Consumption
Excessive consumption patterns, especially in the global North, and increasingly in urban centres in the global South, demand a constant extraction of minerals, energy and raw materials. Most of this extraction takes place in the global South, where companies take over community lands for industrial plantations, fossil fuel extraction and large-scale mining. Communities are losing their lands and forests so that consumers can continue to have cheap access to paper products, cars and mobile phones, etc – and companies continue to pocket their profits.
This book, commissioned by the World Rainforest Movement at its meeting in Delhi in April 1994, has its origins in increasing concern among non-governmental organizations in the South over the spread of monoculture tree plantations. It is intended as a tool for all movements alarmed at the social, political and environmental effects of these plantations.