Angola

Sign this letter to alert people in the global North! Stop development agencies from promoting expansion of large-scale tree plantations.

Governments are opening the doors to corporations for planting vast areas of land with oil palm plantations. This trend is not only happening in West and Central African countries, but is even expanding to parts of Eastern Africa. Large scale oil palm plantations are already causing serious environmental and social impacts in some countries, resulting in loss of community rights over their territories.

A growing number of new corporate security operations around the world link former intelligence officers, standing armies, and death squad veterans. They go into battle for new bosses: the mineral industries.

Deforestation has become one of Angola's most important environmental problems, also resulting in freshwater shortages and soil erosion. The long civil war that affected Angola from 1975 to 1991 and the continuous hostilities among rival groups that have persisted since then, have determined not only human and material losses but also brought with them severe consequences on forests. Deforestation is considered one of the major environmental results of this state of violence and devastation.