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.
Peasants and other people working in rural areas are one step away from achieving a United Nations Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local markets and much more.
