The FAO has recently released the 2009 edition of its “State of the World’s Forests” which, as usual, includes tree plantations as being part of the world’s “forests”. In spite of all the evidence documented by WRM and others proving that monoculture tree plantations result in social and environmental disaster –including forest destruction- the FAO continues to provide a “green” disguise to the plantations industry by defining them as “planted forests”.
Bulletin articles
We recently received a publication released in 2008 by FOBOMADE and Rainforest Foundation Norway, written by Pablo Cingolani, Álvaro Díez Astete and Vincent Brackelaire and entitled “Toromonas. La lucha por la defensa de los Pueblos Indígenas Aislados en Bolivia” (Toromonas: the struggle for the defence of the Isolated Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia), which presents an exhaustive account of the situation of isolated indigenous peoples in the region.
he old Lepcha tribe were isolated forest dwellers living harmoniously with nature over centuries. They were hunters and gatherers leading nomadic lives until mid-nineteenth century when they began practicing settled agriculture. They are known for their rich cultural heritage and for being sacred and restricted, especially to outsiders.
The Mekong River is one of the world’s major rivers and flows along 4,350 km (2,703 miles) draining an area of 795,000 km2. (1) As Aviva Imhof from IRN beautifully describes it, “the Mekong River is a changing kaleidoscope of cultures, geography and plant and animal life. From a small trickle in Tibet, the river quickly gathers steam and carves magnificent gorges through Yunnan Province of China.
The Batwa (often described as “pygmies”) are widely regarded as the original forest-dwelling inhabitants of the Equatorial forest in the Great Lakes Region comprising Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Uganda, they lived in the forest of the Mufumbira Mountains in the South West. They were hunter-gatherers that relied on the forests for their livelihood and found in the forests the sustenance for their spiritual and social life.
Between 24 and 28 March 2009, in Heredia, Costa Rica, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) brought together civil society organisations from around the world to address the subject of climate, forests and plantations and their interrelations with local communities.
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.
WRM has produced four new briefings intended to serve as tools for action.
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