The Corporate Sector
Corporate activities drive deforestation processes. To distract from their role in forest destruction, corporations engage in public-private initiatives, preferably with conservation NGOs. These fora play a crucial role in greenwashing their image, and in implementing strategies to weaken community resistance to corporate destruction. The corporate sector lobbies governments and politicians, often aggressively, to obtain priority access to land, incentives and subsidies. Corporations also put pressure on international policy processes in order to protect and expand their profits.
Bulletin articles
23 April 2025
Under the guise of ‘conflict mediation’ and community empowerment, the work of certain corporate NGOs results in communities continuing without access to and control over their lands, and in strengthening destructive production models. One example is the Earthworm Foundation's partnership with palm oil agribusiness in several countries. See the article and interview below.
Bulletin articles
15 December 2024
Initiatives by NGOs and corporations with a focus on the “gender issue” that distort and depoliticize the feminist struggle are more and more common. The various examples of “purplewashing” do not tackle the structural causes of oppression over women, perpetuating systemic inequalities within the capitalist system.
Bulletin articles
25 October 2023
WRM’s reply to Biofílica Ambipar’s “Clarification Note” about the article "REDD and the Green Economy exacerbate oppression and deforestation in Pará, Brazil", written by WRM and published in its Bulletin of July 2023.
Bulletin articles
25 October 2023
More than seven percent of Uruguay's territory is covered with monoculture tree plantations. A handful of companies have been behind this massive expansion—which has occurred mostly over watersheds and prairies—,with devastating consequences. This year, almost half of the urban population had no access to drinking water—an imminent warning of the drastic change that is needed for Uruguay to maintain its water.
Publications
21 August 2023
Suzano is a Brazilian multinational company that produces cellulose and paper products from eucalyptus plantations. Read this booklet produced by the ‘Alert Against the Green Desert’ Network and find out important facts that are often hidden by this mega-company’s propaganda machine.
Bulletin articles
22 July 2023
The ‘green’ economy sells the idea that it is possible to confront climate chaos without looking at the direct link between power structures and pollution. Its ‘green’ programs allow energy demand to continue to grow, and thereby the accumulation of profits and injustices as well. In this way, it is actually a ‘green’ facade for the same violent, patriarchal, colonial and racist system.
Other information
22 July 2023
DW news portal investigated ongoing socio-environmental conflicts in Brazil related to Suzano, which manages over a million hectares of eucalyptus plantations across the country and plans to almost double that in the next decade.
Other information
30 March 2023
In early 2023, Chile once again experienced megafires which caused devastating damage to affected regions.
Bulletin articles
16 June 2022
Fossil fuels are at the root of the climate chaos – but the conditions for this crisis have been created by the interconnections and dependencies between colonialism, racism, patriarchy and class exploitation. To address climate chaos, therefore, it is necessary to address the unequal relationships of power upon which a fossil-fuel dependent capitalism is based.
Bulletin articles
16 June 2022
In Brazil, oil palm plantations are expanding rapidly, mainly in the Amazonian state of Pará. BBF (Brasil BioFuels), the largest oil palm company in Brazil, stands accused of environmental crimes and violence against indigenous, quilombola and peasant communities such as Virgílio Serrão Sacramento, a community linked to the Small Farmers’ Movement (MPA).
Bulletin articles
16 June 2022
More than 10 million hectares in Indonesia are controlled by the pulp and paper industry, mainly by two giant corporations: APP and APRIL. Despite the companies’ commitments to protect forests and peatland, both keep being associated with deforestation, forest fires and to a business model of violence, criminalization and dispossession of forest communities. (Available in Bahasa Indonesia)
Bulletin articles
16 June 2022
Communities resisting the impunity and impacts of oil palm growers in Ecuador: Cases from Esmeraldas
There are currently 270,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Ecuador. The resistance processes of the communities of La Chiquita, Guadualito and Barranquilla de San Javier in the region of Esmeraldas continue to generate outrage and solidarity among other communities, and internationally.