Large-scale monoculture tree plantations are spreading in many countries, particularly in the South. These (timber, pulpwood, oil or carbon sink) plantations, promoted as "planted forests", are resulting in a number of negative social and environmental impacts on local communities. This campaign aims at generating conscience on and organizing opposition to this type of forestry development. With this aim we have elaborated some information material.

The problem with industrial tree plantations

Tree plantations are neither good nor bad in themselves: it depends on their scale, their aimed objective and the type of plantations, as well as on the natural and socioeconomic environment where they are implemented. The type of plantations which are becoming a growing problem are characterized by their large scale and uniformity. At the national level, they consist of scores of thousands of hectares -and in cases such as Chile, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia, surpassing a million hectares- of tree monocultures. Such plantations are based on some few species -usually eucalyptus or pines- bred for rapid growth, uniformity and high yield of raw material. Planted in even-aged stands, they require intensive preparation of the soil, fertilization, regular spacing of trees, seedling selection, mechanical or chemical weeding, use of pesticides and mechanized harvesting in short rotations.

These vast monocultures are increasingly being promoted in the South, where inexpensive land, low labour costs and fast tree growth combine to make wood especially cheap. As these extensive plantations begin to invade native grasslands, agricultural lands and forests the results, in country after country, have been impoverishment, environmental degradation and growing local opposition. 

See also:
The launch of the Campaign
WRM bulletin Nº13 / July 98

Why the plantation boom?

Tree monocrops are not the result of a locally expressed need nor are they meant to favour local people. Their real aim is to ensure the global paper industry with cheap raw material for an ever increasing overconsumption of paper and paper products, particularly in the North. As northern forests are depleted as a result of the paper industry’s growing demand for wood fibers, and as the northern environmental movement becomes stronger in its defense of the remnants of old-growth forests, the industry is moving its future supply to the South.

A number of different actors are making this shift possible. Multilateral Development Banks,"aid" agencies, northern consultants, technology suppliers, state investment and export credit agencies are among the main external actors which provide the impetus and the financial and technical support for the spread of plantations all over the world. Internally, national governments -pushed by the above-said external actors- provide a number of overt or hidden subsidies which allow these plantations to be implemented. Such subsidies may be direct (e.g. payment of a large percentage of the plantation cost, tax breaks, etc.) or indirect (e.g. government forestry research, road and port infrastructure, soft loans, etc.).

Are plantations good for the environment?

"Trees are good" and "we are planting forests" are arguments widely publicized by plantation proponents to confuse the public. However, these plantations are not forests but crops, and they are not only crops but large-scale, rapid growth tree monocrops. Such characterists result in social and environmental negative impacts:

All plants function as water pumps: soil nutrients reach the leaves dissolved in water. The faster the growth, the bigger the plant and the larger the area they occupy, the more water they will consume. Such is the case of these industrial tree plantations. South Africa is probably the only country in the world where all actors (from industry to NGOs) agree that plantations produce an important impact on water. In most of the other countries, forestry "experts" deny this fact, even when local people denounce the depletion of water resources.

A second environmental impact relates to soils. Plantation trees and management result in changes in soil structure and chemical composition. Short term rotations, coupled with the use of heavy machinery expose the soil to erosion. Important amounts of nutrients are exported with the removal of logs. Changes in soil flora and fauna resulting from the chosen plantation tree species -usually eucalyptus and pines- imply changes in the nutrient cycle and even in the original soil structure. Many of these changes are irreversible.

Thirdly, large-scale plantations impact on local ecosystems and their native flora and fauna. For the majority of local wildlife, plantations don’t provide neither food nor shelter nor opportunities for reproduction. The few species which manage to survive can become pests, either to the plantations themselves or to other local productions. The impacts are not restricted to the plantation area (where they are obviously more intense, particularly on local flora which tends to disappear completely), but can have devastating effects on other related regional ecosystems such as grasslands, wetlands and water courses.

More problems at the local level

All the above environmental problems also impact directly on local communities, that will have less available water resources for their crops, cattle and homes, less soils available for their productive activities and less free access to local plant and animal resources which provide food, medicine, fodder, fuel, building materials and many other goods.

Industrial plantations also bring about further problems, among which perhaps one of the main ones is the expulsion of rural people to make way for large plantations. These people can either become plantation workers (usually seasonal and casual labour where working conditions vary from bad to terrible) or migrate to the cities’ shanty towns, because plantations create less jobs than the agricultural activities which they substitute. Large-scale plantation companies also bring about important changes in the local power balance because of their economic strength and become the main decision-makers in whole regions. Nationally, dependence on a commodity such as this (be it pulpwood, chips or pulp), subject to wild tumbles in price, implies following the same path as with previous export commodities such as sugar, cotton or coffee, which have had disastrous economic, social and environmental effects in many southern countries. This new export commodity, promoted all over the South, offers no assurance that what happened with the former will not happen again with this one: overproduction followed by price falls.

Stop industrial plantations!

Plantations are not forests. The only thing they have in common is the presence of trees. A forest is a complex, self-regenerating system, encompassing soil, water, microclimate, energy, and a wide variety of plants and animals in mutual relation. A commercial plantation, on the other hand, is a cultivated area whose species and structure have been simplified dramatically to produce only a few goods, whether lumber, fuel, resin, oil, or fruit. A plantation's trees, unlike those of a forest, tend to be of a small range of species and ages, and to require extensive and continuing human intervention.

The plantation model being promoted worldwide has already shown its negative impacts wherever it has been implemented. According to the specificities of the environment where they are established, the main impacts may be social or environmental. In some cases, the main problem associated with plantations may be the encroachment on local peoples' land resources; in others it can be the depletion of water resources, or the disappearance of local sources of food, medicines and other community resources. In all cases there are important negative impacts, which have led to growing opposition in places were extensive plantations have been implemented.

People in Thailand, Uruguay, South Africa, Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, Hawaii, Brazil, Congo, Philippines and many others are now joining their struggles to put a stop on this socially and environmentally unsustainable forestry model. The struggle is not against any particular tree species or against other forms of locally-approved tree plantations. It is against an industrial model which only serves the interests of a few against the basic needs of the majority.