Large-scale eucalyptus plantations in the State of Espirito Santo --and their related pulp production activities-- have generated opposition since the very beginning. They were first opposed by the people more directly affected by them: the Tupinikim and Guaraní indigenous peoples, Afrobrazilian communities (quilombos) and local farmers, whose lands were appropriated to give way to the plantations.
Bulletin articles
A few days ago, serious events took place in the city of Temuco, ending in over 125 community members in jail, many injured and serious destruction. These incidents are the result of a long chain of encroachments that the Mapuche people have suffered throughout the whole of the twentieth century and that have not been recognised either publicly or fundamentally by the State, which continues to act in favour of forestry companies, providing them with all kinds of support, among which, placing the police force at the companies’ service.
Eucalyptus Pacifico S.A. - EUCAPACIFIC is a new company set up at the end of 2000 to carry out a major eucalyptus plantation project on the Ecuadorian coast, in the Province of Esmeraldas, specifically in the Tonchigüe and Sua sector. This company, composed of transnational capital, has received approval by the Ministry of the Environment to carry out large scale plantations.
"People in the Rainforest of Ecuador" is an exhibition currently running in Frankfurt's municipal botanical garden, the Palmengarten. The exhibition describes some of the vast knowledge indigenous people have of plants and ecosystems in the rainforest. The posters advertising the exhibition are sponsored by Aventis CropScience and feature the company's name and logo. As a piece of public relations it is brilliant. Aventis CropScience hopes to gain from having its name associated with indigenous expertise.
Papua New Guinea's (PNG) rainforests are of global significance, comprising one of the last major tropical rainforest wildernesses in the World. Within a mere 1% of the world's land mass, it is estimated that PNG contains 5-8% of global biodiversity and that seventy five percent of this valuable forest is still standing. However, these forests are once again under threat.
Oil palm plantations currently extend over millions of hectares of forest lands throughout the tropics. Further plantations are either being implemented or promoted in almost every Southern country where soil, water and solar energy fill the requirements of this palm. From Mexico to Brazil, from West to East Africa and from Asia and Southeast Asia to Oceania, governments are being urged to create conditions for the expansion of this crop.
Oil palm plantations in Cameroon cover more than 80,000 hectares divided in three different sectors: 1) large scale industrial plantations, with some 58,000 hectares; 2) Village plantations comprising 12,000 hectares and 3) "Informal" plantations covering some 10,000 hectares.
In March this year, planters at Cote d'Ivoire's Ehania agro-industrial oil palm plantation unit embarked on an "unlimited strike action" to press for an increase in the price of palm oil. The strike paralysed the activities of three factories that collect and transform palm oil. The Ehania planters, grouped in an agricultural cooperative called Palm-Ehania, were protesting against a drop in the purchase price of their produce, which had since January 2001 fallen from 23 to 19.07 CFA francs (1 dollar = 700 CFA francs).
More than 125,000 hectares of land are under oil palm cultivation in Ghana, mostly under the nucleus estate model, which implies a large plantation surrounded by smaller plantations established in local farmers' lands.
Oil palm is indigenous to the Nigerian coastal plain, having migrated inland as a staple crop. In the case of Nigeria, oil palm cultivation is part of the way of life --indeed it is the culture-- of millions of people. However, during the past decades the country has become a net importer of palm oil. While in the early 1960s, Nigeria's palm oil production accounted for 43% of the world production, nowadays it only accounts for 7% of total global output.
On 13 June this year, Amnesty International released a report on Burma titled "Myanmar. Ethnic minorities: targets of repression." The report states that for the last 13 years this organization has documented "the widespread use of forced labour of ethnic minorities by the Myanmar military" and adds that "perhaps the most common human rights violation of ethnic minorities is forced labour of civilians, who are much more likely to be seized by the army than the majority Burman group."
Since 1997, the Mong Reththy Investment Cambodia Oil Palm Company has planted an area of 3,800 hectares with oil palm trees. The company, with the help of the Phnom Penh authorities, moved 99 families from a squat in Phnom Penh to work on the plantation adjacent to Route 4, 150 kilometres south of Phnom Penh. However, few of the people moved from Phnom Penh have actually found work on the plantations, the processing factory is still to be built, and many people are simply moving back to Phnom Penh to look for work there. (See WRM Bulletin no. 39.)