Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Oil palm has traditionally been part of the culture of West and Central African communities, who have planted it on their own lands or collected its fruits, leaves or sap from the forest. The native crop has been locally processed to obtain palm oil for domestic use or sold in the local markets to produce palm wine (see the WRM briefing “Oil palm in Africa: Past, present and future scenarios”,http://wrm.org.uy/countries/Africa/Oil_Palm_in_Africa.html).

Rainforest Rescue has started a campaign to demand Deutsche Bank to dissociate itself from the Malaysian palm oil giant FELDA Global Ventures Holding, which wants to raise three billion dollars on the stock market to establish new oil palm plantations in Indonesia and Africa. Rainforest areas are going to be bought, destroyed and turned into huge monocultures. The Deutsche Bank, one of Germany's largest banks, which pretends to be ecologically and socially harmless, is helping FELDA to search for investors.

In Chile, the onslaught of big forestry business groups backed by the state means more than 3 million hectares covered with industrial monocultures of pines and eucalyptus.

The tropical moist forest area of Cross River state has the largest area of tropical forest in the country. Approximately 8,500 square kilometres are mostly undisturbed virgin forest, partially under community ownership. 5,140 square kilometres of the tropical high forest land are designated as protected areas, comprising the Cross River National Park, which occupies 3,330 square kilometres of high forest, and the Forest Reserves occupying 1,810 square kilometres of forest land where the Etara and Ekuri-Eyeyeng communities have their customary lands.

After many years of supporting local struggles and disseminating information from different countries on tree monocultures and its impacts, WRM presents a new report to all those involved in these struggle (1). No better time than the month of September 21st, International Day of Struggle against Tree Monocultures (2), to launch this new report.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an estimated 160 million people suffer from work-related diseases, 270 million are involved in work-related accidents annually, and two million workers die from work-related diseases and accidents every year. ILO Director-General Juan Somavia has stated that the “green economy” – promoted by the UN itself and the central theme of the Rio+20 conference next month – should work towards greater protection of the health and safety of workers across the world.

In Asia, as in many other parts of the world, forest areas have been inhabited by successive generations of indigenous communities. For these peoples, the forest has come to play a central role in their socio-cultural identity and their survival as a community. But today, many of these forests are being cleared and replaced by industrial oil palm plantations – in many cases, on lands granted to companies by the state on the pretext that they were vacant or idle lands!

Several months ago (see WRM Bulletin 172) we reported on the plans of Suzano Papel e Celulose S. A. – the world’s second largest pulp producer – to invest in biomass plantations. Biomass energy is one of the market-driven false “solutions” to climate change. It promotes land grabbing and diverts attention from the need to effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the source.

Veracel is expanding its operations in Brazil, with the consent of the government. The decision of the Institute of the Environment and Water Resources (INEMA) to grant preauthorization for the expansion of Veracel Celulose S.A. – a joint venture between Stora Enso and Aracruz – runs counter to a 2008 Federal Court ruling that revoked the environmental licence granted to the company in 1993.

EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade) is an ambitious collaborative project that brings together 23 environmental organizations and academic institutions to catalogue ecological distribution conflicts and produce material for use by environmental justice organizations in their struggle against environmental injustice (see www.ejolt.org).

The Carbon Connection, is a Fenceline Films presentation in partnership with the Transnational Institute Environmental Justice Project and Carbon Trade Watch, the Alert Against the Green Desert Movement, FASE-ES, and the Community Training and Development Unit.

Over the past several decades, large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations have spread throughout the tropical regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. We spoke with Giorgio Trucchi, a correspondent for the Latin American regional branch of the International Union of Food Workers (Rel-UITA, its acronym in Spanish) in Central America. Rel-UITA has been involved in numerous cases of denunciations of human rights violations and union conflicts connected to oil palm plantations.