Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Friends of the Earth-UK has just published a detailed report on forest destruction in Indonesia, focused on the damaging environmental and social impacts of Asia Pacific Resources International Holding Ltd, otherwise known as APRIL, one of the biggest pulp and paper companies in the world.

In December 1999, Provincial Law No. 3,631 was sanctioned in Argentina, creating the Overall Conservation and Sustainable Development Area, known as the “Green Corridor of the Province of Misiones.” It involves 22 municipalities and covers an area of 1.108,000 hectares of Parana forest, located in the province of Misiones, spanning a mosaic of landscapes including protected areas, private property put to various uses, agricultural settlements, indigenous communities and varied socio-economic situations and even areas having land use and land tenure conflicts.

The Chilean forestry model, based on the promotion of large-scale monocultures of pine trees and eucalyptus for export, has been implemented at the expense of the environment and of the local peoples. In spite of this fact, both the State and the forestry companies continue to hide the truth and insist that they are “planting forests” and contributing to the country’s development.

Residents of the Waratah-Wynyard Municipality, a tree plantation-devastated community and environment in Tasmania, have issued a Joint Submission to the national authorities, the media, interested bodies and concerned people on January 13, 2002 (the full document is available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Australia/joint.html )

Last year the Vietnam Paper Corporation (Vinapimex) announced an ambitious plan to expand the pulp and paper industry in Vietnam. With a total cost of more than US$1 billion, the plan involves 15 new pulp and paper production projects. If they were all built, the projects would raise Vinapimex's annual paper production capacity from the current 171,000 tons to 419,000 tons. The pulp and paper industry in Vietnam presently produces a total of approximately 360,000 tons of paper a year. Vinapimex hopes to increase this figure to more than one million tons by 2010.

Although many NGOs believe that certification of wood and other forest products is a good idea, there are a number of doubts about whether the actual process is moving in the right direction. The issue has resulted in confrontations between environmental organizations in countries such as Brazil, where some NGOs are working hard to convince logging companies to move into Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, while other NGOs accuse those same NGOs of thereby promoting further forest destruction.

The development of the oil palm industry in Indonesia is associated with murder, human rights violations, destruction of local communities and local cultures, and forest loss. Many local communities and NGOs have been struggling against this destructive industrial model for years, both at the local and at the international level. This struggle has recently resulted in a very important success which needs to be shared with all those involved in similar struggles.

Few large-scale industrial tree plantations have so far successfully been developed in Laos. However, companies and aid agencies are keen to promote them through changing Lao forest policy and through subsidies. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is leading the push for plantations in Laos, particularly through its US$11.2 million "Industrial Tree Plantation Project" (see WRM Bulletin 43).

In February last year, “Río Foyel S.A.” a company set up in March 1999 and recent owner of a 7,800 hectare plot located in the zone of El Foyel, in the southern province of Rio Negro, submitted a project for the logging of four thousand hectares of ñire native forest and then reforestation of the zone with exotic Oregon and Radiata pine and the “sustainable” management of over 1,800 hectares of native species (see WRM Bulletin 38, September 2000).

What has recently happened in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo is a great motivation for people struggling throughout the world to halt the further spread of monoculture tree plantations. The news is that the State Parliament finally passed a law --after lifting the Governor's veto by 20 votes in 25-- which bans eucalyptus plantations in the state until an agroecological mapping --which will determine where eucalyptus can and cannot be planted-- is carried out.

For some time now we have been addressing the issue of oil palm plantations. But it was in our June 2001 special bulletin --entirely devoted to the subject-- and in the book "The Bitter Fruit of Oil Palm: dispossession and deforestation", that we entered more specifically into the derivations that this large-scale monoculture has on the situation of the workers.

Throughout the world, tree plantations and the installation of pulp mills are promoted by governments using, among others, the argument that these activities generate employment. However the true situation shows how false this argument is.