Oceania (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.

   

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.

La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International, Focus on the Global South, the World Rainforest Movement and more than than 120 organizations from around the world sent a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, in Rome, on the occasion of March 21st, the UN International Day of Forest. The letter demands that the FAO change its present definition of forests.

Around the world ‘development’ is robbing tribal people of their land, self-sufficiency and pride and leaving them with nothing. “There you go” is a short, satirical film, from Survival International, that tells the story of how tribal peoples are being destroyed in the name of ‘development’. For further information see http://www.survivalinternational.org/

Only available in Spanish  - By Guadalupe Rodríguez, Salva la Selva.

Vast areas of land where diverse and rich ecosystems predominate are being replaced with large scale tree plantations in the South. These plantations –whether eucalyptus, pines, rubber, oil palm or other- are resulting in serious impacts on local communities, who see their ecosystems and livelihoods destroyed to make way to industrial tree plantations. Apart from affecting communities as a whole, they result in specific and differentiated impacts on women which translate in their disempowerment.