Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Back in 2003, we said that “using the term reforestation for the establishment of a monoculture tree plantation has historically conferred on this type of activity all of the positive characteristics that people rightly associate with a forest, although this is far from the actual reality” (Ambientico magazine, issue 123, December 2003,www.una.ac.cr/ambi/Ambien-Tico/123).

In comparison, Guatemala is a relatively small country but it is very rich in biodiversity. The country is located in the Meso-American* region, the centre of origin of traditional maize and bean landraces, as well as of various species of pumpkins among others.

The Southern African organization GeaSphere has produced the online video “Earth Matters” which can be viewed (in two parts) athttp://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Earth_Matters.html

On International Women’s Day in Brazil, once again women lead the struggle against monoculture tree plantations. Starting in 2006, when close on 2 thousand peasant women from Via Campesina destroyed greenhouses and nearly 8 million eucalyptus saplings belonging to the pulp mill company Aracruz Celulose (see WRM Bulletin No. 104), 8 March has now become a day for mobilization and complaints against monoculture tree plantations. 

The entrance of China into the global capitalist market with the ensuing accelerated expansion of its economy has been marked by a growing hunger for timber. 

Thirty-one families from the districts of Lichinga and Sanga in northern Mozambique have not been able to harvest any crops this 2008/2009 season due to their obligatory withdrawal from their crop areas (machambas) to other new areas because of a “reforestation” megaproject. The inhabitants are blaming the reforestation projects for the devastation of their machambas.

 In 1999, shortly after he was elected, President Hugo Chávez received a letter from WRM (seehttp://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/22/Venezuela2.html) in which we expressed our deep concern over the serious impacts on peasant communities in the state of Portuguesa generated by the monoculture tree plantations operated by Smurfit Cartón de Venezuela (a subsidiary of the Smurfit Kappa Group, a leading producer of cardboard for the European market)

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has long worked on behalf of the plantation industry. One of FAO's strategies to support the spread of monocultures is to pretend that industrial tree plantations are forests.

Up to last year, the Forest Stewardship Council had certified 8.6 million hectares of industrial tree plantations despite ample evidence regarding the social and environmental unsustainability of large scale monoculture tree plantations.

In his novel “The Invisible Man”, H.G. Wells tells the story of a scientist who succeeds in making himself invisible, and the problems that unfold as a result. In real life, women have been struggling for many years against the problems caused by the social invisibility to which they are subjected, in which most of the work they do is equally invisible and greatly undervalued. 

Vast areas of land where diverse and rich ecosystems predominate are being replaced with large scale tree plantations in the South. These plantations –whether eucalyptus, pines, rubber, oil palm or other- are resulting in serious impacts on local communities, who see their ecosystems and livelihoods destroyed to make way to industrial tree plantations. Apart from affecting communities as a whole, they result in specific and differentiated impacts on women which translate in their disempowerment.

Oil palm production is increasing in Papua New Guinea, a country where 97% of the land is communally owned and most of its 5 million population still lives in the rural area and rely on subsistence farming for their livelihoods. The palm oil produced is mostly exported to the EU with the UK, Italy and the Netherlands being the main markets.   A hidden large-scale scheme