Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Nowadays only 3% of the once dense area of tropical forests that covered the territory of the Philippines is still standing. Most of them occupy reduced patches and have even suffered a severe process of degradation (see WRM Bulletin 27).

Palma Tica is a company working in the area of cultivation, processing and production of oil palm products. It owns thousands of hectares of oil palm plantations (Elaeis guineensis) in the Central Pacific Region (Quepos Division) and in the Southern Region (Coto Division). To face the rapid advance of its competitor Agroindustrial Cooperative of Oil Palm Producers (Coopeagropal R.L.), Palma Tica started in 1995 an aggressive campaign of land purchasing in the communities of Colorada and La Palma de Corredores, located in the extreme south of the Coto Division.

Last September Canada reached a controversial deal to "buy" oxygen from Honduras within the framework of a "debt for nature" swap and the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) will "forgive" about U$S 680,000 of Honduras' U$S 11 million debt with Canada. In exchange, a so-called joint implementation office will be established in Honduras to promote tree plantations and monitor forest conservation programmes in that country.

Colombian forests are undergoing a severe process of destruction. The civil war that is devastating the country can be considered one of the main causes of deforestation. Due to the prevailing state of violence in Colombia, entire rural communities are obliged to leave their homes and lands. Additionally to their effects from a social and cultural point of view, forced displacements also create conditions for further negative impacts on forests.

The news that giant bleached eucalyptus pulp producer Aracruz Celulose had applied for FSC certification had an enormous impact in the two Brazilian states -Bahia and Espirito Santo- where it operates. As a result, a large number of organizations and individuals concerned with the spread of extensive monoculture plantations in the region -which include those of Aracruz, Bahia Sul and Veracel- got together to prevent the company from receiving FSC approval.

One of the arguments used by large-scale tree plantation promoters (with the pulp and paper industry at the forefront) is that they contribute to the well being of the rural areas where they are set up, by increasing employment opportunities. This is a crucial issue: unemployment is one of the most negative consequences of the ongoing globalization process, so any activity that promises to increase jobs can be perceived as being attractive by local people.

The "environmentally concerned" French car producer Peugeot, decided to do something about the global warming effect of the millions of cars it produces. Of course, nothing as radical as switching to a different source of fuel. Instead, it decided to go the easy way: to plant "carbon sequestering" trees in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. The project began to be implemented last year, with the aim of converting 12,000 hectares of "degraded" pastures into plantations.

The promotion of tree plantations as a means of combating global warming has received all kinds of criticism. On the one hand, plantations do not relieve pressures from forests -which are carbon reservoirs- but constitute a direct cause of their destruction. According to a satellite image analysis, in the 1980s, 75% of the new tree plantations in Southern countries in the tropics were made by replacing natural forest that had existed there ten years earlier.

  The Tourism industry has done, and is doing much more for Responsible Environmental Management than the "forestry" industry. Maybe for this one reason only. . . It is rooted in Biodiversity. Alien tree plantations destroy the indigenous vegetation they replace. The basis of the food chain destroyed, local fauna and flora can not adapt and live in a plantation. When calculating the profit associated with tree farms, is the cost of the destruction to the natural environment ever brought into consideration?

Tanzania's 33.5 million hectares (129,310 square miles) of forests are increasingly at risk, mostly as a result of illegal logging, which is destroying some 500,000 hectares (19,300 square miles) of the country's pristine forests every year.

According to the official viewpoint, India holds favourable climatic and social conditions for the set up of tree plantations. Forestry officials state that more than 60 million hectares of "non-forest wastelands and open scrub forest lands" can be considered available for undertaking tree plantation activities. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is promoting the use of clonal disease-resistant plants of fast-growing eucalyptus. Clones of acacia, poplars, gmelina and teak are also being included in the menu.

Two weeks ago, nineteen persons, including a 17-year old, all Iban, from two long-houses in the Niah area, were provisionally charged with murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code. The charge carries a mandatory death sentence if convicted.