On 21 March 2017, Malaysian NGOs The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) and Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) joined worldwide action against the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) forest definition. About 200 groups have renewed the call for the FAO to amend its misleading definition of forests which has allowed industrial tree plantations to expand. The letter called on the FAO to cease recognising plantations as forests, as provided for in the definition because this has allowed the plantations industry to hide devastating ecological and social impacts of large-scale monoculture tree plantations behind a positive image that forests enjoy in public perception.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2017/03/21/stop-recognising-plantations-as-forests-un-body-told/
The letter sent to FAO today can be found here. It is also available in Spanish, French and Portuguese. For more information about the long-standing demand for FAO to change its misleading forest definition, see also: http://wrm.org.uy/all-campaigns/international-day-of-the-forests-march-21st-2017/
