Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Consumerism and poverty are the two extremes of the current world paper market. Manipulation of markets, cartel agreements, establishment of prices and other similar practices give a group of companies the necessary power to control it. In between are pollution of air, water and soil, land accumulation and appropriation by foreign companies, scale increases and strengthening of a form of production requiring fewer and fewer workers.

Local communities generally perceive forest management as a public affair. And yet, in the household, the public domain and investment fall within the competence of men, since women are responsible for “private,” domestic business. Because of their deciding role in household food security, women are most affected by disruptions in the availability of and access to resources. Hence, latest forest policies fuelled by international and national environmental trends that restrict people's activities in parks, affect local communities and mainly women within them.

Organizations and representatives from social movements from Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North and South America came together in Buenos Aires, Argentina over the first half of December, 2004 to tell the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s tenth Conference of the Parties (COP 10) to ban GE trees from the Kyoto Protocol —the international global warming treaty.

Looking at the statistics for Swaziland is a depressing experience. Unemployment stands at 40 per cent. More than two-thirds of the people in Swaziland live on an income of less than US$1 a day. About one third of the people in Swaziland rely on food aid to survive. Nearly 40 per cent of the population is infected with HIV - one of the highest rates in the world. Life expectancy has fallen to 33 years for men and 35 for women.

In an open letter signed by several social organisations and personalities from Brazil, the Rede Alerta contra o Deserto Verde (Alert Against the Green Desert Network) denounces and rejects the certification of the huge plantation company and one of the biggest producers of bleached eucalyptus pulp in the State of Espirito Santo, Aracruz Celulose, through the Brazilian government programme CERFLOR.

The American based Rainforest Alliance is undermining the efforts of local conservation groups in Papua New Guinea struggling to combat widespread illegal and unsustainable logging.

It seems that the road to the global market is paved with good intentions. And it utters void statements, it should be added. The industrialized world tears its clothes off in the face of corruption, which it attributes to Third World country governments. And the World Bank brings together some of the leading logging companies in Africa –mainly European- with environmental NGOs to discuss issues related to Sustainable Forest Management, in what is called the “CEO Initiative”. However, true meaning should be discovered digging into declarations.

Kenya’s ‘shamba’ or Tongya system has been generally defined as a form of agroforestry, where farmers are encouraged to cultivate primary crops (maize, bananas, beans and cassava) on previously clear cut public forest land on the condition that they replant trees. Since the mid 19th century, Kenya adopted this system to establish tree plantations by means of cheap or totally free labour, in order to meet the demand for timber.

In Cambodia, more than 80% of the population lives in rural areas and 36% lives in extreme poverty, earning less than 50 US cents per day. Though many villagers make a living out of the forest products, deforestation is part of the national policy and economy, showing that local and state authorities pay lip-service to the needs of the poor.

The Nature Sanctuary Carlos Anwandter at Rio Cruces is the Site that Chile incorporated as Wetland of International Importance when it adhered to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat, in 1981. It is home to a wide diversity of species of flora and fauna, particularly black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus), an endangered migratory bird. The Sanctuary and its swans are part of the identity and image of the inhabitants of the nearby city of Valdivia, closely linked to the riparian landscape.

Ever since Western forestry science defined forests as predominantly wood-producing entities, efforts have concentrated on increasing productivity of one single product: wood. Diverse forests were simplified, by weeding out all the species that industry was not interested in, while promoting the absolute predominance of "valuable" trees in the forest.

Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I really thought that the World Bank would have a position on GM trees. The first field trial of GM trees was in 1988. Surely, I thought, 16 years is long enough for the Bank’s policy experts to come up with something. When the Bank’s shiny new forest policy came out two years ago, it did so after a “stakeholder consultative process” which was “supported by extensive analytical, technical and economic studies, some commissioned by the World Bank and others done by independent institutions and NGOs on a wide range of subjects,” according to the Bank.