Bulletin Issue 110 - September 2006

In 2004, the Brazilian Network campaigning against the spread of tree plantations came up with the idea of instituting an International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations on 21 September, which is National Tree Day in that country. The idea was supported by organizations from all over the world, who since then carry out a number of special activities on this day. It is important to stress that this is certainly not a day aimed at opposing tree planting in general, but an activity focusing on one type of plantation in particular: large scale tree monocultures.

A team comprising Alvaro Santos, Emiliano Camacho and the author travelled from Montevideo, Uruguay to the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon in the framework of a national and international campaign on “An end to violence in rural areas!” “Cut out this scourge from the root!” promoted by the Latin American Secretariat of the International Union of Food workers (Rel-UITA) and the Brazilian National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), against rural violence in that country. The purpose was to film a documentary video gathering testimonials regarding some of the dozens of cases of rural leaders that have either been murdered or threatened with death.

African logging concessions are usually seen as units of forest management. However they are better seen as a kind of currency in a larger system of power politics and exploitation.

When a forestry operation is certified under the Forest Stewardship Council system, it should mean we can all relax in the knowledge that the forests are reasonably well managed. Unfortunately, it seems, this is not the case. SmartWood, an FSC accredited certifier, recently certified forestry operations in Laos which are producing timber that is illegal under the Lao Forestry Law.

Nicaragua has been aware of the effects of mining for a long time now. The many gold mining and other metal mineral works have left an aftermath of environmental degradation, impacts on water resources with, inter alia, high cyanide, lead and arsenic levels and irreparable damage to the health of thousands of workers who have also suffered violation of their labour rights.

For some months now, declarations have been circulating in Southern Brazil and in Uruguay, both by members of the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso and by Government authorities of these countries regarding the advantages for the local population of the installation of the company’s pulp mills in the region.

Establishment of monocultures of fast-growing trees to produce so-called fast-wood has accelerated in Cambodia following the country’s transition to a market-oriented economy in the early 1990s. Proposed and established plantations under the development paradigm of ‘economic concessions’ include fast-woods acacia, pine and eucalyptus. The majority of these economic concessions violates Cambodian law and there is little evidence that they create the proposed benefits and income for the state.

The study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “Preliminary Review of Biotechnology in Forestry Including Genetic Modification” (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/008/ae574e/ae574e00.pdf), released in December 2004, summarized the state of biotechnology in forestry generally with a specific look at genetic modification of trees. In their findings they report 225 outdoor field trials of GM trees worldwide in 16 countries. Unfortunately they do not differentiate which field trials are current and which occurred in the past, painting a somewhat skewed picture. Of the 225 field trials, they list 150 in the United States. The remainders are listed mostly in Europe: France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Sweden, as well as in Canada and Australia.

Wherever industrial tree plantations are planted in the South, governments provide a range of subsidies to investors. In Indonesia, the government has handed out billions of dollars for plantation development. The plantation and pulp sectors have also received generous aid support. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank funded studies in the 1980s. A range of export credit agencies helped finance the construction of pulp mills.

In our previous issue (WRM bulletin 109) we made reference to the promotion of oil palm plantations, denouncing their negative impacts on the Amazon forest and on displaced peasants. The wave of plantations continues, with other types of alien trees. In July of this year the National Reforestation Plan was submitted, promoting plantations for commercial and industrial purposes. Adopted in January 2006, the plan set out an average annual rate of plantation of 104,500 hectares from now until the year 2024. In a country where over eight million hectares of forests have been pillaged, it seems extremely ironic to propose such a reforestation plan as a remedy, and by the very same authors of the pillaging!

The history of the plantation industry in South Africa can be compared with the development of plantations elsewhere in the South: in Brazil, Aracruz Cellulose was developed under a military dictatorship; Indonesia’s pulp boom was planned and put into operation during the Suharto regime; Cambodia, Thailand and Chile provide other examples of how state oppression has benefitted pulp/plantations companies.

The PEFC was set up between 1998 and 1999 by the national forestry interest groups – mainly associations of small-forest owners in several European countries as the Pan European Forest Certification Scheme. It changed to its current name after having endorsed other non-European schemes. The scheme is governed by the PEFC Council, which consists of representatives of national certification schemes and are the PEFC’s members. The PEFC is not a single certification scheme with a single standard, but a programme for the endorsement of national certification schemes. As with other certification schemes, although the PEFC was supposed to certify forest management, it has also included tree plantations as being certifiable “forests”.

The Brazilian CERFLOR certification programme, endorsed by the international PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes), was officially launched in 2002 by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade and started to operate in March 2003.

In the year 2000 Chilean forestry companies announced the launching of their own forestry certification scheme, CERTFOR. This label was created under the auspices of the Fundación Chile, the Forestry Institute (Instituto Forestal - Infor) with the financial support of the Corporation for the Promotion of Production - CORFO (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción). After having attempted to join FSC – seeking international legitimacy – and following a negative answer, CERTFOR approached another international certification system: PEFC. It was thus that in October 2004, the Chilean CERTFOR certification system was internationally endorsed by PEFC.

At its last Conference of the Parties (COP8), the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a very important Decision (VIII/19), “Recommending Parties to take a precautionary approach when addressing the issue of genetically modified trees”. That Decision recognized “the uncertainties related to the potential environmental and socio-economic impacts, including long-term and transboundary impacts, of genetically modified trees on global forest biological diversity, as well as on the livelihoods of indigenous and local communities, and given the absence of reliable data and of capacity in some countries to undertake risk assessments and to evaluate those potential impacts”.