Large-Scale Tree Plantations

By Global Justice Ecology Project

There is nothing like creating a problem for finding a good business opportunity . Or at least this is so for seasoned business men and women. It is thus that behind wars one can easily find the arms business. Behind citizen insecurity -largely resulting from social and economic inequity- is the business of security: insurance monitoring systems, bars, alarms and heavy-handed “saviour” politicians.  Behind disease is the “health” business: the drug industry and corporate medical power.

Where? Which trees? What for? By who? Who support? Who regulates? Who oppose?  Research on genetically engineered trees is being currently carried out in a number of countries and yours can be one of them!

The World Forestry Congress taking place in Buenos Aires is viewed as an excellent business opportunity by the Argentine forestry sector.

Something extremely interesting is currently happening in Kenya. On the one hand, the country’s Environment Minister, John Michuki, has ordered the uprooting of eucalyptus trees from wetlands and banned their planting along rivers and watersheds.

Uruguay and the Republic of Korea have recently signed an Agreement for Investment Promotion and Protection which, according to Uruguayan government authorities establishes a framework for Korean investment in Uruguay. From past experience in Uruguay, the establishment of a framework for investment in this country may mean reducing or eliminating all taxation, granting of foreign trade zone permits and all kinds of support to the company’s enterprises.

World demand for paper and paperboard is expected to grow by 2% to 3% annually in the long term, with significant growth potential for Asia and Eastern Europe - India, China and Russia in particular. Paper pulp exports from Latin America from lands converted into monoculture tree plantations, so called “green deserts”, are expected to grow by 70% between 2000 and 2010.

International Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations is a good opportunity to expose the myths being spread around about the so-called “benefits” of these plantations. Such myths have not arisen on their own but are the result of a long process during which people and institutions related to the corporate-plantation sector have invented arguments to convince both the general public and governments and institutions of the advisability of mass tree plantation.

Plantations are forests in uniform. They look like soldiers all lined up in ranks, and that is what they are. Dressed in green, they march off to the world market. The hymns that sing their praises in the name of our Mother Earth are lies. Industrial forests are to natural forests what military music is to music, and what military justice is to justice. Eduardo Galeano, writer, Uruguay

Large-scale tree plantations do not generate jobs because they always involve as much mechanization as possible. For example, the Veracel Celulose Company in Brazil generates 1 direct job per 130 hectares of eucalyptus. On the other hand coffee plantations, very common in Brazil, are able to create up to one job per hectare.

Why is this statement simply not true? Monoculture tree plantations cannot ever improve on the natural environment that is eliminated when plantations are established.

A typical propaganda disseminated by business interests and governments in many tropical countries is to say that plantations will relieve pressure on native forests. They claim that with enough plantations, native forests would eventually be left alone, as the plantations would provide sufficient wood to avoid the need of extracting timber from native forests.