Bulletin 263 - October 2022

This bulletin highlights materials and analysis related to communities’ struggles against industrial tree plantations. It also pays homage to communities in DRC struggling to get their lands back from an oil palm company since colonial times. Their courageous struggle showcases the multiple layers of oppression and violations that result from the plantation model.

Industrial tree plantations have always been about corporate control over community fertile lands. The monoculture model inherently endangers communities’ survival, food sovereignty and autonomy, deepens the violence of patriarchy and racism while enforcing the same destructive and oppressive way of organizing land (and thus, people) as the one enforced during the colonial era.

The network that brings together movements, organizations and communities in the fight against tree plantations met in the Far South of the State of Bahia. This September 21st, it once again denounced the impacts of this violent and unjust model, which is based on large-scale plantations mostly for pulp export.

The oil palm plantations of BIDCO, a company partially owned by Wilmar, in Kalangala Island, Uganda, generated devastating impacts. The company plans to expand to Buvuma Island, however, they keep confronting strong organized opposition! Watch a short video with testimonies of resistance from Buvuma Island.

On the occasion of September 21st, 2022, the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, WRM launched the briefing “12 Replies to 12 Lies about Industrial Tree Plantations”.

The Informal Alliance Against the Expansion of Industrial Oil Palm Plantations in West and Central Africa released a declaration to keep breaking the silence of the many abuses around industrial plantations and to reaffirm their strong commitment to resist their expansion in the defence of their territories and lives.

A recent report from the Campaign to Stop GE Trees alerts that the global release of genetically engineered (GE) trees is closer than it has ever been.

21 September, the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, is a day for networks, movements and organizations to celebrate resistance and raise their voices to demand: “STOP the Expansion of Monoculture Tree Plantations!”.

In the framework of September 21st, International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, Colombian organizations and movements made a declaration in which they denounce the expansion of large-scale monocultures, and aim to shine light on a problem “that threatens the life, dignity and autonomy of communities.

Documentary film produced by​ NUPOMAR, Núcleo de Pesquisa, Mídias e Arte, with the purpose of recording and valuing the social memory of the Pataxó Indigenous Peoples of Aldeia Barra Velha (in the municipality of Porto Seguro-Bahia), Brazil.

We share the final statement where they express their demands and claims.