Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Nothing likes eucalyptus. If you let cattle loose among the eucalyptus, they start grazing around the outside, which is supposed to be a reserve. The cattle don't like it, neither do the birds, or the wasps. The hardest thing about a place like that is the wasps, but not even the wasps like to be where the eucalyptus is. (Video interview with Manuelzão, a character from the novel "Corpo de Bailes" by João Guimarães Rosa)

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the UN agency that oversees labour issues, shaping policies and programmes mainly related to labour standards for the protection of workers.

Chinese lawyer Yang Zaixin has been imprisoned in Beihai, Southern China since June 2011. We urge you to support a petition that demands that the Finnish government and company Stora Enso take action to end his unjust imprisonment. Finnish-Swedish company Stora Enso is planning to build massive board and pulp mills in Beihai city in Guangxi, Southern China. The project began in 2002 and has been surrounded by controversy and accusations of misconduct.The tree plantation and pulp mill project has displaced local people of their lands without their free and prior consent.

The interest of foreign investors in natural resources, and especially land, has grown significantly in recent years throughout Africa, and Mozambique is no exception. It is in the northern region of the country that foreign investment projects have come to occupy the largest areas of land in Mozambique, primarily for the establishment of monoculture plantations of eucalyptus, pine, jatropha and sugarcane.

Men and women peasant farmers in the Bajo Aguán valley in Honduras are suffering violent repression after organizing and taking action to regain control of their land, which had been granted to them as part of a thwarted agrarian reform process dating back to the early 1970s.

The article: “Environmental services and the promotion of the commodification and financialization of nature: Forests, tree plantations and the green economy” published in last WRM bulletin Nº 175, raised a complaint from the NGO Forest Trends. The complaint concerned the information given in such article on the lack of public input for the approval of a law promoting trade in environmental services in Acre, Brazil.

A broad coalition of organizations from around the world released the first global civil society declaration to outline principles that must be adopted to protect public health and the environment from the risks posed by synthetic biology and to address its economic, social and ethical challenges.

Business as usual dressed up in green Humanity is moving along old paths in new clothes. The current civilization model, which is portrayed as hegemonic but actually corresponds to a small minority of the planet, is dragging it towards its limits, exposing it to multiple crises.

The new year got off to a fiery start in Chile, as seen in the national and international news reports of the devastating forest fires raging across various regions of the country. These include the regions of Araucanía and Bío Bío, in central-southern Chile, where there are more than three million hectares of industrial plantations of exotic tree species. Over two million hectares of these plantations – primarily made up of pine and eucalyptus trees – are owned by the companies Arauco and Mininco, and have also been hit by the wildfires.

The year 2011 was declared the International Year of Forests by the United Nations. Major international events such as the climate conference in South Africa and the upcoming Rio+20 summit in Brazil and biodiversity conference in India have also contributed to making forests a key issue on the global agenda, as well as the subject of high-profile public relations campaigns.

In the reports about the effects of industrial tree plantations of eucalyptus, pine or oil palm on peoples' lives, negative impacts such as conflicts over land tenure, depletion of water resources, lack of work opportunities and destruction of local economies are most frequently mentioned. Specific impacts on fundamental aspects of people's culture are usually mentioned less or not at all, although the consequences can be tremendous when the culture of a people is strongly linked to their identity, self-esteem, well-being and ultimately to their survival.