Ghana

The false idea that industrial plantations are a solution to the climate crisis is a golden opportunity for investment funds like Arbaro, which access scarce climate funding for expanding destructive monocultures.

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?

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

Company plans 75,000 hectare expansion of Industrial Tree Plantations in Seven Countries in the Global South: Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Peru, Ecuador and Paraguay. Download the leafelt to know more about the company and why communities should be alert.

The Norwegian company APSD is establishing industrial eucalyptus plantations in Ghana for biomass fuel, which is considered a "carbon neutral" fuel. The Youth Volunteers for the Environment in Ghana spoke with communities affected by these plantations.

RSPO is the most widely used voluntary certification system for palm oil companies and it hold its 3rd African Sustainable Palm Oil Conference in Accra, Ghana on August 2019. But Friends of the Earth Africa groups exposed it as a greenwashing label. Cases of environmental degradation and rights violations remain visible in many of the plantations that have the label. They also blame the activities of oil palm plantation companies for biodiversity loss, increased poverty, human rights violations and the climate disaster in Africa, among others.

A new report on the state of industrial oil palm plantations in Africa shows how communities are turning the tide on a massive land grab in the region.

Oil giants Eni and Shell have both recently announced plans to use trees to offset some of their ever increasing carbon emissions. On May 13th, NGOs put out a statement opposing the oil industry’s attempts to avoid its responsibility for climate breakdown.

An interview with University of Ghana professor, Dzodzi Tsikata, makes it clear how "anyone who declares himself/herself to be a feminist cannot fail to recognize the connection between women's rights and the right to land." Therefore, she adds that "women's rights affect many interconnected spheres that cannot be separated. If one focuses only on one aspect and ignores the rest, women's rights are not realized."

 

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.