Large-Scale Tree Plantations

 

The state administrative High Court in Medan, has decided in favor of the organization WALHI, cancelling administrative decisions that led to the issuance of the license to the oil palm plantation PT Kalista Alam for an area of around 1,605 hectares in the Rawa Tripa peat swamp forest, Nagan Raya District, Aceh.

São Tomé and Príncipe is one of the countries on the West African coast that stands out when it comes to biodiversity. For this reason, since the end of the 19th century these “beautiful equatorial islands” have attracted enormous interest from international researchers.Their forests have been classified as one of the two hundred most important areas in the world in terms of biodiversity. They are the habitat for around 25 species of endemic birds.

The struggle in Geragai District Up to 2011, a total of 18 companies had licenses over forest areas for a total of 663,809 ha distributed over 8 Regencies in Jambi Province, Sumatra, nearly 50% of which - 293,812 ha - is being controlled by one large corporation, PT. WiraKaryaSakti (PT. WKS), a subsidiary of Sinar Mas Group. The concession land of PT. WKS is divided in 5 Regencies, namely Tebo Regency, Batanghari Regency, Muaro Jambi Regency, TanjungJabung Barat Regency, and TanjungJabungTimur Regency.

The trend of voluntary certification is a FAO-supported phenomenon that came up in the 1990s, presented by corporations and governments as a solution to deforestation; according to a set of principles and criteria, certification schemes aim to assure consumers that products are coming from areas with a “sustainable forest management”. In some schemes this also includes management of industrial tree monocultures, declaring these activities socially and ecologically benign.

  This past September 21, to mark the International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, the Portuguese environmental organizations Liga para a Protecção da Natureza (League for the Protection of Nature) and Quercus launched a petition against a proposed new regime for tree planting and replanting presented by the government.

  “Sustainable on Paper”, a documentary film by journalists An-Katrien Lecluyse and Leopold Broers released in Belgium in 2011, is now available on the internet. The film broadly denounces the FSC certification of plantations owned by one of the biggest eucalyptus and pulp companies in Brazil, Veracel Celulosa, a joint venture of Brazilian-based Fibria and Swedish-Finnish transnational Stora Enso.

This September we pay tribute once again to the men and women around the world who have taken up different struggles against monoculture tree plantations in defense of their territories, their forests and their way of life, as opposed to the greed of big corporations and investors who seek to exploit the same land for their own benefit.

Baby food scandals in Africa, tropical forest destruction for candy bars: There are companies like Nestle that attract scandals like light the flies.

The traditional communities known as geraizeiras at the Vale do Guará Settlement, in the town of Rio Pardo de Minas, north of Minas Gerais, denounce that an airplane spraying poison on a major eucalyptus plantation has hit the community, intoxicating 30 people, including children, elderly, youth and adults. They felt nausea, fever, vomit and itching skin. Airplane spraying is increasingly common in Brazil – the world's champion in pesticide use.

Sappi Limited, South African producer of pulp and paper, plans the construction of a biomass combustion plant at Ngodwana Mill, Mpumalanga. It has a proposed capacity of about 50 megawatt, which will supply to the public grid. Misleadingly, this investment is called ‘Green Energy Power Project' (GEPP) – in reality, the power is as green as the inside of the Sappi boiler.