Petition Lands Minister Over Eviction,
Harassment”, by Moses Mulondo, 20 July 2009 http://allafrica.com/stories/200907210016.html
and on information from the company’s web site: http://www.newforestscompany.com/index.php/project_area/7/
http://www.newforestscompany.com/
http://www.newforestscompany.com/about-us
index
-
Destroying with one hand, taking with the other: Biomass, REDD and
forests
Forests
are big news these days. Preventing deforestation will help us address
climate change (at least if the carbon stored in the forests isn't
traded, allowing emissions to continue elsewhere). Yet forests have
never been under such serious threat.
Reducing
deforestation is a good idea. Stopping it altogether would be better.
Paying the Indigenous People and local communities who protect the
forests would be even better. That is supposed to be the idea behind
the Big New Plan to save the forests: REDD (reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation). So why does REDD not attempt
to address the drivers of deforestation?
As
WRM has repeatedly pointed out, one of the most insidious threats
to forests comes from industrial tree plantations. The current obsession
with all things carbon, coupled with the UN's failure to differentiate
between forests and plantations, provides the biggest ever incentive
to clear forests and replace them with plantations.
A
major part of that threat comes from a false solution to climate
change: biomass plantations. According to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change wood is considered to be “biogenic
carbon”, which is “part of the natural carbon balance
[that] will not add to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.”
But as a result of this creative accounting, biomass plants are
springing up like mushrooms after the rain. China is planning to
build 30,000 MW of biomass power plants by 2020. The southern USA
has been called the “Saudi Arabia of biomass”. Much
of this expansion is to feed European utility companies, which have
to produce 20 per cent of their energy from “renewable sources”
by 2020.
As
trees grow they absorb carbon. So far so good. But biomass proponents
are ignoring the fact that burning wood releases carbon dioxide,
much as the pulp and paper industry ignores the fact that pulping
wood to make paper also produces massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Of
course, if the trees are replanted, they will absorb carbon dioxide.
But even with the fastest growing eucalyptus trees there is a five
to seven year delay before the carbon dioxide released by burning
the wood is absorbed by the trees. If we are going to address dangerous
runaway climate change, the last thing we need is a five to seven
year delay. Trees in Europe and the USA grow more slowly and therefore
take longer to absorb the carbon.
A
May 2009 report in Science magazine, written by Marshall Wise and
colleagues at the University of Maryland, compares two possible
future scenarios. One where all carbon emissions are taxed (including
emissions from land use change) and one where only fossil fuel and
industrial carbon emissions are taxed. The latter case is the logical
outcome from considering biomass as “biogenic carbon”
and therefore ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted when it is burned.
The result of this would be that “virtually all land that
is not required for growing food and forest products is used for
growing bioenergy”. A graph in the article shows that by 2065
all unmanaged forest, shrubland, grassland and unmanaged pasture
worldwide would be converted to bioenergy plantations.
The
authors drily comment that “Such grand-scale deforestation
is hard to imagine in reality, because it is hard to imagine that
society would find this result acceptable.”
Riau
Province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, provides an example
of precisely such “grand-scale deforestation”. Twenty
years ago the province was 80 per cent forested. Now, only about
30 per cent is left. Two pulp and paper companies have driven the
deforestation: Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources
International (APRIL). The conglomerates that own the companies
(Sinar Mas and Raja Garuda Mas, respectively) have also invested
in massive oil palm plantations, resulting in yet more forest destruction.
One of the drivers of oil palm plantation expansion is the demand
for bioenergy in Europe.
The
Indonesian government is fond of REDD, not least because it hopes
to gain millions of dollars worth of funding through REDD. Countries
in the North are also keen to fund REDD in Indonesia, not least
because it allows them to greenwash continued oil extraction. Norway's
StatoilHydro, for example, is developing oil projects in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Norway's Ambassador to Indonesia, Eivind Homme can claim
that “Norway is financing the UN REDD program, one of the
pilot projects on climate change, in Indonesia.”
Indonesia
was the first country in the world to establish legislation on REDD
investments. Yet earlier this year, the same Indonesian government
decided to allow the expansion of oil palm plantations on peatlands.
To grow palm oil or pulpwood tree plantations on peatland the land
has to be cleared and drained, which releases millions of tons of
CO2 into the atmosphere. The authorities also allow pulp companies
to log native forests and turn a blind eye when they use illegal
timber.
Will
REDD address this destruction? Not if progress so far is anything
to go by. In Guyana, President Bharrat Jagdeo assures industry that
his Low Carbon Development Strategy will not affect logging companies,
mining companies or plans for road building through forested areas.
In Papua New Guinea, the government is doing little or nothing to
address the destruction caused by industrial logging or oil palm
plantations, while allowing a series of companies to sign dubious
forest carbon trading deals with villagers for future REDD projects.
Unless
REDD addresses the destruction caused by logging and plantations
(whether for bioenergy, oil palm or pulpwood) it will fail to halt
deforestation. And as long as the UN definition of forests fails
to differentiate between forests and plantations, there is no chance
of this happening.
By
Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
index
COMMUNITIES
AND FORESTS
-
Argentina: Wichi and Guarani women raise their voices against deforestation
linked to soybean expansion
According
to a research paper produced by Daniel Slutzky from the Conicet
Centre for Urban and Regional Studies quoted by journalist Claudio
Scaletta (1), in the Province of Salta “until the mid nineties
sugar cane, tobacco and citrus, together with kidney beans were
the traditional crops.” Later the kidney bean cycle shrunk
because of the rise of the soybean. Today this crop occupies over
fifty percent of the cultivated land in the Province and continues
to expand.”
Along
with the soybean came deforestation. It has been estimated that
between 1988 and the present, 2.3 million hectares were deforested.
According to the article, “although indiscriminate felling
started with kidney bean crops, it is now part of the soybean problem.”
In
addition to deforestation, soybean also brought land concentration,
unemployment and eviction. “The increasing prices of oilseeds
and new technologies have made many marginal areas more profitable.
The price of land and land renting was low in relation to potential
profitability, sufficiently low to absorb the extra cost of logging
and freight to ports. Due to soybean requirements regarding scale
and facilities, these new opportunities were only accessible to
medium and large-scale farmers. In the year 2000, 95 thousand hectares
were in the hands of 19 farm operators and one of these alone possessed
25,000 hectares. Concentration of land coexisted with the eviction
of workers. Technological modernization led to a drastic cut
in labour requirements, dropping from 2.5 working days per hectare
to 0.5, an unprecedented increase in work productivity. The
counterpart was a significant migration of the rural population
and the virtual disappearance of small villages. The traditional
linking between large farm operators and small farmers, many of
them indigenous farmers, was broken. Small peasant subsistence
farmers started finding serious difficulties in complementing their
income with salaries from the seasonal demand for cane and bean
harvesting, activities that lost relative importance. To the situation
of small farmers evicted from their lands is added that of the indigenous
peoples, such as the Wichi. Some emigrated to the suburbs of Tartagal
and Embarcación and the City of Salta. Others found themselves
cornered in shrinking forests.”
In
this context, on 17 December 2008, 18 indigenous Wichi and Guarani
communities from Salta filed a precautionary measure before the
Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation demanding the suspension
of the numerous logging authorizations issued by the provincial
Government. Through the Environmental Secretariat, the Government
had endorsed requests for clear felling and logging on a total of
807,509 hectares of forest. In spite of complaints about pollution,
diseases and natural disasters caused by the depredation of native
forests and the indigenous communities’ demand to have their
ancestral lands restored, the Court did not issue any definitive
verdict. At the end of December 2008, it ordered the temporary suspension
of clear felling and logging of native forests, authorized during
the last quarter of 2007, until an environmental impact assessment
was made, which should be ready within 90 days.
On
26 March 2009 the Court extended the suspension, while awaiting
the provincial report. In spite of this verdict, deforestation continued,
the companies continued to advance on the territories claimed by
the communities and on the native forest.
Faced
by the imminent final verdict of the Court, 20 Wichi and Guarani
women took the decision to make themselves heard. Thus, at the end
of July they travelled from Salta to the capital city, as they explained
“for US, WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES, to take the claims to the
places where the decisions on our lives are taken, that is why we
are going to Buenos Aires.” So far, the response to their
claims, presented before the provincial municipalities, has only
been more repression, exclusion and discrimination.
These
women, who are determined to “take up the arms of awareness,”
have announced that they do not want to be represented by intermediary
organizations “be they NGOs or others.” “We want
to shout our claims clearly: for our lands and our territories that
are being devastated by clear felling, because the ban on felling
the native forest is not being complied with.” “We are
in a state of poverty which we did not seek, but that is the consequence
of the dehumanized way people on the other side behave who, thought
their money and power, have overwhelmed us and made other poor brothers
and sisters confront us by invading our lands and depriving us of
our territory.”
They
speak about the diseases that come with clear felling, of leishmaniasis
which they are unable to defend themselves against because they
do not know about it. “Nobody comes here to teach us, nobody
comes to train us and we know that no indigenous people are involved
in preparing health projects and programmes.” (2)
In
Buenos Aires, the group of women presented a petition to a number
of institutions and organizations, among which the Supreme Court,
the Presidency of the Nation, the Nation’s Peoples Defence
Office, the Chamber of Deputies, Amnesty International, the American
Association of Jurists and the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights.
However,
there is no truce: on 14 August the Supreme Court of Justice of
the Nation decided euphemistically to “allow the execution
of tasks for forest management in the Departments of San Martin,
Oran and Santa Victoria." This implies that deforestation will
be allowed to continue in the north of Salta, rejecting the demands
of the indigenous communities.
The
women stated that the response they were given was that “perhaps
what we are denouncing is “Selective Felling” or “Reforestation”.
After looking at the photos and the proof of all we had submitted,
they told us that we could follow the example of our brothers and
sisters from the South who are the protectors of national parks!!!!!
But of course, provided we have the ownership deeds!!! OUTRAGEOUS!!!!
They neither gave us a reply nor an alternative.” (3)
As
they stated “we are suffering at this time from what we have
suffered all our lives: dispossession. If before they used to fight
us with Winchesters, Remingtons and Mausers, now it is with this
soybean model.”
(1)
“Soja y bosques nativos”, Claudio Scaletta, page 12,
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/cash/17-3842-2009-03-29.html
(2) “Para ser vistas y escuchadas. Mujeres de la comunidad
wichí "Honat Le' Les", en lucha”, Raquel
Schrott and Ezequiel Miodownik for the News Agency Biodiversidadla,
http://www.biodiversidadla.org/content/view/full/50831
(3) “Argentina_MUJERES WICHI Y GUARANI: La lucha continúa”,
Red Latina Sin Fronteras, http://red-latina-sin-fronteras.lacoctelera.net/post/2009/08/20/argentina_mujeres-wichi-y-guarani-lucha-continua
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Burma: The looming social and environmental disaster of the Tasang
dam
Keng
Kham is a community located along the Pang River, that flows down
from the mountain and into the Salween River in southern Shan State
of Burma. The community had an estimated total population of
14,800 before the Burma Army started in 1996 an anti-insurgency
campaign that forced relocation and made the majority to flee to
Thailand. Now it has dwindled to some 3,000 in 114 villages.
The
situation for those that still live in Keng Kham is constantly precarious.
Villagers often have to hide from passing Burma Army patrols to
avoid harassment, extortion, forced labor, or interrogation. However,
those who remain are managing to maintain their traditional rural
ways of life and culture in an ecologically unique area.
Yet,
they face a further major threat: the Tasang dam, the largest of
five dams planned in Burma for the transnational Salween River by
the Chinese, Thai and Burmese governments, that will submerge 870
km2 in the heartland of Shan State. Tens of thousands will be displaced
by the dams upstream and a half million will be impacted in the
delta downstream. Three of the dams will flood areas of outstanding
biodiversity and one will submerge the homeland of the last remaining
Yin Ta Lai people, who now number just 1,000.
The
majority of the power from the dams will be sold to Thailand, providing
revenues to the military ruling Burma but not electricity to a domestic
population that faces chronic energy shortages. Keng Kham community
will be directly impacted from the Tasang Reservoir when the dam
is finished as nearly all the 114 villages will go under water together
with their river-fed farms, sacred cave temples, pristine waterfalls
and forests.
Initial
surveys for the dam began in 1998, in the midst of the relocation
campaign. Project investors include the Thai MDX Company and China’s
Gezhouba Group Company. They are eager to begin construction and
have already held a ground-breaking ceremony.
However,
the project continues to be delayed by the instability of the area
surrounding the dam site. Areas south and southeast of the dam site
are under the control of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a ceasefire
group. Since early 2009 the Burmese regime has been putting pressure
on ceasefire armies to transform into Border Guard Forces which
will be fully under Burma Army control. Many of the ceasefire groups,
including the UWSA, are resisting this, throwing into doubt the
stability of former ceasefire territories. This will directly threaten
the security of the main supply route from Thailand to the Tasang
dam-site, which is also the expected route of the power transmission
lines.
Meanwhile
rampant logging carries on unabated in areas surrounding the dam
site. Hard wood trees including teak are being clearcut for transport
and sale in China and Thailand.
Logs
are transported after the rainy season. From January to May 2009,
Century Dragon, a logging company of Tay Za, a close associate of
the Burmese generals, and the Wa-controlled Hong Pang Company were
actively logging from the east banks of the Salween inland. In the
past, Thai Sawat logged only big trees in this area, but today’s
loggers are clear-cutting everything.
Most
of the forests in the Mong Pu Long area are now gone. Recently Hong
Pang Company also started building a logging road west of the Salween
between Mong Pan and Tasang. In various areas logs are floated down
the Salween for sale in Thailand or sent up the Mekong for sale
in China.
The
Shan Women’s Action Network has documented sexual violence
by Burma Army troops against hundreds of women living around the
Tasang dam site and denounced that “Women’s lives are
interdependent with nature because we must collect vegetables, firewood,
and traditional medicines for the sustenance and health of our families.
The natural environment must be preserved for the survival of our
future generations and the most important component is water and
our rivers. But now Burma’s military government is going to
build dams on our Salween River for their own interest. Before building
the dams they are logging and constructing the road to carry materials
to the dam site. At the same time the number of soldiers is increasing
for the dam’s security. This situation is making it very difficult
and unsafe for women who depend on the forest around the Tasang
dam.”
The
Shan Sapawa Environment Organization is calling for a halt of the
Tasang dam. They have produced the report “Roots and Resilience”
(1). By focusing on the ecologically unique area of Keng Kham community
and their struggle to survive amidst civil war, the report tries
to reveal the potential human costs and all that will be lost under
the flood of the Tasang Dam.
(1)
“Roots and Resilience”, by Shan Sapawa Environment Organization,
can be downloaded at http://www.salweenwatch.org/
Article
based on the report “Roots and Resilience” and the 4
August 2009 press release. Contact: Sai Sai, e-mail: shansapawa@gmail.co
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Kenya: Projected sugar cane plantations may wipe out invaluable
Tana River Delta
The
Tana River Delta is one of the most important wetlands in Africa
and among the largest and most important freshwater wetland systems
of Kenya. It covers an area of 130,000 ha where a mix of savannah,
mangrove swamps, forest and beaches provides good grass throughout
the dry season. Local Orma and Wardei pastoralists have used the
delta for centuries.
The
website of the Tana River Delta campaign describes that “there
are also large area of rice paddies and other agricultural activities
being carried out along the edges of the Delta. Crops grown in the
Delta include rice, maize, mango, cassava, bananas, melons, beans,
peas and many other vegetables. Most farmers belong to the Pokomo
ethnic group. Fishermen include the Bajuni people and migrants
from other parts of Kenya.
The Tana River Delta is a lifeline to some 30,000 farmers, pastoralists
and fishermen as well as minority hunter and gatherer communities
collectively called the Wasanya.”(1)
This invaluable ecosystem that sustains a high biodiversity and
the livelihood of tens of thousands of people may well be disrupted
out of blind short-term profits. The push for agrofuels is behind
the project of large-scale planting of sugar cane in order to produce
large amounts of ethanol for export to the European market.
Mumias
Sugar Company (MSC) Ltd. and Tana and Athi River Development Authority
(TARDA), in a planned private joint venture, are proposing to turn
20,000 hectares of the mostly pristine Tana River Delta over to
sugarcane. On 11th June 2008 Kenya’s National Environment
Management Authority (NEMA) approved the project.
A
short sight approach has overestimated the potential profit and
ignored Tana delta's ecological benefits, including flood prevention,
the storage of greenhouse gases and food provision that "defied
valuation", concluded a report commissioned by the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds. The report warned of grave environmental
consequences if the project went ahead. (2)
Tana
River villagers and fishermen as well as pastoralists who bring
60,000 cattle from as far afield as the Somali and Ethiopian border
regions to graze in the delta during the dry season are angry because
their concerns about the loss of livelihoods have not been addressed.
They have disrupted public hearings on the project.
"Since
time immemorial, thousands of livestock farmers in Tana River have
been relying on the delta for the provision of pasture and water
for their animals. During severe drought, livestock farmers from
as far as Garissa and Ijara in North Eastern Province stream here
for pasture and water," Orma elder, Mr Hussein Guracho said.
"When Tarda and Mumias Sugar bring in the sugar project, millions
of animals will be wiped out by drought since Tana River is semi-arid,
denying over 100,000 pastoralists a living," he explained.
Anger
grows out of outrage: “Tarda will establish the factory over
our dead bodies” warned the protestors. (3)
Cases
like this of the Tana River Delta illustrate the destructive side
of agrofuels with their toll of poverty and displacement when occupying
large tracts of land that are people’s livelihood base.
(1)
“About the Tana River Delta”, http://www.tanariverdelta.org/tana/about.html
(2) “Wildlife and livelihoods at risk in Kenyan wetlands biofuel
project”, Xan Rice, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/24/biofuels.wildlife
(3) The East African Standard (Nairobi), http://www.sucre-ethique.org/Kenya-Tana-Residents-Protest.html
index
COMMUNITIES
AND TREE MONOCULTURES
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FSC’s greenwashing of tree monocultures: Evidence provided
by the Brazilian Pulp and Paper Industry itself
For
over a decade, the World Rainforest Movement has been denouncing
that -by certifying large scale tree plantations- the FSC is greenwashing
the destructive activities of plantation companies in Southern countries
(for further information see
http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/index.html).
More importantly, WRM has stressed that by doing so, the FSC is
undermining local peoples’ struggles against monoculture tree
plantations.
Evidence
supporting the above is provided in a video by the executive president
of the Brazilian Pulp and Paper Industry (BRACELPA), who argues
that Brazilian “planted forests” cannot be called Green
Deserts (as local communities suffering their impacts define them),
because “all our forests [plantations] are certified by the
FSC …”.
The
video is available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/FSC_greenwashing.html
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Indonesia: Indigenous Peoples oppose acacia plantations on their customary
lands
The
indigenous people of Teluk Meranti in the Kampar Peninsula, Riau,
Sumatra, are resisting efforts by a pulp and paper company to take
over their customary lands.
The
pulpwood plantation company, Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, (RAPP)
owned by the pulp and paper giant, APRIL, has obtained in principle
permits to develop Acacia plantations on 45,000 hectares of peat
swamp forest in the Kampar Peninsula, Riau Province, Sumatra. RAPP
would like to establish up to 150,000 hectares of Acacia plantations
in a ring around the edge of the 700,000 Kampar Peninsula on peat
forests that are under the traditional management and ownership
of about ten indigenous communities.
RAPP's
permits cover peat forests that are the customary lands of the indigenous
community of Teluk Meranti. If the acacia plantations are developed
on their lands, the Teluk Meranti community will lose an essential
source of livelihood, as it manages and uses the area for fish,
shrimp, small game, building materials and non timber forest products.
RAPP plans to start clearing the forests this year.
In
June, the community of Teluk Meranti sent a letter to the company
RAPP/APRIL declaring that they reject the presence of the company
on their lands. They did so “with regard to the following
considerations:
1. The
land is to be retained for our grandchildren's future
2. Experiences by other surrounding villages and areas where
the RAPP company has operated have impacted negatively on the local
community's rights
3. It has caused loss of agricultural and horticultural land
belonging to the community
4. The community will lose the source of its livelihood (economic,
social and cultural) from the forest which will be converted to
an industrial timber plantation.”
This
community has the right to this land because as they specified in
their letter: “We, the community of Teluk Meranti, have inhabited
and utilised this area in a wise and traditional way since long
before Indonesia's independence”.
The
letter, signed by 82 community members, had the intention specified
by the community “that unwanted problems will be avoided in
the future”. Copies of the letter were sent to the most important
authorities of the country including the Ministry of Forests and
different Commissions of the House of Representatives.
Scale
Up, a local organization that is now assisting the community to
prepare a map of their customary territory, was recently requested
by community leaders to contact national and international groups
and ask for their support in their struggle to stop their peat forests
being destroyed by RAPP.
As
a result, on August 17, 26 organizations from Asia, Europe, and
the Americas sent a joint letter to the company, urging it to respect
the community’s decision of rejecting the presence of the
company in their lands. In the letter, they reminded the company
that “the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, includes the right of indigenous peoples to reject planned
developments that would affect their customary lands”. Copies
of this letter were sent to the community, the authorities, the
press and the customers of RAPP.
We
hope that the Indonesian authorities will take action to ensure
that the rights of the indigenous people of Teluk Meranti are respected
and that they will intervene to stop the planned acacia plantations
on their lands.
Article
based on information sent by Patrick Anderson. Please contact WRM
for his email address.
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Indonesia: Call for suspension of World Bank (IFC) lending to oil
palm
An
internal audit has revealed that the World Bank’s private
sector arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) –
has allowed commercial interests to override its social and environmental
standards in making major loans to the oil palm sector in Indonesia..
The uncontrolled expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia
has become synonymous with widespread clearance of forests and peatlands,
massive CO2 emissions and the theft of indigenous peoples’
lands. Yet the government plans to expand from a current 7 million
hectares of plantings to more than 20 million hectares over the
next decade.
Although
the IFC knew about all these risks, it went ahead with loans to
the Wilmar palm oil trading group, in violation of its own standards,
according to the report. The IFC failed to assess the supply chains
or look into the damaging impacts of the company’s subsidiary
plantations that were taking over community lands and forests in
Borneo and Sumatra. These findings come from a highly critical audit
report just issued by the semi-independent Compliance Advisory Ombudsman
of the IFC which looked into a detailed complaint filed in July
2007 by Forest Peoples Programme and a coalition of 19 Indonesian
civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations, including
SawitWatch and Gemawan.
The
complaint was sparked by the fact that the IFC was persistently
ignoring NGO warnings that its favoured commercial client, Wilmar
International, was operating in violation of both IFC standards
and Indonesian law. In a detailed dossier submitted in 2007, the
NGOs demonstrated that Wilmar was: failing to recognise the customary
rights of local communities; grabbing the lands of communities with
the connivance of local and national State agencies; party to serious
human rights abuses when communities objected to the takeover of
their lands; clearing extensive areas of forest and peat; carrying
out illegal practices such as use of fire to clear lands; failing
to comply with legal regulations and failing to carry out environmental
impact assessments and; breaking promises made to communities to
establish areas as smallholdings. At the time the IFC made the investment
guarantee to Wilmar that triggered the complaint, Wilmar group companies
were actually the subject of legal proceedings brought by the government
for alleged violations of environmental laws.
The
company, Wilmar trading, has over the 8 years that it has enjoyed
IFC patronage grown into the world’s largest trader of crude
palm oil and become a ‘vertically integrated’ business
empire, worth an estimated US$7 billion, with factories in eastern
Europe, ports and refineries in Sumatra, shipping facilities, an
HQ in Singapore and an aggressively expanding ‘land bank’
of extensive plantations in Sarawak and Indonesia, heading towards
a target area of 1 million hectares.
The
IFC-Wilmar case has been particularly shocking as, even after the
complaint had been filed and a team from the CAO was negotiating
land disputes between Wilmar and local communities, IFC staff persisted
in ignoring the situation and prepared a further loan to the Wilmar
Group. Although NGOs warned the President and full Board of this
travesty and even though IFC staff were again in violation of procedures,
the Board approved a further loan to the company.
As
is normal when the CAO issues an audit, in this case Senior IFC
staff also published a ‘Management Response’ to go out
at the same time that the audit was released. Having carefully scrutinised
this response NGOs have told the IFC they find it ‘inadequate’.
In a strongly worded letter
supported by NGOs
from all over the world to World Bank/IFC President, Richard Zoellick,
they argue that:
“In
the first place, it is clear to us, and the audit confirms this,
that IFC suffers a systemic problem whereby the pressure to lend
and to support business interests overcomes prudence, due diligence
and concern for social and environmental outcomes. No actions are
proposed to address this problem. Secondly, the Management Response
provides no contextual analysis of the wider problems within the
palm oil sector in Indonesia, instead an Annex to the management
response only puffs the potential benefits. As our own documentation
has detailed and as the audit report confirms, the palm oil sector
in Indonesia suffers endemic problems which are not limited to one
company or group of companies…. We note in particular that
in the Management Response:
• No
actions are suggested to discipline IFC staff for systematic policy
violations.
• No actions are recommended to stop IFC staff misleading
the Board when controversial projects are presented for the Board’s
approval.
• No actions are proposed to remedy the wider problems
still besetting the Wilmar group’s operations in which IFC
has so heavily invested.
• No actions are proposed to address the fundamental problem
that the current land tenure laws and land acquisition procedures
in Indonesia deny customary rights and encourage companies to take
over communities’ lands without their free, prior and informed
consent.
• No actions are proposed to address the problems raised
in our complaint that companies are planting on peatlands and burning
forests, despite global concern about climate change being exacerbated
by deforestation and land use change,
• Indeed no comprehensive action plan is presented to
clarify what IFC staff will actually do to ensure future compliance
with standards.”
The
NGOs have thus called on the IFC President and Board to suspend
IFC lending to the palm oil sector in Indonesia until these deficiencies
are addressed.
Sources:
Press release by Forest Peoples Programme, SawitWatch and Gemawan,
10th August 2009; http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/ifc_wilmar_cao_fpp_press_rel_aug09_eng.pdf
Original complaint and follow up correspondence with the IFC and
CAO see: http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/ifc_wilmar_fpp_let_jul07_eng.pdf
http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/prv_sector/bases/oil_palm.shtml
CAO audit see:
http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/ifc_wilmar_cao_audit_report_jun09_eng.pdf
index
-
Malaysia: Indigenous Peoples call for a moratorium on large-scale
tree plantations
On
the World Indigenous Peoples Day – 9th August 2009 –
the Malaysian Indigenous Peoples Organisations Coalition called
on for Malaysian State governments “to stop large-scale plantations
and other extractive activities on our customary lands until effective
measures to safeguard our rights and the environment are in place”.
Malaysians
Indigenous Peoples Organisations described in a press release (1)
how timber companies have exploited their forest, which provides
for their means of livelihoods: “Logging have destroyed our
fundamental existence to livelihood, the plant varieties including
medicinal plants, animals and fish have either become threatened
or extinct.”
More
hardships are in store for the Indigenous People: “In Sarawak,
our communities are yet to face the worse in the near future. As
the sun sets on the timber industry in Sarawak, the current state
government is energetically seeking to diversify and broaden its
revenue base via land development for oil palm plantations and large-scale
trees plantations. These land development activities has time and
again encroached into the lands and forests of various indigenous
communities which claim native customary rights (NCR) over these
territories.”
Taking NCR land as “idle land”, the government promotes
large-scale commercialisation as a means of bringing “the
native communities into mainstream society in order to alleviate
their poverty. This argument was used to promote logging in the
1970s and is now used to justify the introduction of oil palm plantations
and industrial tree plantations.”
However,
such “development” has proved a failure: “the
indigenous and local community by and large do not benefit from
these activities that destroy the resources on their land”.
“After more than three decades of extensive logging and deforestation,
why is it that most of our people living in the interior are now
worse off than before.” Indigenous Peoples’ organisations
question “the reigning ‘development paradigm,’
the idea that these large-scale projects are always beneficial to
the indigenous communities.” The reality is that “such
projects generate large profits for a small number of people, the
elites and the corporations; they also bring social and environmental
devastation to the country, and beyond.”
Now,
apart from oil palm plantations, the State government of Sarawak
has issued licenses for tree plantations over 1,397,644 hectares
including NCR land and water catchment areas. “With the water
catchment damaged or destroyed, the communities are no longer able
to get clean water. The rivers would be polluted with chemicals
and silt that washed down from the forest plantation estates”
reads the statement.
Plantation
companies have already illegally encroached into the customary lands
of the indigenous communities without their free, prior and informed
consent, resulting in disputes over rights to land and resources
that lead to an increasingly tense situation. More than 100 legal
demands have been issued by Indigenous communities against the plantation
developers, the State Agencies and the State government in the High
Courts all over Sarawak.
Representatives
from Indigenous Peoples organisations that form the Malaysian Indigenous
Peoples Organisations Coalition “strongly urge a moratorium
on any plantation development projects and call the government to
immediately bring about meaningful solutions to all these land disputes
problems and land rights issues in Sarawak.”
(1)
“Malaysian Indigenous Peoples want moratorium on plantations,
other extractive projects”, press release of the Malaysian
Indigenous Peoples Organisatins Coalition, http://www.indigenousportal.com/Environment/-Malaysian-Indigenous-Peoples-want-moratorium-on-plantations-other-extractive-projects.html,
sent by Bruno Manser Fonds, e-mail: bmf@bmf.ch
index
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Meeting of the Latin American network against monoculture tree plantations
On
1 August 2009, members of the Latin American Network against Monoculture
Tree Plantations (RECOMA) met in the locality of Villa Serrana,
Uruguay, to examine the reasons for the alarming expansion of monoculture
tree plantations aimed at the production of charcoal, pulp, timber
and agrofuels (agrodiesel and ethanol derived from wood), mainly
intended for export.
Representatives
from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay exchanged
information and experiences regarding the different types of plantations:
eucalyptus, pine, oil palm, teak and gmelina.
An
element common to all of them is the increasing appropriation of
territories by forestry companies and oil palm growers, leading
to a concentration of land directly affecting local community rights
and good living, as set out in the final declaration of the meeting
(see the complete text at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RECOMA/Declaration.html.
In
the case of Chile, which has become the “model” for
the expansion of timber plantations in the region, there are two
and a half million hectares planted with pine and eucalyptus trees
for pulp, concentrated in just a few regions. The expansion continues:
over the past five years pulp production has doubled, with the introduction
of mills with an annual production of over 1 million tons –
98% intended for the international market.
The
expansion continues thanks to government support, although the pattern
has changed. Subsidies and tax exemptions granted to companies
are now directed towards small farmers and indigenous peoples, seeking
to co-opt them with bridge loans that pay money in advance to establish
the plantation.
In
Peru, a decree known as Law of the Jungle, at the root of the recent
indigenous rising, intends to establish private investment on thousands
of hectares of Amazon forest. With the reasoning that “reforestation”
of “deforested” zones is being promoted, the law will
make it possible to introduce large-scale tree plantations on lands
that are part of the traditional migratory farming model followed
by peasant and indigenous farmers.
In
the Peruvian sierra, plantations are promoted within plans for closing
mines, while oil palm plantations advance in the forest area, displacing
small farming communities. There are also 18 tree plantation projects
in the coastal area.
In
Colombia pine, eucalyptus and oil palm plantations cover 600,000
hectares. In the case of oil palm plantations, the rise of agrofuels
has had a strong impact and there is talk of establishing 3 million
hectares of plantations.
Following
the Chilean model, plantation expansion has enjoyed state support
under the form of subsidies and different types of tax exemptions.
At
this time, policies are stepping up commercialization of the natural
heritage (forests, water, fauna, etc.), promoting strategies for
the certification of plantations and dismantling the Ministry of
the Environment’s monitoring system.
In
Ecuador, tree plantations have been established in forest and paramo
areas, on the lands of communities that were induced and deceived
into signing 20-year contracts whereby they gave the State the right
to intervene and have left themselves exposed to the application
of sanctions.
In
Nicaragua the cultivation of oil palm has started on the Atlantic
coast, hand in hand with ferocious deforestation affecting the Bosawuas
Reserve. A programme of reforestation and highway infrastructure
in the west of the country - including teak and gmelina plantations
- is in the pipeline.
In
Mexico there are projects for 1 million hectares of oil palm plantations.
The promotion is taking place at an accelerated and disorganized
pace, with the rationale that this is not deforestation but occupation
of degraded lands. The European Union has been an important actor
in the expansion of oil palm plantations around the Lacandona Forest,
with the argument that they are preventing the indigenous people
from deforesting the area.
The
paper-pulp and iron and steel industry sectors are behind the expansion
of tree plantations in Brazil. In 2003, the government’s forestry
plan proposed a growth of 6 million hectares of plantations. Finally,
plantation expansion mainly took place in the States of Rio Grande
do Sul, Parana, Para and Bahia, in addition to Espirito Santo and
Minas Gerais, although the expansion was not quite so intense in
the latter states.
The
first stage of expansion in Brazil was mainly on the traditional
lands of indigenous, Afro-descendent and peasant farmers’
lands. During the last stage, the plantations advanced on areas
that were intended for the Agrarian Reform or on the lands of small
farmers through rental-type contracts.
In
Uruguay, the plantation promotion law established benefits leading
to the establishment of one million hectares planted with trees,
of which 600,000 are in the hands of just 4 foreign companies: Stora
Enso (Sweden-Finland), Arauco (Chile), Weyerhaeuser (USA) and Botnia
(Finland). A consortium involving Stora Enso and Arauco hold the
largest landed estate in the history of Uruguay covering 253,000
hectares.
FSC
certification has been an important factor in the consolidation
and legitimization of the model, weakening opposition. Certification
is present in all the plantations and is merely a bureaucratic process.
As
set out in the RECOMA declaration “The process of tree plantation
expansion is becoming more consolidated and is expanding further,
hand in hand with false solutions to climate change such as agrofuels
and the wrongly called ‘carbon sinks’ that are simply
new business opportunities for transnational companies.”
“Communities,
movements and social organizations resisting this uncontrolled advance
of monoculture plantations are undergoing persecution, harassment,
criminalization and plundering of their means of living.”
RECOMA
affirms that “As part of our struggle we take up the defence
of food sovereignty, the defence of land and territories, forests,
biodiversity and water.”
index
