Large-Scale Tree Plantations

We share this song, composed by the organizations Justicia Ambiental, Missão Tabita and AJOCME, from Mozambique.

(Only available in Portuguese) Confira o vídeo com o posicionamento da comunidade contrária à passagem de caminhões de eucalipto.

Why do peasant farmers lose out when they produce for the palm oil industry? A publication based on experiences from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

This bulletin aims to reflect on the extraction, violence and oppression related to the so-called energy ‘transition’ and its ‘green’ camouflage. A transition from what? And towards what?

Balsa wood is an important input for windmills. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of this wood. The invasion of millions of wind turbines in China, Europe and the US means the extraction of metals to build them, as well as the brutal felling of balsa wood trees. 

Certification schemes seeking to legitimize activities that harm the environment and its people, with terms like “sustainable,” are a survival strategy for capitalism. In the framework of the energy transition, even the mining industry seeks to validate its unstoppable growth. A transition must happen, but in a fair and consensual way, not based on more green lies.

In February 2021 more than 500 scientists and economists issued a letter urging to stop burning wood as a means of making energy in converted coal burning power plants and to end subsidies now driving the explosive demand for wood pellets. The burning of wood to produce electricity boomed since the United Nations categorized this energy source as ‘carbon neutral’, which enables governments and companies to burn wood instead of coal and not count the emissions in helping them meet their climate related targets.

Another two young men have been killed at the industrial oil palm plantations of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). European development banks have been financing PHC for years, and agreed to hand over the plantations to an obscure private equity fund after the previous owner, Feronia Inc. went bankrupt in 2020 – after having received more than USD 100 million in development funding.

The booming demand for palm oil has come at the high price of rainforest destruction, labour exploitation, and brutal land and water grabbing. Communities living in and around oil palm plantations in Indonesia and elsewhere are deeply concerned about their freshwater sources. But this long-term impact on freshwater streams around oil palm plantations seems to have been overlooked until now. The reality is that along the destruction of these plantations, is also the serious problem of water grabbing.

Available only in French.

WRM Bulletin Compilation. Available in English and Indonesian.

A young man was killed and other people are still in prison. It was after a protest against the failure of the PHC company to provide local communities with any benefits after 100 years of illegally occupying their land.