New booklet: Nine Reasons to Say NO to Contract Farming with Palm Oil Companies
Why do peasant farmers lose out when they produce for the palm oil industry? A publication based on experiences from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Buklet baru: Sembilan Alasan Menolak Pertanian Kontrak dengan Perusahaan Kelapa Sawit
Mengapa petani kecil merugi ketika mereka menanam untuk industri kelapa sawit? Sebuah publikasi berdasarkan pengalaman dari Amerika Latin, Afrika sub-Sahara dan Asia Tenggara.
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The transition to a ‘low-carbon’ economy: a green camouflage for more destructive capitalism
This bulletin aims to reflect on the extraction, violence and oppression related to the so-called energy ‘transition’ and its ‘green’ camouflage. A transition from what? And towards what?
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Electric Vehicles: Driving Suffering and Pollution
Electric cars have become the symbol of the ‘low carbon’ economy. As an item of consumption first and foremost for the wealthy, the negative impacts of the required minerals and metals that are extracted are frequently downplayed.
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Industrial Consumption: A largely invisible yet decisive underlying cause of the crisis
This article highlights the voices of Justiça Ambiental! in Mozambique and the African ecofeminist alliance WoMIN.
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The green paradoxes of an Amazonian country
Balsa wood is an important input for windmills. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of this wood. The invasion of millions of wind turbines in China, Europe and the US means the extraction of metals to build them, as well as the brutal felling of balsa wood trees.
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Renewable energies and ‘green hydrogen’: Renewing destruction?
Industrial-scale renewable energy infrastructure has seen a revival in the agenda of the ‘energy transition’ and as part of the economic recovery plans in front of the pandemic. Besides, the production of ‘green hydrogen’ from these projects adds another layer of injustices.
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Wind energy on the Northeast Brazilian coast and the contradictions between ‘clean energy’, injustices and environmental racism
In dominant models of energy production and consumption, the centralization of the energy matrix and the concentration of decision-making power remain, and with all the marks of inequalities, patriarchy and environmental racism, even if the source of energy has changed.
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The ‘Digital Economy’: Cementing the Expansion of Extraction and Pollution
The so-called ‘digital economy’ is usually promoted as one that has a relatively low impact on the environment, one in which material resources are largely unnecessary. But what (and who) is being hidden by such images of an almost ethereal and cleaner economy?
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Responsible, sustainable, renewable and certified: An economy that destroys the planet?
Certification schemes seeking to legitimize activities that harm the environment and its people, with terms like “sustainable”, are a survival strategy for capitalism. In the framework of the energy transition, even the mining industry seeks to validate its unstoppable growth.
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Mining and Militarization: two sides of the same coin
A report from the organization London Mining Network highlights that extractivism is a militarised process: it violently ruptures...
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How the fossil fuel industry used Covid-19 for polluting energy schemes
Fossil fuel companies and interest groups in Europe captured tens of billions of public money from Covid-19 recovery packages. On top of...
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500+ experts call on world’s nations to not burn forests to make energy
In February 2021 more than 500 scientists and economists issued a letter urging to stop burning wood as a means of making energy in...
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Bioeconomy and Global Inequalities
This is the title of an open access book with 15 chapters focusing on the meanings, agendas, as well as the local and global implications...
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Letter in Defense of the Amazon and Mother Earth, Against the Invasion of Capital, Extreme Violence and Green Scams
A call to Brazilian society and the peoples of the world to defend the territories from capitalism and its new “green” onslaught.
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Nature is NOT a “Solution”
It is imperative to understand the concept of ‘nature-based solutions,’ to name it for what it is: ‘nature-based dispossessions’, and to expose the real threat it poses to territories.
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Conservation NGOs Gift Polluters a Massive Land Grab called ‘Nature Based Solutions’
While the concept of ‘Nature Based Solutions’ has eagerly been seized upon by polluting industries, financial institutions and governments, its origins lie somewhere else.
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Analysing the Discourse of ‘Green’ Capitalism: The Meaning of Nature in ‘Nature-Based’
The term ‘nature-based solutions,’ in the context of the exclusionary and predatory projects that gather behind it, reveals something fundamental.
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When different forms of oppression come together on the same subjects
Using “intersectionality” in her reflection, the author highlights how essential it is to understand how various situations of oppression often befall the same subject.
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Food and agribusiness corporations peddle a deadly scam
Big polluters are making ‘net zero’ pledges to satisfy the financial players that fund them. So-called ‘nature-based solutions’ are at the core of these pledges –a new corporate brand for offsets.
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Corporate enthusiasm for forest protection and tree planting driven by determination to protect profits from fossil fuel extraction
These companies have destroyed large territories and the devastation that comes with their fossil fuel extraction continues. Now, they are putting forest protection and tree planting at the heart of their climate strategies
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‘Nature-based Solutions’ and Corporate Territorial Control: A Fabricated Consensus
The mining sector seeks to gain legitimacy and expand its frontiers of accumulation and territorial control. It does so using a discourse of sustainability and by investing in so-called “nature-based solutions.
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Brazil: The Impacts of Nature-based Exclusions on Women’s Bodies-Territories
This text shares reflections that emerged from our discussions with women impacted by Green Economy projects in Brazil.
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Attack of the Space Cadets. Offworld Colonies, Racist Repression and ‘Nature-Based Solutions’
For the world’s richest men, the environmental crisis has finally arrived. From fleeing into outer space or fantasylands to science-fiction solutions, capitalists desperately seek fossil-fuelled business as usual to continue.
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“Attacks on Forest-Dependent Communities in Indonesia and Resistance Stories” A Compilation of Bulletin Articles.
The WRM has compiled articles in Bahasa Indonesian and in English in order to expose the many processes of corporate control that are...
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European development banks shamefully indifferent to violence and killings at industrial oil palm plantations in the DRC they have been financing for years
Another two young men have been killed at the industrial oil palm plantations of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). European...
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Toxic river: the fight to reclaim water from oil palm plantations in Indonesia
The booming demand for palm oil has come at the high price of rainforest destruction, labour exploitation, and brutal land and water...
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RDC: Entretien avec Mme Augin Nolofana, la maman d’un jeune villageois de Mwingi, qui aurait été tué par les agents de la société PHC/KKM
Available only in French.
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Attacks on Forest-Dependent Communities in Indonesia and Resistance Stories
WRM Bulletin Compilation. Available in English and Indonesian.
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Ancaman terhadap Komunitas Yang Bergantung Pada Hutan di Indonesia dan Kisah-Kisah Perlawanannya
Sebuah Kompilasi Berbagai Artikel di Buletin WRM. Available in English.
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DR Congo palm oil company bankrolled by development banks unleashes wave of violence against villagers after peaceful protests
A young man was killed and other people are still in prison. It was after a protest against the failure of the PHC company to provide local communities with any benefits after 100 years of illegally occupying their land.
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Offsets: Feeding the Illusion of a (Sustainable) (Green) (Carbon Neutral) (Nature-Based) (Net-zero emissions) Capitalism
Polluting corporations tell stories about reaching “Net-Zero” emissions while planning to continue, or even increase, destruction and exploitation. Offsets are at the centre of these stories. Of late, offsetting is also being championed by the financial industry.
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Thailand’s imposition of National Parks: The Indigenous Karen People’s struggle for their forests and survival
Indigenous Karen People from Bang Kloi returned to their ancestral home in the Kaeng Krachan forests, after years of dispossession due to the creation of a National Park. Karen communities are mobilizing in solidarity to the Bang Kloi communities’ right to return home.
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“Gender” in the palm oil industry and its RSPO label
Can the inclusion of gender-specific policies in the operations of oil palm companies and the RSPO certification scheme do more than cover up the violence and structural patriarchy and racism inherent in the plantation model? How, in such context, do these gender policies unfold?
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Ecuador: The certification of industrial shrimp aquaculture intensifies rights violations and the destruction of mangroves
Despite the massive clearing of mangroves to make way for shrimp farms, and the oppression of fishing and gathering communities, this industry has access to certifications that not only facilitate its entry into foreign markets; they also conceal a history of violence against the peoples of the mangroves.
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The Indigenous Kinggo’s Struggle to Defend Papua’s Customary Forest
The Korindo Group cleared Kinggo’s Indigenous People’s forests for its industrial oil palm plantations. Petrus Kinggo and other community leaders were persuaded to give up customary forest land with misleading and false promises. Now they are fighting against the FSC-certified Korindo.
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(Bahasa indonesia) Petrus kinggo kambenap: pembela hutan adat papua
Masyarakat adat setempat mengalami kerugian dan tidak mendapatkan manfaat, kompensasi tidak adil dan menjadi korban kekerasan aparat. Selanjutnya, masyarakat adat setempat menolak dan protes atas ketidakadilan dan kerusakan hutan adat.
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Resistance Against Industrial Oil Palm Plantations in West and Central Africa
Communities in West and Central Africa are facing the impacts of industrial oil palm plantations. With the false promise of bringing ‘development’, corporations, backed up with government support, have been granted millions of hectares of land for this expansion.
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Predatory mining in Venezuela: The Orinoco Mining Arc, enclave economies and the National Mining Plan
The crisis in Venezuela from 2013 to 2021 has caused the collapse of a nation that was built around oil over the last 100 years. This has created a situation characterized by the emergence of mining-dominated predatory extractivism.
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Why Reject the Privatization of Customary Land
For capitalists, the customary and collective land tenure systems are obstacles to wealth creation and the accumulation of profit. There has been a strong pressure for formalizing private property land rights for easing its sale and lease for commercial use. This push must stop now!
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Forests for sale in Brazil!
Since Jair Bolsonaro assumed the Brazilian presidency, deforestation is not only on the rise, it is increasingly out of control. This is...
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Chasing Carbon Unicorns: The Deception of Carbon Markets and “Net Zero”
A recent publication unpacks the science behind “net zero” claims and how they are used to obscure climate inaction. It explores the...
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Numerous organizations denounce the company UPM at the UN
A demand is being presented before the United Nations to verify the negative impacts and the possible violations of human rights in Uruguay...
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Mozambique: Our lives are worth more than gas!
A new video clip entitled “Cabo Delgado Weeps”, produced by Justiça Ambiental JA!, aims to help in the struggle against the gas...
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Liberia: Longstanding rights’ violations and deforestation exposed
On February 2021, a comprehensive report confirmed longstanding allegations that Golden Veroleum Liberia, a venture controlled by the...
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Malaysia. Palm oil and international law: A tale of double standards
EU’s restrictions on palm oil-based fuels are portrayed by the government of Malaysia as a threat to thousands of small holders relying...
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March 8 | The feminist struggle: A path of resistance and hope
This International Women’s Day we share a message, a series of articles from the WRM bulletin, and a recent video made by the Informal Alliance Against Oil Palm Plantations in Central and West Africa.
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Video: Katakan TIDAK untuk kekerasan terhadap perempuan tinggal sekitar perkebunan kelapa sawit
Video tersebut merupakan produksi bersama dengan Alliance of grassroots groups (Aliansi kelompok akar rumput) dan para aktivis dari...
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ALERT! Karen indigenous communities face danger after returning to their ancestral territory in Thailand
They have been living in the Kaeng Krachan forests for generations. When a National Park was created, they started to suffer violence and evictions. Karen indigenous people are mobilizing around the country in solidarity to the communities from Bang Kloi’s right to return home.
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DR Congo: Call for the immediate release of people arrested after a protest against the palm oil company PHC
RIAO-RDC and international NGOs calls for the immediate release of community leaders and villagers from the communities of Mwingi, Bolesa and Yanongo who were arrested after a peaceful protest against the palm oil company PHC. An urgent action alert is open to sign-ons.
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Naming the crimes (and criminals) for what they are
The tactics and strategies employed to impose land control and extractive operations in the forests are many. Most of these tactics and strategies are criminal acts.
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Legal but corrupt
The boundary lines between the “legitimate” and the “criminal” have long been paper thin. Indeed, mainstream capitalist enterprise arguably only prospers because its particular forms of looting, theft, fraud and cheating have been blessed with the holy water of “legality”.
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Sexual Exploitation and Violence against Women at the Root of the Industrial Plantation Model
Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.
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Organized land theft for industrial tree plantations in Brazil: The case of AMCEL
Land grabbing in Brazil is a clear example of organized crime, of land theft from small farmers.
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Indonesia: Legalizing Crimes Under the Slogan of “Creating Jobs”
The government of Indonesia endorsed the criticized Omnibus Law by saying that it is “crucial to attract investment and ultimately create jobs.” The Law is a direct attack on the territories and communities resisting the increasing destruction that has been ongoing for decades in Indonesia.
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Indonesia : Legalisasi Kejahatan di balik slogan ‘Penciptaan Lapangan Kerja’.
Pemerintahan Indonesia mengesahkan Omnibus Law yang kontroversial dengan berdalih bahwa ‘Ini penting untuk menarik investasi dan menciptakan lapangan kerja sebanyak-banyaknya’. Undang-Undang Ciptaker merupakan serangan langsung terhadap teritori dan komunitas – yang terus mengalami kehancuran dari dekade ke dekade di Indonesia.
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Law, Crime and Deforestation in the Thai Countryside
How are forest crimes defined? In Thailand, forest-dependant communities, rather than the government and companies carrying out large-scale deforestation, became scapegoats for this destruction.
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(Thai) กฎหมาย อาชญากรรม และการตัดไม้ทำลายป่าในพื้นที่ชนบทของไทย
อาชญากรรมป่าไม้ มีนิยามอย่างไร ? ในประเทศไทย ในขณะที่รัฐบาลและบริษัทต่างๆ ตัดไม้ทำลายป่าไปเป็นจำนวนมหาศาล ชาวบ้านกลับต้องกลายเป็นแพะรับบาปต่อการทำลายล้างดังกล่าว นโยบายอนุรักษ์ของรัฐบาลมุ่งเน้นไปที่การใช้กฎหมายกับประชาชนที่อยู่ในป่า ด้วยการใช้ความรุนแรงและการก่ออาชญกรรมต่อพวกเขา
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RSPO: outsourcing environmental regulation to oil palm businesses and industry
The RSPO certification scheme used the palm oil industry’s legitimacy crisis to strengthen the terrain to the industry’s own advantage by issuing certificates that supposedly guarantee sustainability standards.
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African Peoples Tribunal against Industrial Plantation Companies
Friends of the Earth organised the First session of the African Peoples Tribunal in Lagos, Nigeria, in November 2020. Affected communities...
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2020: A year of resistance and defiance
Focus on the Global South recently released its newsletter with a message from Asia, where, despite the pandemic and all its consequences,...
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An explanation of the new financial markets on nature’s destruction
Recent calls to action to address critical loss of biodiversity are both long overdue and very welcome, but a parallel debate on the...
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(Thai) นักกิจกรรมและองค์กรทั่วโลกร่วมสนับสนุนประชาชนไทยในการต่อสู้กับอุตสาหกรรมเหมืองแร่
ดาวน์โหลดจดหมายพร้อมลายเซ็นที่นี่
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International support to a struggle against mining in Thailand
Organisations, social movements and activists, from 40 countries express their support and solidarity with a community struggle in Northeastern Thailand to reclaim the land and forests encroached on by the Thor Silasitthi mining company.
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Video: Violence and sexual abuse against women in oil palm plantations MUST END
The video “NO to violence against women and girls living in and around oil palm plantations” denounces the violence against women in West and Central Africa whose lands have been invaded by industrial oil palm plantations.
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Evangelists of Development
This bulletin seeks to warn about the strategies used by those imposing themselves on territories with the development flag. They increasingly work in alliance with financial capital—which they see as a partner, and which they reinforce with public resources.
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Development: Understandings from the Ground
WRM spoke with close allies from Brazil, Gabon, India, Mexico and Mozambique, to hear from them and learn about their understandings of development.
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The Enduring Legacy of a Little-Known World Bank Project to Secure African Plantations for European Billionaires
Why haven’t Africa’s post-colonial governments dismantled the colonial plantation model of exploitation and extraction, returned the lands to their people and emboldened a resurgence of Africa’s diverse, local food and farming systems?
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Why Governments should Reject Land Commodification Efforts Orchestrated by the World Bank and the United States
The development narrative continues to be revived despite its role in driving the current crisis and the millions of livelihoods it has destroyed through displacement and dispossession.
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Indonesia: REDD+, European Development Funding and the ‘Low-Carbon Economy’
How does REDD+ fit into the development agenda in Indonesia? What are the actors involved in promoting REDD+ and with which interests?
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Indonesia: REDD+, Pendanaan Pembangunan Eropa dan ‘Ekonomi Rendah Karbon’
Bagaimana REDD+ sejalan dengan agenda pembangunan di Indonesia? Siapa dan apa aktor yang terlibat dalam mempromosikan REDD+ dan dengan kepentingan apa? Artikel ini merefleksikan masalah ini dan peringatan tentang bagaimana REDD+ berperan penting untuk mendorong apa yang disebut pembangunan ‘bersih’, ‘hijau’, dan ‘rendah karbon’.
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European Development Bank Involvement into Congolese Palm Oil Company Perpetuates Racism of Colonial-Era Land Grab
European development banks have financed a plantation company in DRC that is built on injustice and violence dating back to a colonial-era land grab. When the company went bankrupt in 2020, the banks chose to uphold the plantation model.
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The African Development Bank and the Tree Plantations Industry
In June 2019, a report from the AfDB and WWF Kenya made a call to development-funding agencies, mainly from Europe, and the World Bank, to provide aid money to a new Fund for financing 100,000 hectares of (new) industrial tree plantations, to support the potential development of 500,000 hectares, in Eastern and Southern Africa.
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“It has Always been the same”: Cooperation that does not Cooperate
This article is about how so-called ‘development cooperation’ hides, and grants legitimacy to, an agenda of dispossession and capitalist expansion; and how this ‘cooperation’ actually co-opts the political agenda of grassroots movements.
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Unravelling Concepts tied to Development
Development discourse is intertwined with an array of concepts. It is impossible to talk about development without thinking about other...
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“They should not be called public development banks”
A sign-on statement denounces public development banks for financing companies and private projects that heavily impact communities, their...
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Stolen Land Reclaimed in Argentina
The organization, Independent Producers of Piray, in Argentina, organized to stop the Alto Paraná company and the monoculture of pine...
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“Transform the System”
The last bulletin related to the global pandemic from the organization Focus on the Global South encompasses seven articles that pose the...
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The Suspension of UPM’s Works is Requested until the Environmental Requirements of their Authorization are Met
Members of MOVUS (Movement for a Sustainable Uruguay) denounced before the courts that UPM pulp company failed to comply the environmental...
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The Development Dictionary
This 1992 book, edited by Wolfgang Sachs, compiles more than 15 key concepts that served as a basis for, and a way to expand, destructive...
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(Swahili) Ni jambo gani linaloweza kuwa baya kuhusiana na upandaji miti? Shinikizo jipya kuhusu upandaji wa miti kwa ajili ya viwanda Kusini mwa Dunia
Pakua chapisho katika pdf.
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Support the struggle against mining in Thailand!
We call organizations around the world to adhere to this letter of solidarity with the women and men human rights defenders (W/HRDs) of Khao Lao Yai-Pha Jun Dai Forest Conservation Group.
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Say NO to Green Climate Fund money for REDD in Nicaragua!
We call on organizations to sign this open letter before this Friday 6th of November!!!
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Community members from Mozambique and organizations around the world say NO to more industrial tree plantations
On the eve of the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations, an open letter signed by more than 730 members of Mozambican communities, and 120 organizations from 40 countries has been released.
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Open Letter to HSBC about Suzano in Brazil
This Open Letter is a public reply from the Alert against the Green Desert Network from Brazil and WRM to an email from the investment department of the HSBC bank in the USA, requesting more information regarding the Suzano paper and pulp corporation in Brazil.
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Resisting a (Mono)Culture of Devastation
Despite the various tactics that try to hide the underlying harm and violence behind large scale tree plantations, each year, communities and movements raise up on September 21st to give visibility to their struggles and to denounce the detrimental impacts tree plantations have on their lives and territories.
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The Agony of a Tree-Planting Project on Communities’ Land in Uganda
The large-scale plantations from UK-based New Forests Company (NFC) have meant violence for thousands of residents from Mubende, Uganda. More than 15 years after the company began its operations, affected communities still confront the long-lasting and severe damages.
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From the ‘Greening Motherland’ Campaign to the ‘Ant Forest’ App: Tree-planting in China’s environmental politics
A historical reflection of China’s main mass tree-planting projects puts in evidence the increasingly key role of capital and market forces in rural China. The most recent one is based on the idea of “green” consumerism and benefits some of the biggest retailer and technology companies.
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South Africa: Death by Eucalyptus Monocultures
Several of Sappi’s plantations have been converted from pine to eucalyptus trees without authorization. Data obtained in over 75 years to verify timber plantations’ water use demonstrate that eucalyptus trees use 30 to 50% more water than pine trees.
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Colombia: Palm-Producing Company Poligrow Plans to Grab more Land under the “Small Producers” Scheme
Violence, massacre and forced displacement in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia have served to advance the industrial cultivation of oil palm. Palm-producing company Poligrow has an undeniable role in land-grabbing and intimidation in the municipality of Mapiripán.
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A Different Vision of “Doing Conservation:” The Kawsak Sacha of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador
Most governments, NGOs and corporations are promoting more Protected Areas and conservation areas around the world. But what does conservation mean? Marlon Santi of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku explains to us what the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador consider to be conservation.
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Deforestation in the Amazon, and the REDD+ Money that Keeps Coming to Brazil
The tens of millions of euros that the government of Acre received from the German government for its REDD+ program failed to stop deforestation. Despite this fact several Brazilian states continue to receive funds from the German government.
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The Road that Threatens to Destroy the “Protected” Harapan Forest in South Sumatra, Indonesia
The approval of a road construction inside the first Ecosystem Restoration Concession in Indonesia puts in evidence the inherent contradictions of such concessions.
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(Bahasa Indonesia) Jalan yang Mengancam Kerusakan Hutan Harapan yang Dilindungi di Sumatera
Persetujuan pembangunan jalan di dalam Konsesi Restorasi Ekosistem pertama di Indonesiaterbukti nyata bertolakbelakang dari prinsip yang melekat dari konsesi tersebut. Sebagainegara yang memiliki citra internasional tentang kepedulian terhadap deforestasi,pemerintah malah terlibat dalam memndorong terbitnya kebijakan yang mengarah padadeforestasi yang semakin parah.
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Feminist critique of corporate power
Women’s March Global and Semperviva Feminist Organization (SOF) have produced a series of videos that bring a feminist critique to...
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Land defenders facing ever-increasing violence
The NGO Global Witness recently released its 2019 report on the violence against land and environmental defenders – those who are at...
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“Meaningless certification”
Three-quarters of oil palm concessions in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) occupy...
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The donation farce during the battle against Covid-19 in Brazil
A network of civil society organizations and social movements launched a letter to expose how big companies (agribusiness, industrial tree...
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(Video) Luchas contra los monocultivos de árboles en Latinoamérica
Conversatorio virtual realizado el 21 de Septiembre de 2020, en conmemoración del Día Internacional de Lucha contra los Monocultivos de Árboles. Organizado por la Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de Árboles (Recoma).
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Declaration: International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations – September 21st, 2020
We share the Declaration of the Latin American Network Against Monoculture Tree Plantations.
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