Consumption
Excessive consumption patterns, especially in the global North, and increasingly in urban centres in the global South, demand a constant extraction of minerals, energy and raw materials. Most of this extraction takes place in the global South, where companies take over community lands for industrial plantations, fossil fuel extraction and large-scale mining. Communities are losing their lands and forests so that consumers can continue to have cheap access to paper products, cars and mobile phones, etc – and companies continue to pocket their profits.
Communities resisting the impunity and impacts of oil palm growers in Ecuador: Cases from Esmeraldas
For a long time, WRM, along with other organizations and social movements, has denounced the certification of projects that are destructive to forests and their web of life. These projects have also proven to be detrimental to communities living in and depending on forests. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification not only legitimates industrial logging in tropical forests and vast areas of monoculture plantations, but has also been associated with carbon markets, by certifying trees planted for “carbon capture".
