The coastal village of Mehuin is located in the Northeastern zone of the Province of Valdivia, on the borders of the ninth and tenth regions of Chile. It is a small bay, fed by the river Lingue, and surrounded by the mountains of the coastal cordillera. It has a population of approximately 1,700 people, but co-inhabits with 13 communities comprising some 3,000 Mapuche-Lafkenche indigenous peoples who come down to the village to sell their products and to get supplies. Some very well defined sectors also exist in Mehuin, with their own cultural characteristics.
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The Ñielol hill located near the city of Temuco in Chile’s Ninth Region, is a faithful witness to the numerous lies circulating both in this region and in many others in the country as well as in other countries, regarding forests and plantations.
The Finnish company Oy Metsä-Botnia Ab (Botnia’s trade name) established in 1973, is the second largest pulp producer in Europe. It has four subsidiary companies, two of which are located in Uruguay: Compañia Forestal Oriental S.A. (FOSA), that has eucalyptus plantations; and Botnia S.A. established in 2003 to implement the project to install a pulp mill producing one million tons per year.
Extensive cultivation of oil palm and the resulting oil extraction have always been linked to repression. Plantation cultivation was originally established by colonial regimes. The rapid expansion of plantations in Asia following the Second World War was encouraged in connection with forest clearing and was used as a weapon in combating Malay rebels.
The environment in West Kalimantan has changed radically over the past 25 years. Much of the forest that supported communities’ livelihoods has been cut down and the land allocated to companies that clear it to make way for oil palm plantations. Even forest traditionally set aside for future generations (hutan cadangan) is prey to “forest conversion”, since the government regards land left fallow under traditional cultivation systems as “neglected” or “critical”.
Oil palm plantations are expanding in South America: Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and now Peru have joined the commercial thrust. The companies find profitable opportunities at the expense of the invaluable Amazon forest and of the lives of peasants who are displaced from their lands where they obtain their means of livelihood.
The accelerated destruction of rainforest and indigenous woodland in Uganda, making way for palm oil and sugar production, follows an all too familiar pattern that has been seen in other parts of the world, especially South Asia.
Widely reported (in the local media) was the government release of five thousand hectares of protected woodlands from its statutory care to BIDCO, a palm-oil producing firm that originates in South Asia, in 2001. These forests, on the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria were then removed in short order.
The Alert against the Green Desert Movement is a broad network of opposition to the expansion of large scale eucalyptus tree plantations in the region which covers the States of Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. Its existence and struggles arose from the proven social and environmental impacts of these plantations, some of which presently enjoy FSC certification.
In 1999, the FACE Forestación del Ecuador S.A. programme, known as PROFAFOR, hired the Swiss certification firm SGS-Société Générale de Surveillance to assess the forestry management of 20,000 hectares of its monoculture tree plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes.
In South Africa, a thorough research carried out by John Blessing Karumbidza --“A Study of the Social and Economic Impacts of Industrial Tree Plantations in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa”, available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/SouthAfrica/book.pdf -- has identified a host of damaging economic, social and environmental impacts of monoculture tree plantations affecting local communities, water resources and ecosystems.
About 9% of Swaziland is now under timber plantations (eucalyptus, pine and acacia). In December 2004 Wally Menne, a member of the South African Timberwatch Coalition made public his research: “Timber Plantations in Swaziland: An investigation into the environmental and social impacts of large-scale timber plantations in Swaziland” (available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Swaziland/Plantations.pdf ).