Large-Scale Tree Plantations

We call on organizations to sign this petition in support of the Mayan Q’eqchi community Santa Elena in the northern region of Guatemala. The community is asking for international and national support in the face of recent threats and growing criminalization by Industria Chiquibul, a palm company that supplies palm oil to transnational corporations such as Nestle and Unilever. Read and sign the letter below.

The Amazon region is one of the final frontiers of resistance to capital expansion. This is epitomized by the struggles of social activists such as Chico Mendes, as well as by the presence of most of the earth’s remaining indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. However, different forms of ‘green’ extractivism are currently and increasingly advancing on this territory.

In the Acará Valley, Pará state, the Tembé and Turiwara indigenous peoples, and quilombola and peasant communities are fighting to take back part of the living spaces they traditionally occupied. It is not just a struggle for territory, but one to reverse a history of oppression and injustice. Today, they are denouncing structural violence and state omission.

The expanding agricultural frontier to grow soybean and oil palm, in addition to mining and the potential construction of mega-dams, are advancing upon the living spaces of indigenous and peasant communities. In late 2018, communities organized a coordinating committee to defend their territories and their right to a dignified life.

The certifying company has turned a blind eye to the fact that the Peruvian government has not only not demarcated the indigenous territory but has also given the company two contracts for concessions.

Between August 4 and 7, 2023, there were violent attacks on the lives of four indigenous Tembé people as a consequence of the struggle to take back territories from the hands of the company Brasil BioFuels (BBF). In the face of this, the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) sent a formal letter to the authorities requesting the immediate regularization of indigenous and quilombola territories, as well as an investigation into the mechanisms of criminalization of their leaders and the suspension of all incentives to companies involved in the violence.

On August 8, 2023, the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) sent a recommendation to federal and state authorities regarding measures to protect, promote and defend indigenous peoples and quilombola, riverine, peasant and agro-extractivist populations in Pará state.

Almost 30 years of UN climate negotiations have resulted in the establishment of policies and practices that facilitate the constant expansion of the fossil fuel-based economy (and its profits) while hiding its implacable negative impacts for the territories where it expands.

In the past two years, tree plantation initiatives aimed at generating carbon credits have doubled. Whether as large monocultures or as nicely sounding projects with grassroots communities, tree plantations for carbon offsetting are neither a solution to the climate chaos nor beneficial to rural communities in the Global South.

A compilation of articles from the WRM Bulletin aims to expose the damaging role played by companies and organizations involved in certification schemes. After three decades, what is clear is that the only “sustainability” that they guarantee is that of corporations’ business and that of certification industry itself.

The Afrise women's association launched an international petition to stop the replanting of oil palm monocultures around their homes and over the grave sites of their ancestors. They are denouncing decades of sexual abuse, land dispossession and misery. They are demanding that their territory be returned to them, so that they can lead a life of dignity.

For decades, Mapuche communities have been resisting the impacts of a forestry model based on large-scale monoculture plantations. In this interveiw, Pablo Reyes Huenchumán, spokesperson for the Paillakawe community, explains how they organize, and what the main challenges are in the struggle to recover their territory and maintain their culture.