Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Ms. Mai of the Palaung ethnic community and mother of three children in Pang Daeng village of north Thailand has been camped in front of Chiang Mai City Hall for the past few weeks. Along with about hundred members of her community, she came to petition the Chiang Mai governor for the release of her husband Mr. Tan Bortuk and others.

In Popondetta, Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, representatives of all land owning communities from around the province gathered on 12th March 2004, in the first Oro landowners Forum on Land Rights and Community Based Natural Resource Management. They committed to ensuring sustainable resource management and to protect their rights as the rightful owners of those resources, declaring that:

In 1944, the Rockefeller Foundation funded the introduction of a series of technologies in Mexican agricultural production. This gave rise to an agricultural production model known as the “Green Revolution” with a central concept of “high yielding varieties” developed in the framework of monoculture crops supported by a technological package including mechanization, irrigation, chemical fertilization and the use of toxic chemicals to control pests.

Agriculture and cattle-raising are direct causes of deforestation. However they should be looked at in depth in order to be able to understand what promotes them, who benefits from them, how they arise. It may be said that it is a funnel-like process. What is most visible is on the outside, the disappearance of the forest as a consequence of these activities.

Deforestation of tropical forests took place at a rate of 10–16 million hectare per annum during the last two decades, and is showing no signs of slowing down. 16% of the whole Amazon forest has already disappeared and every day, another 7,000 hectares of forest is lost – a surface of 10 kilometers by 7 kilometers. The causes are complex and often interrelated, but among them is the role of large-scale commercial agriculture.

As has been the case with most Southern countries, Côte d’Ivoire inherited from the colonial period the role of exporter of tropical agricultural products. Apart from the ivory from which the country was named, prior to colonization Côte d’Ivoire had less to offer for trading compared to its eastern neighboring country Ghana, more endowed with gold. So, when the French arrived in the area in the 1880s they found it simple to use the vast fertile land of dense tropical forest for agricultural production.

Even by conservative estimates, less than a quarter of Ghana’s pre-colonial forest remains. Loggers and politicians caused most deforestation, though they like to shift the blame to farmers. But the fact is that throughout the Twentieth Century farmers have had little control over the trees on their land. British colonialists gave timber rights to chiefs, who promptly sold them to loggers, or ordered them cleared and replaced with cacao plantations. After independence, the government claimed ownership of all trees and land, and sold most of it off to loggers.

Senegalese exposure to European trade started in 1444 when the Portuguese established trading posts along the coast on the river Senegal: Goree (which eventually became a major slave transit post), Rufisque and along the south as a whole.

I was part of a filming crew of seven members who were on June 4 in the Modhupur forest in order to make a documentary film on the forest destruction with special attention to the effects of plantations —mostly commercial and industrial— on public forestland. The Modhupur forest is now thoroughly plundered. We were in our third and final round of filming in Modhupur, and we focused our last shots on a suddenly discovered spot where green vegetation was being thoroughly cut. The spot is very near to Lohoria Beat between Rasulpur and Dokhola Ranges.

Two years ago, China's State Forestry Administration approved genetically modified (GM) poplar trees for commercial planting. Well over one million insect resistant GM poplars have now been planted in China. Also two years ago, China launched the world's largest tree planting project. By 2012 the government aims to have covered an area of 44 million hectares with trees.

Between 1990 and 2002 the global planted oil palm area increased by 43%. Most of this growth occurred in Indonesia and Malaysia. In Indonesia, between 1990-2000, the total area planted with oil palm almost tripled from 1.1 to 3 Mha (million hectares). In 2002, overcoming the 1997-1999 financial crisis, the total mature oil palm plantation area reached 3.5 Mha. Assuming recent planting rates, the total area of oil palm plantations in Indonesia is set to increase to 11.2 Mha in 2020.

Bananas, in terms of gross value of production, are the world’s fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. Latin America dominates the world banana economy, where they are cultivated mostly in large mono-crop plantations.