6 March 2009
World Rainforest
Movement
Friends of the Earth International
Negative impacts of monoculture tree plantations
on women
Three new case studies on three continents
6 March 2009 – Three new
case studies on the impacts of monoculture tree plantations on women
in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Brazil will be released on 8 March,
International Women’s Day.
The case studies
(1) and a related short video (2), available online at www.wrm.org
[and www.foei.org], are jointly published by the World Rainforest
Movement (WRM) and Friends of the Earth International.
International Women’s
Day is an important day for celebrating the crucial role played
by women in our societies and reminding ourselves that we still
have a long way to go to achieve gender justice, equality and equity
in our societies.
The three new case studies carried
out on three continents demonstrate that women who live near monoculture
tree plantations are very negatively affected by them.
NIGERIA
The case study from Nigeria
is focused on the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a highly biologically
diverse region in the southwest whose crops long supplied food for
around 20,000 people. The area has undergone drastic changes since
the arrival of the French transnational company Michelin in December
2007. All of the area’s natural wealth was destroyed to plant
rubber trees.
A local woman described the
situation like this: “Michelin came with its evil bulldozers
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 didn’t allow them.”
BRAZIL
The case study from Brazil states
that tree plantations established to produce pulp for paper-making
are continuously expanding, causing severe impacts on communities
and the environment. Three big corporations have moved into southern
Brazil to satisfy the enormous demand for paper, mostly in Western
countries: Swedish-Finnish forestry giant Stora Ensa, and Brazilian-owned
Aracruz and Votorantim.
In Southern Brazil women from
the grassroots organization Via Campesina have been leading protests
against the “green desert” development model since 2006
in order to protect food sovereignty and the rights of local communities.
According to a woman interviewed in Southern Brazil, “the
companies only give work to men. The few jobs they give to women
are the ones that pay the least.” Even in the case of men,
the companies tend to hire workers from outside the region, and
this influx of strangers invariably leads to a rise in sexual harassment
cases.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
In Papua New Guinea, monoculture
oil palm plantations are destroying the forests, biodiversity local
communities livelihoods. Palm oil produced in Papua New Guinea is
primarily exported, especially to the European Union where it is
used to produce soap, cosmetics, processed foods and agrofuels.
In some Papua New Guinea communities
women are no longer able to grow food crops, and they are exposed
to dangerous pesticides.
“Health is a very big
concern in our place right now we breathe in the chemicals... I’m
pretty sure we are inhaling dangerous substances and definitely
are dying every minute. Some women had babies who developed asthma
when they were just one or two months old. Chemicals are killing
us; we will all die sooner” said a woman from the community
of Saga.
IN GENERAL
Monoculture tree plantations
are primarily geared towards meeting the high levels of consumption
in Western countries. The European Union plays a key role in this,
due to policies that promote plantations and that benefit, above
all, the transnational corporations that export, process and market
the products harvested from the plantations.
By publishing these new case
studies, WRM and FoEI want to expose the unsustainability of policies
promoting tree plantations that do not benefit local communities,
and to highlight the crucial role of food sovereignty, collective
rights and gender equality as the foundations of sustainable societies.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Teresa Perez
World Rainforest Movement
International Secretariat in Montevideo, Uruguay
Ph: + 598 99 36 79 66 / + 598 2 413 29 89
Isaac Rojas
Friends of the Earth International Forest and Biodiversity Programme
Tel: +506 8338-3204
(1) The summarized version of
the report is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/summaryreport.pdf
The full report is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/fullreport.pdf
(2) The video can be acceded at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Women_Voices.html
