Struggles Against Tree Monocultures
Corporate profit drives land grabs to install industrial tree monocultures. Where industrial plantations take root, communities' territories and lives are violently invaded, their forests destroyed and their water polluted. When communities resist, companies tend to respond with aggression. Despite this extreme violence, communities around the world are resisting, organizing and joining forces to defend their territories. Every September 21 the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations is celebrated.
While palm oil companies present themselves as benevolent donors during the pandemic, communities living in and around these plantations tell another story. Activists against industrial oil palm plantations talk about communities’ situation since the Covid-19 outbreak.
With the Covid-19 crisis, the initiatives of movements and collectives based on feminist economics have gained strength. Feminist economics leads us to reflect on the updated mechanisms of control, while continuing to affirm the capacity for resistance and reconstruction of bodies in movement.
In response to an article that was published in WRM’s bulletin, Missão Tabita and WRM received letters from the plantation company, Portucel, and the organization, ORAM. The letters claimed that the article was untrue; however, neither Portucel nor ORAM could prove that the information published was not true.
The Norwegian company APSD is establishing industrial eucalyptus plantations in Ghana for biomass fuel, which is considered a "carbon neutral" fuel. The Youth Volunteers for the Environment in Ghana spoke with communities affected by these plantations.
What are the experiences of communities living inside or adjacent to the plantation areas of companies with “zero deforestation” pledges? How can these companies continue expanding without deforesting in densely forested countries?
After more than 50 years of struggle by peasant communities who have faced all kinds of environmental and social destruction, the highest court of Cauca Valley has ruled against the industrial plantation company, Smurfit Kappa Cartón Colombia.
Plantation companies often argue that local populations are destroying the forests, particularly where people depend on firewood and/or charcoal for their energy needs. Thus, they argue, industrial plantations can “sustainably” provide this wood. But this is simply not true.
One of the latent dangers that comes with the establishment of monoculture plantations—which is generally invisible—is the high use of agrochemicals. Agrochemicals support profits for plantation companies and their financiers, while poisoning life.
