Members of the Latin
American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA)
from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and
Uruguay have gathered here to address the situation at the
level of the entire region.
The recent coup d’état
in Honduras has prevented the Honduran delegation from attending
the meeting. RECOMA expresses its solidarity with our companions,
repudiating the coup d’état that has launched
Honduras into a spiral of violence and systematic violation
of Human Rights by the usurping government, and emphatically
appeals to the governments to unite with the Honduran people
to ensure an immediate return to democracy.
The meeting’s
central issue was to analyze the reasons behind the alarming
expansion of monoculture tree plantations for the purpose
of producing coal, pulp and timber and agrofuels (agro-diesel
and wood ethanol) mainly intended for export.
It has been observed
in all the countries of the region that the advance of monoculture
plantations is generating an increasing process of land appropriation
by forestry companies and palm-growers, leading to land concentration
directly affecting the local communities’ rights and
good living.
Monoculture plantations
are progressing on the basis of deception promoted by the
large corporations in partnership with national and local
governments, who make false promises to the communities and
small farmers regarding the generation of jobs and local development.
In other cases, small farmers are persuaded to install these
monoculture plantations on their own land, thus tying them
to the big corporations. Another strategy is to promote monoculture
plantations as a way of rehabilitating “degraded land,”
when in fact this land is of enormous use to the peoples inhabiting
these areas.
These false promises
are made in a deliberate manner, ignoring the abundant documented
evidence of the most serious and negative environmental, social
and economic impacts suffered by the local peoples. Water,
fish, animals, medicinal plants, firewood, food and many other
resources that sustained the life and culture of these populations
disappear after the installation of such plantations.
This process is becoming
more consolidated and is expanding further hand in hand with
false solutions to climate change such as agrofuel and the
wrongly called “carbon sinks” that are simply
new sources of business for transnational companies.
All the negative impacts
described above will become even more serious in the event
that the future monoculture tree plantations comprise transgenic
trees already being developed in Brazil and Chile and in various
other countries outside South America.
This entire model
is aimed at supplying the excessive consumption of industrialized
countries in the North. In order to achieve this, they resort
to the support of international funding institutions, cooperation
agencies, free trade agreements and multilateral organizations
placed at their service and equally responsible for the damage
caused.
Communities, movements
and social organizations resisting this uncontrolled advance
of monoculture plantations are undergoing persecution, harassment,
criminalization and plundering of their means of living.
For all the above,
RECOMA has set out to broaden the front against monoculture
tree plantations, merging it with other on-going regional
processes, such as those of the indigenous, Afro-descendent,
traditional and peasant farmer peoples, rural workers, landless
people and women’s organizations. As part of our struggle
we take up the defence of food sovereignty, the defence of
land and territories, forests, biodiversity and water.
Friends of the Earth,
Argentina - FOBOMADE, Bolivia – Alert against the Green
Desert Network, Brazil - OLCA, Chile - CENSAT, Colombia -
COECOCEIBA, Costa Rica - Acción Ecológica, Ecuador
- CESTA, El Salvador - Otros Mundos, Mexico - FEDECAMP, Nicaragua
- Sobrevivencia, Paraguay - Programa de Defensa de Derechos
Indígenas, Perú – REDES, Uruguay –
World Rainforest Movement
For further information:
RECOMA Secretariat: recomala@gmail.com – phone / fax:
0598 2 413 2989
