America (general)

Genetic engineering allows scientists to modify trees by inserting genetic material from another tree of the same species, from another tree species or from another species altogether. The attempts by research and plantation companies in the US, Brazil and other countries to commercialize engineered trees are posing an enormous risk to the world’s forests.

The area planted in eucalyptus and pine in Latin America has doubled in the past three decades, due to the action of national and transnational companies. Wood production is intended mainly for pulp and paper manufacture. WRM found several recent trends in this process, such as the expansion of monocultures of African palm (oil palm), greater research efforts into transgenic trees, the phenomenon of the “green economy” and the increasing involvement of speculative financial capital.

   

Only available in Spanish and Portuguese. Download here the full document in pdf format in Spanish or in Portuguese Documento informativo del Movimiento Mundial por los Bosques Tropicales (WRM)

Continuing with the communications for September 21st, this time we would like to share with all of you a collection of videos that we have prepared together with GRAIN, on the impacts of large scale industrial oil palm plantations. The videos have been produced by several partners from around the world working against expansion of industrial oil palm plantations and they describe the impacts that local communities suffer when the expansion takes place on their territories.

The Fourth Special Conference of Social Movements of Latin America and the Caribbean for Food Sovereignty was held on May 2 and 3, 2014, in Santiago, Chile. The conference was organized by the Alliance for the Food Sovereignty of the Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, an important alliance of social movements encompassing indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, rural workers, artisanal fisherpeople, women, environmentalists and NGOs.

Only available in Spanish. Entre los días 28 y 31 de mayo de 2014, en la ciudad de Macapá, Brasil, los pueblos de la región amazónica celebraron el VII Foro Social Panamazónico. Llenos de coraje y solidaridad, los participantes se comprometieron a luchar por la transformación de la Amazonia en la tierra sin males soñada por sus abuelos, como lo expresaron en la Carta de Macapá.

Industrial oil palm plantations have been expanding in many countries in the global South, increasingly in Africa and Latin America, invading territories of rural populations, indigenous peoples and traditional communities in order to produce palm oil for export or agrofuel for foreign markets.

The women and men farmers and peasants belonging to the Via Campesina, are calling for this April 17th to be a global day of action and mobilisation in defence of the struggles of farmers and peasants, and, in particular, in defence of peasants' and farmers' seeds which are a heritage of the world's peoples in the affirmation of Food Sovereignty.