Large-Scale Tree Plantations

This March, we remember a bulletin that denounces the layers of oppression that women living around plantations confront.

In early 2023, Chile once again experienced megafires which caused devastating damage to affected regions.

An investigation from BBC’s Panorama uncovers how British power company Drax is linked to forests being logged in British Columbia, Canada. Drax switched from burning coal to burning wood pellets, which gave the company millions of taxpayers’ money from “green” subsidies.

Socfin oil palm plantation company has meant violence and oppression in several African countries. Sierra Leone is no exception.

On the International Women's Day, we share a series of articles and audiovisual materials with diverse stories of struggle in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and India.

Four years ago, nine communities from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) filed a complaint with the Independent Complaints Mechanism (ICM) of three European development banks financing the oil palm plantation company Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). The complainants were seeking a resolution to a long-standing land conflict with the company and the ICM agreed to proceed with a mediation process.

What governments agree (or don't agree) on during the UN climate summits is not that relevant in the real world of carbon market expansion. Companies, governments, conservation NGOs, consultancies, brokers, banks and many other interested players are working hard to establish carbon market schemes as ‘the only way forward’.

Oil palm plantations are a central cause of deforestation in southeast Mexico. A network of women in Chiapas have organized to denounce the tactics of coercion and deception employed by the State and companies to get peasants to accept this monoculture on their lands. Their struggle is for the land, for their knowledge, and for their voices to be heard.

In 2022, WRM, along with other allies, spoke with several authors from the publication, “15 Years of REDD: A Mechanism Rotten at the Core”. The aim was to reflect on the different layers of harmful impacts that REDD has caused over the last 15 years. Here is a summary of each contribution.

Oil palm plantation company Socfin has meant violence and oppression for affected communities in several African countries. Sierra Leone is no exception. In collaboration with Aminata Finda Massaquoi, a journalist and the national coordinator of the women’s advocacy network WORNAPI, WRM is releasing a podcast to highlight the voices of women living with the impacts of industrial plantations.

Most of the causes of deforestation that were identified in a UN-led global analysis from 1999 continue to exist. Yet, the “solutions” proposed since then have become new underlying causes of deforestation. In this scenario, projects that destroy the forest and “green” projects depend on each other in order to be viable.

The news portal Metrópoles travelled 5,700 km to denounce how the palm oil production chain affects quilombola communities and Indigenous Peoples in the state of Pará, Brazil—namely through expropriation of traditional communities, environmental impacts, and a labor history analogous to slavery.