The International Tropical Timber Organization has dedicated an entire issue of its Newsletter (Vol. 11 No 3, 2001) to tree plantations. Unfortunately, the ITTO has chosen to publicize their allegedly positive impacts, while basically ignoring the numerous struggles against them resulting from the broad range of negative social and environmental impacts they entail.
The opening paragraph of the first article sets the scenario: "The way some people talk, tree plantations are the answer to more than a few global problems. They reduce deforestation, restore degraded land, fight climate change, improve local livelihoods, return good profits, create employment and bolster national economies."
One could assume that the second paragraph would put some question marks on those assertions or provide some evidence to support them. Regretfully, this is not the case. It is therefore necessary to bring in some reality to that scenario.
Do plantations reduce deforestation? The history of large scale plantations in the tropics proves the contrary. Plantations are either a direct cause of deforestation or an indirect cause or both. We all know (and the ITTO knows) that the famous fires in Indonesia were started by plantation companies and that forest areas in numerous countries have been cleared to give way to plantations We all know (and the ITTO knows), that many thousands of people throughout the tropics have been displaced to give way to plantations and that, as a consequence, these people have had to clear new forest areas to provide for their livelihoods.
Do plantations restore degraded land? Commercial plantations are never implemented in truly degraded lands, for the simple reason that trees don't grow fast enough in that type of land and that they are more prone to sanitary problems. These plantations require good quality soils and increased mechanization also implies the need for land which allows the use of machinery --the same type of land used in agriculture. They are therefore implemented either in good quality soils or in areas "declared" as degraded (usually meaning deforested or containing secondary forest), but which are not considered to be degraded by the local communities that are using them.
Do plantations fight climate change? The fact that plantations have been included in the Clean Development Mechanism cannot be considered as scientific evidence about this alleged role. On the contrary, there is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that they may even become sources of CO2 instead of acting as sinks. Additionally, deforestation directly or indirectly linked to plantations may prove to generate more CO2 than the amount allegedly captured by plantations.
Do large scale plantations improve local livelihoods? All the available evidence proves exactly the contrary and the ITTO should know that in the "normal" situation local people end up in a much worse situation than before the plantations were implemented. Their resulting opposition is confronted with repression and people are killed, injured, imprisoned and are finally evicted from their land.
Do plantations return good profits? This is the only absolutely true statement in the paragraph, but it lacks mention of who obtains those good profits: plantation companies, the pulp industry, consultants, banks, machinery producers. Not local people. Additionally, it does not mention that the reason for returning good profits is that in all cases plantations are directly or indirectly subsidized. In many cases plantation companies receive direct subsidies, tax breaks or soft loans. In other cases, subsidies take the form of cheap land, free research, road building, port facilities. And in many cases they are subsidized through the use of the police or the army to protect corporate interest against local peoples' resistance.
Do plantations create employment and bolster national economies? Large scale tree plantations are almost certainly the worst available option for generating employment in the tropics and the situation is increasingly worse due to the adoption of modern machinery that displaces workers, particularly in harvesting operations. To make matters worse, subcontracting is now widespread and subcontactors compete among themselves through lowering labour conditions (low salaries, inexistence of health security and social benefits, low quality housing and food, etc.). From a national economy viewpoint, plantations generate some hard currency through exports, but international prices of both logs and pulp are subject to severe drops, tendency which can be expected to grow as more plantations reach their harvesting time.
In sum, the whole issue of the ITTO newsletter is misleading and does not incorporate the differing viewpoints of the many people that are suffering from plantations or the many studies which have recorded the social and environmental impacts of this type of plantations. And even more misleading is the paragraph which states: "What is more certain is that if environmentalists get their way, one day all the world's wood will come from plantations. 'Plant up the millions of hectares of degraded land and leave the natural forest alone,' they say." Who are "they", may we ask, because it's certainly not the view of the hundreds of organizations the WRM works with, who are actively opposing this plantation model.
