Large-Scale Tree Plantations

A recent publication form the WRM explains how contract farming with palm oil companies works, and why it is a serious threat to peasant farming and food sovereignty. The booklet looks at nine of the most common promises that companies make, and most importantly, the information they conceal behind each promise. The publication is available in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia.

A recent article from Mongabay warns on how the palm oil industry is expanding rapidly in the Brazilian Amazon. Oil palm coverage in northern Pará increased almost five-fold between 2010 and 2019. Studies have shown that the conversion of forests into oil palm plantations is a major problem.  Most of Brazil’s palm oil production is controlled by eight companies.

An academic article from Janina Puder exposes how the palm oil industry in Malaysia heavily relies on the cheap labour of migrant workers in order to keep palm oil profitable and globally competitive. Palm oil is often associated with social inequalities concerning land ownership, land use and access to land, but the exploitation of migrant workers is a further significant, albeit lesser-known, expression of social inequality that has been caused by industrial oil palm cultivation and the steady expansion of the palm oil sector in Malaysia since the 1960s.

Statement Condemns Proposed Use of Genetically Engineered Trees in Wrong-Headed Climate Mitigation Schemes.

We share this song, composed by the organizations Justicia Ambiental, Missão Tabita and AJOCME, from Mozambique.

(Only available in Portuguese) Confira o vídeo com o posicionamento da comunidade contrária à passagem de caminhões de eucalipto.

Why do peasant farmers lose out when they produce for the palm oil industry? A publication based on experiences from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

This bulletin aims to reflect on the extraction, violence and oppression related to the so-called energy ‘transition’ and its ‘green’ camouflage. A transition from what? And towards what?

Balsa wood is an important input for windmills. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of this wood. The invasion of millions of wind turbines in China, Europe and the US means the extraction of metals to build them, as well as the brutal felling of balsa wood trees. 

Certification schemes seeking to legitimize activities that harm the environment and its people, with terms like “sustainable,” are a survival strategy for capitalism. In the framework of the energy transition, even the mining industry seeks to validate its unstoppable growth. A transition must happen, but in a fair and consensual way, not based on more green lies.

In February 2021 more than 500 scientists and economists issued a letter urging to stop burning wood as a means of making energy in converted coal burning power plants and to end subsidies now driving the explosive demand for wood pellets. The burning of wood to produce electricity boomed since the United Nations categorized this energy source as ‘carbon neutral’, which enables governments and companies to burn wood instead of coal and not count the emissions in helping them meet their climate related targets.

Another two young men have been killed at the industrial oil palm plantations of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). European development banks have been financing PHC for years, and agreed to hand over the plantations to an obscure private equity fund after the previous owner, Feronia Inc. went bankrupt in 2020 – after having received more than USD 100 million in development funding.