Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Planting trees is generally considered to be a positive action. The act of planting a tree – either at a school or in a peasant community – in many societies symbolizes concern for nature and a contribution by the present generation to future ones.

In South-Western Cameroon, near Kribi, two giant industrial plantations cover a total area of 62,000 hectares. One of them, HEVECAM, is a rubber tree monoculture belonging to the Singapore-based GMG group, while the other, SOCAPALM, is an oil palm plantation, property of the French group Bolloré.

Asia Pulp and Paper is probably the most controversial paper company in the world. It has destroyed vast areas of forest in Sumatra and replaced hundreds of thousands of hectares with monoculture plantations. In December 2007, the Forest Stewardship Council announced its "dissociation" from APP after the company starting using the FSC logo.

Approximately five years ago, Aracruz obtained a “green” quality label for its plantations in the extreme south of Bahia. This is a very important conquest for the Company as this certification implies, among other things, that the Company is working in an ecologically and socially correct manner, respecting all municipal, state and federal environmental laws. Such a label is essential for the Company’s exports because with it, it gains enormous prestige abroad.

In 1926, Firestone Tire & Rubber Company signed a 99-year contract with the government to lease one million acres [approximately 405,000 hecatares] of land for the establishment of a rubber plantation. The total concession area of Firestone represents 4% of Liberia’s territory and nearly 10% of its arable land.

Monoculture is against nature, which is diverse. That is why an unnatural system like industrial plantations of tree monocultures triggers off several negative impacts. One of them is fire.

In North East Cambodia different indigenous groups have lived for centuries, preserving an immense and extremely diverse forest ecosystem, maintained intact until the recent decades, when massive forest exploitation started. Indigenous agricultural practices, as in many other forest-covered areas in the world, have contributed to maintain biodiversity and are among the most sustainable so far known. The subversion of this ecological and social system is full of consequences for indigenous communities and women, as this Bunong woman from Mondulkiri explains:

Indonesia is the world's second largest palm oil producer; together with Malaysia they account for about 80 percent of global palm-oil production. With actually around 6 million hectares of land planted with oil palm, Indonesia plans a significant expansion which is set to cover up to 20 million hectares by 2020.

In Malaysia, palm oil expansion goes hand in hand with deforestation –despite government officials claiming otherwise. A press release issued by Sahabat Alam Malaysia [SAM] Friends of the Earth, Malaysia, on August 6, 2008, reveals that some 2.8 million ha of largely forest land in Sarawak has been handed out for plantation concessions of mainly oil palm and fast-growing pulpwood trees.

The road linking Trang and Krabi in southern Thailand is an example of what economists call development. What used to be lush tropical forest has been converted into endless rows of either oil palm or rubber trees. The monotony is only broken here and there by a few houses and shops surrounded by a sea of tree monocultures. At the end of the road, shrimp farms occupy the place of mangrove forests, and only a thin row of mangrove trees bordering the river have been spared from destruction. The monoculture model appears to have defeated the rich diversity of the region.

Imagine an area the size of 500,000 football fields planted with a single species of tree. Is it a forest? No, it is a green desert: no people, no water, no other plants. A few years from now, this will be the landscape in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, where three companies are concentrating pulp production, leading to significant social and environmental damages.

In Latin America, the Chilean case is presented as a successful forestry model, in spite of the fact that many Chilean organizations – in particular Mapuche indigenous organizations – have for years now been denouncing the impacts of large eucalyptus and pine plantations in southern Chile. However, this has not prevented well-paid forestry consultants from repeating the same lies and from convincing governments of other countries (Peru and Ecuador are the most recent cases), to follow the “successful” Chilean path.